[ydl-gen] Response of Fixstars to end of ps3 otheros

[Kai Staats]

Warren, All,

> I would welcome comments from PS3 users and Fixstars people on these
> latest developments. Thanks.

I wish I had answers for you, but I and my staff at Fixstars Solutions have 
very little more information than do you. Yes, we too are sad to see this 
unique, affordable commodity platform be removed from the market. 

I believe it is a decision of economics, as Linux never _made_ money for Sony. 
The PS3 itself was rumored to have lost money in the first year or so, and 
who knows if it makes money now? It is games, and games alone that make money 
in this cut-throat game box market. So consider (from a purely economic point 
of view) that each PS3 sold to run Linux, especially the clusters, may never 
run a single game and therefore invoke 'break-even', at best.

From my personal point of view, black hole research 
(http://us.fixstars.com/showcase/cellebration/umass/) conducted on a PS3 is 
amazing marketing. Sony could have followed IBM's standard of using 
Supercomputing success (which is rumored to lose millions of dollars per 
year) to market enterprise level products. In the same respect, Sony could 
have built a world-wide marketing campaign that would bury the XBox360 and 
Wii --but that is not their style.

They started down this path in 2006 with the Sony competency centers and 
university support programs, even backing our HPC Consortium in the spring 
of '07. But internal to Sony, Linux seems to have lost momentum thereafter.


Now, there appears to be good news, but the details are not yet known:
http://www.develop-online.net/news/32378/Sony-unveils-academic-PS3-dev-kit

"Sony unveils academic PS3 dev kit"

Now, will this support the new slim? Seems it would have to if the current 80 
and 160 models are being removed from the channel?

Is this a way to continue Linux support, but on a more one-to-one basis?

Sincerely,
Kai Staats, COO
Fixstars Solutions, Inc.