The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

IBM mainframe ties the knot with video game chip

Virtual 3D environments get souped up

Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup/Recovery

Computer giant IBM is set to reveal a new project which will merge business mainframes with the microchip used in the latest Sony PlayStation.

IBM and multiplayer online game firm Hoplon Infotainment have teamed up to integrate the Cell game console processor with Big Blue's mainframe computers, according to reports.

The two firms have worked together in the past on the mainframe hosting of a beta version of a massively multiplayer online game.

The new partnership will see the integration of the Cell Broadband Engine with mainframes and Brazil-based Hoplan's virtual world software, bitVerse.

The hybrid technology should better handle the boom in virtual online worlds such as Second Life which uses 3D characters in a complex environment.

An announcement is expected from both firms later today. ®

Agentless Backup is Not a Myth

Latest Comments

Second Life deserves second look

It's so easy to bash things these days. Anonimity allows for the smallest of intellects to act like the largest of egos. The majority of people who attack SL are basically just snobs who never got over the commercial failure of There.com. I was a beta tester for both and I can happily say that SL kicks the proverbial out of most online 3D virtual worlds - even those where people pay good money for monthly subscriptions. SL has lasting appeal primarily because it's a 3D world where anyone can create .. well.. anything and they do so on an almost hourly basis. Where it lacks in realtime voicechat (though this is acheivable via the use of external apps like Ventrillo and suchlike - this is what's done in many other online worlds including World of Whorecraft and City of Zeroes - yes I've played both too and loved/hated em for different reasons) SL makes up in spades in creativity. Sure, if you look for poseurs, freaks and wankers you'll find them in SL but if you actively look for interesting things and people you'll easily find them too.

As for the comments that allude to SL people who lack of real life - I met my honey via SL and she's here with me now, actually she's in bed asleep - all semi naked and yummy, but she's real all the same....and we have a cat too.

SL like RL is what you make of it.

0
0
Anonymous Coward

SL again

As someone who has used Yahoo chat, Skype and dare I say it MSN... Until you can get voice in SL its not even worth thinking about. Text chat is dead... Its like going back 10 years into Yahoo's past when HTML text rooms used to scroll up the screen. So you can fly around and buy things... Big deal. People who use Second Life firstly need a primary life

0
0

Easy about what?

@David Farinic

The other reason people get angry about technology is if it's a Web 2.0-style hype bubble with zero intrinsic value which does nothing productive except keep perverts indoors.

0
0

More from The Register

SCO vs. IBM battle resumes over ownership of Unix
Zombie lawsuit back and wants to suck the brains out of Linux
 breaking news
You don't need phone lines or cable for ANYTHING, says Dish
The satellite-dish man can sort you out with phone and broadband over the air too
 breaking news
What's HP got under wraps? Looks awfully flash and tape shaped
What happens in Vegas won't stay there - we've got the details
AMD lifts the veil on Opteron, ARM chip plans for 2014
Not much action going on in 2013, though
Microsoft borks botnet takedown in Citadel snafu
Stupid Redmond kicked over our honeypots, wail white hats
IBM's $1bn layoffs latest: Now axe swings in US, Canada - reports
Union claims 121 storage bods canned after dismal sales
NetApp musters muscular cluster bluster for ONTAP busters
Storage array OS overhauled to juggle more nodes, go down on you, er, less
HP adds 'Haswell' Xeon E3s to entry ProLiant servers
Gussies up MicroServer for SMBs, adds baby switches