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Sony: Cell Processor Being Shrunk This Year

Rajiv Ashrafi — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 19:06:19 +0000

Sony is not in the best of positions right now. The company announced its first loss in over a decade and the gaming division had income come down by quite a big margin. Sales of the PS3, PSP and PS2 were also down, but that hasn’t put SCEE boss David Reeves down. In fact, he made a rather silly boxing analogy in this interview, but he also said some interesting stuff – namely, the PS3.

Reeves disclosed that the Cell processor running the PS3 will soon be shrunk down. The current Cell chip is a 65nm one and will soon be replaced by a 45nm chip which will require less power and make the machine run cooler. So, when is this coming? “Probably in [the] middle of the year,” said Reeves.

That would bring down production costs for the PS3, and also might mean a price cut, which is always good for the consumer and the product in question.

It costs Sony $448 to make a PS3

James Hyde — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 18:29:32 +0000

Isuppli, the market researchers known for taking apart hardware and gadgets and figuring out how much it costs to manufacture them, have calculated that it costs Sony 448 dollars to manufacture one PlayStation 3 console — which would then retail at 399 dollars.

It might seem like a big loss on each console sold, but keep in mind that the original PlayStation 3 (without the new hardware) cost Sony almost $700 to manufacture.

Isuppli also notes that the newest PS3 version is a lot simpler to make, having only 2820 individual parts, as opposed to a first gen PS3 with a whopping 4048 individual parts. They expect Sony to break even on the PS3 sometime in 2009.

Did Sony help Microsoft with the Xbox 360?

James Hyde — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 18:20:00 +0000

A new book, titled “The Race for a New Game Machine”, paints an interesting story about the development of the PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles, in particular, the processors powering each console.

The authors, David Shippy and Mickie Phipps claim that IBM — who manufactures CPUs for both consoles — used some of the research from the Cell processor it was co-developing with Sony and Toshiba, and helped Microsoft make a CPU for it’s own console, the Xbox 360.

If it wasn’t enough that Sony’s R&D money was spent helping MS, it helped the Xbox 360 beat the PS3 to the market with a full year.

The Wall Street Journal has a full article here. A very interesting read on the early stages of the current console wars.

Cell Processor Shrinking Down

Rajiv Ashrafi — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 21:09:18 +0000

Engadget reports that Sony and Toshiba will begin production of a smaller 45nm Cell processor sometime next year.

As expected, the smaller version of the chip in the PS3 will result in less heat and power, as well as cost less than the current 65nm chip.

It is expected that the drop in cost of the PS3 processor could lead to price cuts for the console, though that is still some time off.