Sony To Sell Cell Chip Production Plant
September 16th, 2007 by James Hyde in Business, PlayStation 3, Technology
Sony is trying to sell its Cell chip production plant, the one supplying chips to the PlayStation 3. The potential buyer, Toshiba, is one of the three original development partners for the Cell (with IBM as well). It’s an expected move from Sony, as they have always planned to shift from production to development only, outsourcing the production to third parties. Japan’s Business Nikkei says the deal is worth some 100 Billion Yen, close to $870 million.
September 16th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
They own 3 plants and this is the oldest one. They will keep the two plants they spent 4 Billion building that are set to ramp to 32nm in two years. Plus they still own two production lines in IBM’s East Fishkill, NY Cell plant.
Sony’s remaining plants along with the two IBM Lines are putting fully fuctioning 9 core Cell BE’s. Surprize to most people is that Sony did not use cripple chips with one set aside for redundency as claimed. All PS3’s have the capability to run all 9 cores. Plus they are all fully capable of dynamic on the fly clocking between 3.2 and 5+ ghz!
In fact newest RSX, Super Companion Controller, and Cell are all at 65nm to run cooler and with dynamic burst clocking exceeding all older claims. When they said the PS3 was upgradable? They meant it!!! hehe That 10 life cycle? It’s true!!! LOLz
The Cell alone is capable of 20+years of use, because of it’s dynamic clocking nature making it almost human like!
Where is Intel’s Cell type chip? ….. not til 2012!
Remember main difference? Asymmetrical Multi-Cores!
September 16th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
<p>Monarky: The cell has 8 cores. PS3 has only 6 accessible cores, the seventh is in a special mode and is dedicated to aspects of the OS and security, and an eighth is disabled to improve production yields. And the “cores” aren’t actually cores as with x86 CPUs from Intel and AMD, they’re “SPEs”, Synergistic Processing Elements. An equivalent 3.2 GHz Intel Quad Core can easily catch up with the Cell, especially the new versions which are coming later this year.</p>
September 16th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
Even if the PS3 lasted ten years, why are they still planning to have a new console in a few years? What would be the point? By then there could be a chip better than the cell.