[tibbydudeza]

From my understanding the CELL was meant to be the GPU for the PS3 but Sony instead found the same issues and could not program a reasonable performing SDK using it within the time limits (MS Xbox 360) and added in a Nvidia RSX GPU.

Another oddball architecture that went nowhere.

[ethbr0]

> could not program a reasonable performing SDK using it within the time limits

It feels like "within the time limits" has always been the problem of difficult to program for software-dependant architectures: time vs competitors.

E.g. in the time it takes to write an intelligent compiler (IA-64), your better-resourced (because they're getting revenue from the current market) competitor has surpassed your performance via brute evolution force.

There are use cases out there (early supercomputing, NVIDIA) where radical, development-heavy architectures have been successful, but they generally lack of competitor (the former) or iterate ruthlessly themselves (the latter).

[tibbydudeza]

"radical, development-heavy architectures" = niche use case

Connection machine = only had one customer afaik (NSA)

Transmeta - interesting technology but nobody in that market wanted to run anything besides Windows+x86.