Well, John Carmack just put the last nail in the ppu coffin... http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=41102 "I am not a believer in dedicated PPUs. Multiple CPU cores will be much more useful in general, but when GPUs finally get reasonably fine grained context switching and scheduling, some tasks will work well there."
of course. PPUs are only needed when the rest of your system is either a) too weak, like the Wii for example, or b)too busy, which in a way leads to point a) if you have enough raw power then maths are maths, and physics love FPU power. The PS3 for example is the best machine out there for any real-time simulation at the price it's offered (real-time simulation even with no video-out signal for example). Carmack is right but not because he's Carmack. Because it's something that just makes real sense.
They could have been huge, but they went about it the wrong way. People are not going to spend 100+ dollars on a card that does things they don't understand. Developers aren't going to develop for these cards unless people are going to buy these cards (catch 22). They should partner with Nvidia or ATI to add another chip on their boards. It would make more sense that way, it would make the boards a bit more costly but I think for the consumer it would be better and the games then could take advantage of those extra processors..... But then why not just beef up the GPU to handle more processing, hence we don't need the PPU at all! My 2 cents
b\c then people are gona bitch about why their new expensive fancy gfx card can't perfom as good on the gfx side as the specs said.
