The Race for a New Game Machine
Creating the Chips Inside the Xbox 360 & the PlayStation 3
David Shippy and Mickie Phipps
review by Zube (zube@stat.colostate.edu)
Created:  Sep 12, 2009
Updated:  Sep 21, 2009
http://www.stat.colostate.edu/~zube/race.txt

My thoughts after reading the first thirty pages of _The Race for a
New Game Machine_ were these: 

Complete Rubbish.  

Still, I pressed on and I was glad I did.  A bad example is often
a most useful tool for learning and, dear me, did I learn a lot.

Looking at the cover, I wondered how much trouble I was in for.  The
"i" in "Machine" in the title is not a normal i, but is instead made up
of dots, suggesting (perhaps) a computer chip.  Interestingly, only the
i is stylized as such.  This turned out to be a whopping big clue of
what was to come.

I knew I was in for some pain from the first paragraph of the
introduction.  After five brief sentences, the authors had burned
through thrilling, adventurous, arduous, best-seller, fascinating,
revolutionized and rebellious.  Watching the smoke rise from my
hyperbole meter, I knew that understatement was not going to be a
hallmark of this book (sigh).  Just fixed the darn thing, too.

You might think that the authors' goal would be to tell the story of
the design of the chips used in the PS3 and the Xbox 360.  It's 
certainly what I thought when I bought the book.  Alas, no.  The story
is actually this:

Once upon a time there was a man, David Shippy, and his exceedingly
large ego.  One day while gazing in the mirror and thinking of how
smart, motivated, talented, hard-working and gosh-darn wonderful he
was, he considered the size of his ego and found it wanting.  Using his
overflowing talent, he decided to use the writing and publication of a
book to inflate his ego until it suffered gravitational collapse,
forming an egocentric black hole from which nothing could escape.

The story the authors tried to tell, which should have been an
interesting one, is an age-old story of treachery and "it's just
business".  Briefly, IBM is contacted by Sony and Toshiba and the three
companies (STI) come together to create chips for the PS3.  David
Shippy is offered a position at IBM to be one of design leaders.
During this development period, Microsoft knocks on IBM's door looking
for processors for their next game system.  Seeing the possibilities of
supplying chips for both machines, IBM agrees to work with Microsoft
too.  Many IBM people working on the STI project balk, thinking that
this is a betrayal of the original agreement with Sony and Toshiba, but
not David Shippy.  He loves the idea of being able to work with both
companies because his ego will then be the focus of not one, but two
next-generation consoles.  He works very hard, does many wonderful
things and both the PS3 and the Xbox are a great success, thanks to
him.

The book itself is rather schizophrenic as it hops between technical
details of chip design, management-speak, descriptions of people's
hair and beer.  Only three threads run the length of the book:
stilted, completely unbelievable dialog, amateur dramatics and 
David Shippy's ego.

For an example of such dialog, consider the following.  Early in the
story, Shippy meets Jim Kahle (another chip designer) in a bar where
Kahle attempts to recruit him for the STI project.  After several
agonizing pages of not getting on with it, the authors finally get on
with it.  Kahle says:

"That's where I need you, Shippy.  You've always delivered high-quality,
innovative solutions for me."

While it is possible that these were the words spoken between the two,
I have a hard time believing it.  This is marketing-speak, advertising-
speak, suit-speak, not two technical people talking to each other.

When people aren't talking in marketing-speak, they often sound like
a press release or a white paper.  For example, Shippy, Kahle and
another lead named Chekib Akrout are relaxing and drinking on Kahle's
deck.

Shippy:  "What's keeping you awake at night?  What's the bottom line?
The worst fear?

Akrout:  "We don't have any idea what Intel has up their sleeves, what
they might bring out of the shadows in response to STI's challenge.
The home computing environment, not just games, is the ultimate target
for all three STI partners, but Intel still dominates the PC market
with over eighty-five percent of the market share.  Intel also provided
the chip for Microsoft's Xbox, the most significant threat to the
PlayStation line."

