Sony, Toshiba and IBM have reached a basic agreement on jointly developing a new operating system to be released in 2005 for computers capable of high-speed Internet connections. The OS will allow personal computers and home appliances to exchange huge volumes of data, including the high-resolution graphics of a television screen, through a broadband connection.
Bye Bye Microsoft…
I just don’t understand why Sony doesn’t license the BeOS or leverage their existing license for the BeIA? How much did they spend developing EVilla…who would have spent that money if they were not thrilled with it?
Eddie,
companies spending tons of money and scapping something is common. Look at car compainies, they spend ungodly amounts of money on cars and then cancel them just before launching them. course Accountants can have big effects on projects to. You can make something perfect but if it doesn’t sell often its best to cut your losses and move on.
Palm ownes Be, what do you mean about sony licensing Beos???
secondly, i hope they use a linux kernal…. no sense in writing a new OS when you can expand on an open source one, right?
k – e – r – n – e – l
The Japanese have been on the forefront in the development of advanced home appliance technologies for quite some time. Nowadays Japanese people already use mobile phones with broadband internet connections which allows them to receive smooth high quality video of the people who they are speaking with.
NTT-DoCoMo is by far the most successful company in Japan to provide wireless internet appliance technologies for cellphones and PDAs. Over 30 million Japanese people use their i-Mode enabled cellphones to connect to the internet and play online games, seek weather reports or seek the nearest restaurant.
Here is a most interesting 13 minute video regarding NTT DoCoMo’s vision of how technologies will be integrated into our lifes in the near future:
http://www3.stream.co.jp/web/nttdocomo/vision2010/vision2010_en.ram… or http://www3.stream.co.jp/web/nttdocomo/vision2010/vision2010_en.asx…
“secondly, i hope they use a linux kernal…. no sense in writing a new OS when you can expand on an open source one, right?”
Hell yes. If you start from scratch you just might get it properly done…
TVs with the OS installed will be much smaller as they will not need a tuner, the sources said.
This will be intresting, in the UK (and other places I belive) you pay a TV lience (which funds the BBC), which is for the right to use a decive to recive radio within certain ranges. I wonder where this leaves the BBC?
re: Bye Bye Microsoft…
Why? They are taking a section of the market that does not exist yet? How will this effect the PC market?
re: NTT-DoCoMo
I belive this is ariving in the UK soon. I am sooo looking forward to it.
mlk
This is not just an OS for TVs… this is an OS for EVERYTHING!!
Thats how huge this project is! Everything will be connected together, and the central part is the PC.
The hardware operation was announced some time ago, and it is no surprise that the OS plans to be just as revolutionary…
Read this:
http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20010313S0113
IBM of all companies should remember those OS projects.
I don’t think this new operating system will ever achieve what’s they are trying to achieve.
Standards like IEEE 1394, protocols like TCP/IP are the kind of stuff that’s needed, better hardware perhaps, but not a new operating system.
ciao
yc
Hmmmmmm. Interesting
A new software and hardware platform built from scratch to push the limits some. I’m cautiously optimistic. Does this mean I have to get Tetris on yet another platform? Does this mean restrictive hardware to benefit major software publishers like Sony? Does this mean ultra-expensive hardware? Does this mean low-power fanless devices? Does this mean Microsoft will suffer? Questions, questions…
BeOS + modern Transputer, it’s that bloody simple. We already did the chip part 20yrs ago at Inmos, put BeOS on it and you have scalable mp out to 100s, 1000s of nodes & tremendous bandwidth, piece of cake in technology that is 20yrs better.
Some people must reinvent the wheel over & over . Irony is IBM, & Japan Inc was quite familiar with Transputers 10yrs ago.
Just my $100M worth.
John
you need an OS that can be taylored to work well in a high bandwidth, multimedia high demand environment. it needs the reliability and reltime function of an embeded OS while giving the multimedia poer of BeOS. seriously, they should look at atleast BeIA and if they go with BeIA, they can move on BeOS for the PC market, however, I think that this should not be a bum rush on Microsoft as that is sure to fail, what they should do is marker this as a special purpose PC that uses the TV as a monitor to the system. then people will feel as if they are buying a seperate appliance for the home entertainment center….sony could even integrate this into the PS2 so they have a well established distrobution of the computer that is already hooked up to the Home theater. it should not be a hostile take over of the PC market, but a take over of the home theater market of the future…that is where these folk and MS will be doing battle…there will be few applications in this reaml other than Gamre and web browsers……and even playing feald…and if they use BeOS for the PS2 then they will have the uperhand on MS as the BeOS is a mature Multimedia OS.
