The excitement began in the summer of 2003. My team and I had worked tirelessly at IBM for two and a half years, breathing life into the Sony PlayStation 3 "Cell" central processing chip...
Then Dr. Chekib Akrout, IBM's senior vice president responsible for the PlayStation's chip team, told me another customer wanted our secret-weapon, record-smashing PowerPC microprocessor core. It was Microsoft.
"How did this happen?" I grumbled through gritted teeth.
"Let's just say it was a blockbuster, an offer IBM couldn't refuse," he answered. Lest I think the stakes of the enterprise were small, Akrout told me that over a billion dollars was involved...
That's how David Shippy, chief architect of the Cell processor, opens his book The Race for a New Game Machine. Not at the point where representatives from Sony, IBM and Toshiba dreamed up the processor -- but instead when he learned that he was going to be developing two chips simultaneously.
One that would go into the PlayStation 3 as originally planned; and another for the console of their direct competitor: Microsoft's Xbox 360.
I haven't yet read the book on store shelves today -- only the first six, staggering pages freely viewable at Amazon.com -- but according to the Wall Street Journal, the fact that Shippy was simultaneously heading processor development for PS3 and Xbox 360 is only the tip of the iceberg:
All three of the original partners had agreed that IBM would eventually sell the Cell to other clients. But it does not seem to have occurred to Sony that IBM would sell key parts of the Cell before it was complete and to Sony's primary videogame-console competitor. The result was that Sony's R&D money was spent creating a component for Microsoft to use against it.
And though that passage suggests that the operation might have been technically legal, it felt more like a cover-up to Shippy and his partner, project manager Mickie Phipps:
Mr. Shippy and Ms. Phipps detail the resulting absurdity: IBM employees hiding their work from Sony and Toshiba engineers in the cubicles next to them; the Xbox chip being tested a few floors above the Cell design teams. Mr. Shippy says that he felt "contaminated" as he sat down with the Microsoft engineers, helping them to sketch out their architectural requirements with lessons learned from his earlier work on Playstation.
Without seeing the contracts signed, it's hard to say whether this information might provoke some sort of lawsuit, either against IBM, or by IBM against their tale-telling employees. According to book publisher Kensington's website, both Shippy and Phipps have since left the company.
Though the Wall Street Journal notes that IBM didn't necessarily develop the Xbox 360 chip at the expense of PS3 -- "Both designs were delivered on time to IBM's manufacturing division" -- Sony suffered regardless:
There was a problem with the first chip run. Microsoft had had the foresight to order backup manufacturing capacity from a third party. Sony did not and had to wait another six weeks to get their first chips. So Microsoft actually got the chip that Sony helped design before Sony did. In the end, Microsoft's Xbox 360 hit its target launch in November 2005, becoming its own success. Because of various delays, the PlayStation 3 was pushed back a full year.
If the story is true, it would seem that it took more than one Microsoft coup to put the Xbox 360 where it is today.
(via The Guardian)
January 2nd, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Isn't this a bit of a non-story?
IBM built the cell processer inside the PS3. They also built the processer in the 360. Just because they were built by the same team of people doesn't mean that they were exactly the same or that Microsoft stole the cell from Sony.
The reason the people like Sony and Microsoft go to people like IBM is that they have privious experiance with developing chips, usually in a similar area. Sony would have gone to IBM, and not done it themselves, because of IBM's experiance. Microsoft have just done the same thing.
To me it sounds like some IBM employees have decided to make a drama about it all to sell their book. Seems to be working well so far with all the fuss on gaming sites at the minute.
January 2nd, 2009 at 5:22 pm
@Matt:
IBM does indeed have a history of building game machine processors, and you're quite right that Microsoft might well go to IBM as well as Sony.
But the reason this is a news story is not because Microsoft and Sony went to the same manufacturer to get their chips made. It is a news story because the author claims that his company showed Microsoft the secret design documents for Sony's chip, that Sony paid to design, and Sony's R&D money was thus used towards Microsoft's chip as well.
There's also the fact that they made the same individual (him) the project lead on two different chips for two rival companies. That's a huge conflict of interest, because any time he spent working on Microsoft's chip is time he didn't spend working on Sony's.
The idea that one man may have been responsible for making the Xbox 360 take the lead this console generation is staggering, to say the least.
But again, this is all according to the author of the book. This may not be a true story, and could well be a drama like you say.
January 2nd, 2009 at 6:55 pm
It may or may not be illegal, but it's definitely unethical. Though this won't be news for anyone who knows me, I can certainly see Microsoft pulling off this kind of a deal.