Yea, that sounds true to life.

How about this?  Engineer guy gets very frustrated and destroys his 
keyboard.  The conversation that follows:

"Jim stepped closer to me and said quietly, "Brian got frustrated when
he couldn't find the solution to a logic problem as quickly as he
thought he should have.""

I give up.

So let's turn to amateur dramatics, specifically the hand-meets-table
gesture.  By my count, this occurs four times in the book and each time, 
I kept wondering where the editor had disappeared to:

(p. 3)  "That's crazy! I shouted and slapped a hand down on the table."

(p. 47) "Kahle immediately agreed with Hofstee.  "I've fought the
'dark side' before and lost," he said, referring to Intel, "and the last
thing I want to do is to come up short again."  He pounded his fist on
the table to let us know his decision was final."

(p. 153) "It didn't take Kahle long to show his hand.  "Schedule is
our top priority", he said, pounding a fist on the table for emphasis."

(p. 192) "He punctuated his angry spate of words with a loud slap of
his big hands on the table."

***

Before confronting the beast that is Mr. Shippy's ego, let's consider
a few of the book's other fundamental problems.

It appears that _Race_ is also a "management" book, so each
chapter has a management-like title.  Interestingly, much of the
writing in any particular chapter often has nothing to do with the
chapter title or, in some cases, directly contradicts it.  For example,
in _Stay Positive, Even in the Swirl of Controversy_, Shippy admits to
being "pissed off" and is sullen when a decision does not go his way:
"If you can live with that consequence, then go ahead".

It feels very much as if the management angle was added at the last 
minute.  If it wasn't, that says a great deal too.

The authors also construct a jaw-dropping retelling of video game
history.  In Shippy's mind, VG history goes like this:

Atari Pong
Fairchild Channel F
Atari VCS
PC games

and then (I love this):

"It took nearly a decade, but the game console market suddenly bounced
back from the dead with the launch of Sony's PlayStation in 1994, then the
follow-on PlayStation 2 with its Emotion Engine in 2000, then Microsoft's
Xbox in 2001.

It takes a serious amount of cajones to omit Nintendo and Sega, but
since he probably didn't work on any of the chips that went into those
machines, why should he waste his precious, precious time?

Finally, I want to get one dig in because it's too good to let pass:

(p. 145)  "... my team argued that working for Microsoft was a conflict
of interest for them and for their Sony and Toshiba friends, who were
unknowingly designing and verifying logic that would be going into
their competitor's product."

"Do you think Intel worries about delivering the same chip to Dell and to
Gateway?", I said.  It's up to those companies to provide product 
differentiation."

This is an excellent bit of sophistry because if one does not consider
it carefully, the argument seems reasonable enough on its face.  The
flaw, however, is evident: sure, Intel provides the same chips to both
Dell and Gateway, but what it almost certainly does not do is design a
chip with Gateway and then sell the results from such an agreement
to Dell behind Gateway's back while the chip is still in development.

I find it more than a little funny that a chip designer has such a 
tenuous grasp of logic.

**

The real story of _Race_ is, of course, David Shippy.  He and his ego
are the focus of the book, front to back.  No opportunity is ever
missed to praise himself or the things he has done.  Other people are
often praised, but that praise rings hollow; others are put on a
pedestal only to give scale to the breathtakingly-high pedestal on
which Shippy sits.

I'm not kidding about the depth of Shippy's self-love.  One cannot
read very far without being reminded how amazing David Shippy is:

(p. 21) "... Akrout, Kahle, and I were about to set out to design
the Holy Grail of computing:  the highest frequency, highest performing
microprocessor in the industry ....  If we could pull it off, a whole
generation of gamers worldwide would pay us tribute ...."

(p. 49) "... Then in 2001, as a very experienced senior engineer, I 
plunged headfirst into the PlayStation design ...."

