a) this didn't need its own thread. we have a massive and active nvidia/ps3 thread already
b) you're misrepresenting his quotes. He used words like "seems" etc. that you have dropped. He's not stating these things as fact. He also said "Cell isn't the be all and end all of all types of processing.", not ""cell isn't the be all and end all" that STI promised". And that's true - if you look at what IBM has been saying, Cell is biased toward apps that require massive floating point performance (like graphics, digital media etc.). I doubt he would be happy with how you are characterising his quotes - a couple of other people jumped in afterwards with words like failure, and Dave was quick to stamp that out.
and
c) with all due respect to Dave Baumann, I'm sure he'd be the first to acknowledge that he isn't as aware of what's going on with cell as he is with the PC graphics landscape.
IMO (and in the opinion of many others who replied to those comments on B3D), choosing NVidia to co-design the PS3 GPU isn't necessarily a reflection on Cell's performance. For a start, we don't even know that the GPU won't be cell based (although that is unlikely, imo), but even if it's not, there are many reasons to go with an experienced graphics partner asides from hardware (software, tools etc., developer pressure, "features", cost).
We'll see in February, and after, how cell is shaping up. But from what we know from the monday before last, things seem to be on track.
IMO, if it's true that Sony have been pitting different options against each other as an alternative to a preferred Cell-based GPU, the reason they chose a "plan B" probably came down to cost - Cell may well be expensive to manufacture at the moment, but instead of compromising CPU power to include a second cell-based chip, they've decided to go with their next best option. I.e. I doubt it has anything to do with missing performance targets, and possibly more to do with missing cost targets. IF that particular scenario is true
