PlayStation 3's New Chip On The Way

KingFishKingFish
edited January 2005 in Science & Tech
The "Cell" processor that will be at the heart of the upcoming PlayStation 3 will appear next year and go into mass production in 2006.
Sony, IBM and Toshiba revealed a little more about their plans for the new chip earlier today. The extra details brought with them a surprise, however. First-generation versions of the "Cell" won't be built on a cutting edge production technology into which the companies have sunk billions of dollars, but on a technology already in widespread use today.

The trio have been developing the chip since 2001 and are positioning it as the engine that will drive future multi-media and home entertainment products. The chip is best known for the place it will take in SCEI's successor to its PlayStation 2 games console, but the companies are also planning to use it in products such as high-definition televisions and home servers.

Samples of the Cell chip will begin rolling off production lines in the first half of next year, appearing in Sony and Toshiba products in 2006. SCEI confirmed the chip's place in its new games console Monday but gave no production schedule.

Early versions of the chip will be built using a 90-nanometer production process, similar to that used by Sony for the processors inside the PlayStation 2 and by other companies such as Intel for some of its fastest microprocessors. The 90 nm measurement refers to the size of the smallest feature on a chip's surface. The smaller features mean semiconductors can be made physically smaller because everything can be made to take up less space, or more powerful because more can be crammed into a given space.
Source: TechWorld

Comments

  • RWBRWB Icrontian
    edited November 2004
    Cell Chip? What is that?
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited November 2004
    If information regarding the Cell CPU is still the same, it's a rather speedy CPU that can be linked to a rather large lattice of other Cell chips for a.. I don't know what to call it.. MacroCPU.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited November 2004
    It's just a new generation of processor. Probably very fast, probably similar to the IBM POWER line. Add one huge dash of hype and a pinch of media cluelessness, and you have "omg 128bit CELL architecture chips in your fridge, TV, and playstation 9 will be able to cook dinner and raise your kids while giving you a workout and creating 4D renderings of money for you"
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited November 2004
    4D renderings of money? Well, they did always say Time = Money.
  • GobblesGobbles Ventura California
    edited January 2005
    My Cousin is one of the engineers developing this processor in Austin Texas. He has 3 of the patents on it, well IBM does cuz he has to sign them over. Its a generic cpu, it can be a graphics cpu, it can be a pc cpu it can be a rendering cpu. It does all things. Its kinda like the plug and play processor. Its scalable, you can link them together to do smp. Its pretty wild stuff. Ill email him and see if I can get some more details. A lot of the info is still covered under the NDA but some of the real gritty details im sure he can pass on. My cousin has been working on this project since he was a college intern with IBM. IBM snatched him up his Junior year, when he finished he went straight to work on the cell processor project full time.

    I want to see if he can get me a sample ps3 when they go into hardware testing. :thumbsup:

    Gobbles
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