IN A REMARKABLE DEAL, Microsoft has asked IBM to make the chips that will power it's next generation X-Box.
The partnership is suggestive of the heady days when the geekish Bill Gates wheeler-dealed is way to to delivering DOS for the original IBM PC. Now, the chips are well and truly down and Bill Gates is the American charged with countering the Japanese threat from Sony's Playstation.
Bill turned to Big Blue and instructed that it should use all the resources and experience at its command to deliver to a PS2-busting PC mark 2.
The geek turned to the suits to forge a deal to compete in a market worth billions. The console is the easy favourite to be at the heart of family entertainment, ousting media PCs by sheer volume.
But the X-Box is a PC too, just a clumsily-knobbled one. Its supposed to be a proprietary system, in the way the original IBM PC wasn't. And maybe if Bill and Blue had gotten on better back then, we'd have two big Apples.
Anyhow, no details were given on the details of the chip which be the heart of the deal.
In a joint statement an IBM fellow spoke of the firm's excitement "to be working on a project of this magnitude" and suggested the powerful partnership would "expand the boundaries of what's possible in entertainment."
source:
The Inquirer