IBM/Sony/Toshiba are trying to sell you their new “cell” CPU — that’s why they are developing the OS. So BeOS/BeIA thing is a non-issue.
?
http://www.timesofindia.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=306808047
http://www.gf-data.de/gamefront/9283924738.html#sony
Japan’s Sony Computer Entertainment denied a press report Friday it would join IBM and Toshiba in developing a computer operating system for global use.
The major Japanese daily Yomiuri Shimbun said in its evening edition that the three companies had reached a basic agreement to develop by 2005 a system that uses broadband data transmission.
The report said the alliance would open the specifications of the new OS to other companies, aiming to make it global standard in the high-speed Internet age.
But a Sony spokeswoman described the claim as “a little misundestanding.”
She said that the three companies announced last March that they would invest $400 million over the next five years to design a powerful new chip to drive broadband communications.
The alliance said at that time that it would marry SCEI’s leadership in the home console market, IBM’s computer and semiconductor track record and Toshiba’s expertise in system large-scale integration of chips.
The spokeswoman said the report might be referring to a system which would accompany the new chip currently under development. “But it is not a generally conceived OS as those of Microsoft. It has been limited to the three-company framework.”
The daily said the three companies were also aiming to create by 2010 an integrated system featuring thousands of personal computers, each equipped with the new OS, that is more efficient than current supercomputers.
Pouier:
> This is not just an OS for TVs… this is an OS for EVERYTHING!!
Yes, a very insightful comment indeed.
> http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20010313S0113
“super-parallel processor network remains a huge hurdle.”
There`s only one technology currently available and being implemented into a huge scala of devices which already provides this kind of functionality. The Tao Group has quietly developed an platform independent operating system before Sun even started work on the development of Java. This technology http://www.eetimes.com/story/chipwire/OEG20000601S0037“>allows&… Taos” rel=”nofollow”>http://www.byte.com/art/9407/sec6/art1.htm”>Taos which was made with some very revolutionary ideas in mind.
The modern version of Taos is called the Elate RTOS / Intent. For more information regarding this technology I recommend searching with the keywords “Amiga” or “AmigaDE”, here on OSNews.
>>IBM of all companies should remember those OS projects.
I don’t think this new operating system will ever achieve what’s they are trying to achieve.<<
Well I think it will a great project indeed… Sony, Toshiba and IBM would love to break ties with Microsoft and get down to business, because Microsoft has screwed them all over on a number of occassions.
Sony has already been working on a new type operating system that would run on their own CPU technology, and IBM has the programmers and the money to do anything they want… I am not sure where Toshiba fits in the spectrum?!
As for OS/2… you can blame Microsoft for its failure, because purposely made it fail due to making sure Windows would succeed!
I wish them luck and hope that Microsoft gets a taste of its own medicine!!!
http://www.amiga.com/feature/about_amiga/
isn’t that called NetBSD?
Tao is it.
I knew that SONY would start something that could actually battle the behemoth that is M$!!!!!!!!! And a few weeks before I bought a PS2(like a month an a half ago) I was tracking a rumour about the PS3 that will supposedly be released around 2005, it is supposed to use a Proccessor by the code name ‘Cell’ but I ran into loads of dead ends, and eventually gave up my search…..
Could it be? This new thing? The Future is comeing and it shows not the Mighty Evil Empire, but the great Holy Alliance which is SONY,IBM,and Toshiba…….. personally I think they should develop something to replace the unstable PC all together , with a new archetecture and a new OS to go with it =)
Nothing against Linux nor BeOs, but they do not have the greatest end-user experience, Beos had problems with my Nvidia card, which i see as a standard video card in the PC world, and Linux isnt the most stable & least buggiest OS around no matter what the zealots say =) In fact Id use M$hit if I didnt hate that company sooo much.