An article from the Wall Street Journal highlights some eyebrow-raising stories from the new book "The Race for a New Game Machine," written by designers who worked closely on the Cell and 360 processors.
The book details the entire roller coaster ride of development, including when Microsoft contacted IBM to have the 360 chipset designed around the core architecture for the Cell, and explains how the PS3 was originally planned to ship in 2005 and why it was delayed.
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.
It seems like the will be an interesting read to say the least. I generally avoid stories involving technical mumbojumbo, but I think I'll be picking this up. The book is scheduled to come out tomorrow, according to Amazon.
Playing the Fool (Wall Street Jornal)