(p. 71) "However, long ago I found that I'm most effective when I can
also use the right side of my brain to visualize my designs spatially.
I imagined the flow of instructions moving through my PowerPC core
like a magnificent fluid piece of art ...."

(p. 79) "For the rest of my days at the university, I was a regular
on the dean's list, and I graduated with honors."

(p. 91) "I recently earned the Master Inventor Award, which is given 
to the top inventors at IBM."

There are literally tens of other examples.

**

_Race_ does contain an interesting story within its pages, but that
story is about opportunism, about how a person who believes that
winning is everything will do anything to win and everything else and
everyone else can go straight to hell.

You might think, "Hey, I want a smart, tough guy like that on my side"
and indeed you might, initially.  The problem is that as soon as he
sees a better opportunity *for himself*, he'll drop you like a hot
potato and that is what _Race_ demonstrates so nicely.  Shippy, despite
his ego, had a chance to make a difference, to "work hard and play
hard" without leaving an emotional, social and moral train wreck in his
wake.  Sadly, he never aspires to that level of commitment.  Instead,
at every point in the story, he chooses what he thinks will be best for
his ego.

Shippy often tries to paint himself as a normal human being with normal
human failings: as a lonely person, a person who feels bad that he can
no longer look his STI coworkers in the eye, as someone with a working
conscience, but it doesn't pan out.  It's really all just a big joke to
him:

(p. 140) "There were now plans to use the core in Apple products as
well as in Sony's archrival's Microsoft's game machine.  As they said
in an old Monty Python episode, "Nudge nudge, wink, wink.  Say no more."

There are brief moments when his conscience almost makes an appearance:

(p. 141) "... or just refuse to take on the Microsoft chip.  The thought
occurred to me.  Life might be easier if I just said no."

but it's quickly smacked down:

(p. 142) "I pushed my useless regrets aside ...."   

I honestly would not have been surprised to read something like this 
in the book:

"While working on the core, IBM was contacted by the Mighty Dog
dog food company with a bold, innovative and forward-thinking plan to
turn the lowest-paid hourly workers at IBM into dog food.  Could I
design a chip that would bring the spark of life to the dog food
industry and also help IBM's bottom line?  For a while the task
troubled me.  People would lose their lives, sons and daughters would
lose fathers and mothers, husbands would lose wives and vice versa.
The impact would be incalculable.  Still, I thought, since IBM had
already signed a contract to do this, "the train has left the station
on that one" (p. 126).  I quickly went to The Dog Food War Room and
started writing designs on one of the whiteboards ...."

Shippy says it himself on page 226:  "winning is everything".  That
comes through loud and clear; he's certainly not much concerned about 
the mass of bodies sacrificed on the altar of winning:

(p. 227) "Chekib, Jim and I were casualties of war.  Still friends?  
Possibly given enough time to heal."

That stylized "i" in "Machine" on the cover was a solid clue.  "i" is
the only thing that matters to David Shippy.  

Here's one final example of his all-consuming egotism:

(p. 224)  "I like knowing that my fingerprints are on all three major
games consoles, the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and the Wii.  The Wii
used the base PowerPC G3 microprocessor that I helped create so many
years ago ...."

"At least for that moment, I ruled the game hardware industry."

Good for you, Mr. Shippy and thank you most sincerely.  Your book has
provided an exceedingly clear illustration of how the Winner of one race
can be a Loser of so many others.

**

Despite all this, I think everyone should own a copy of this book.
It provides excellent examples of:

1) how not to write an interesting book.
2) how an overinflated ego does not make one look smart or interesting, 
   it makes one look like a self-obsessed prick.
3) why opportunists should be avoided at all costs.
4) how morals and ethics are never invited into areas where money reigns
   supreme.

It's certainly not a video game book or even a computer design book,
but _Race_ teaches some important lessons.

It goes high up on my VG shelf, with the spine towards the back.