The link takes you to an article on ZDNet concerning the
fundamentals and incredible potential of the PS3's upcoming Cell chip. Apparently the Cell chip can not only be used in
computers and gaming consoles, but in such things as televisions, cell phones, web servers, refrigerators, milk
cartons, cybernetic assassins, William Shatner, and the like.
However, at one point the article briefly discusses the security measures that Sony has passed on into its young
prodigy. Most of these security measures are in place to prevent — surprise surprise — piracy. The article goes on to
say:
"A lot of (piracy) techniques rely on one application being able to access the same memory region as another application," Halfhill said. "With Cell, you can't do that because memory regions are locked down by the application."
The trick, Halfhill said, will be finding a way to implement such security measures without drastically undercutting chip performance. "What they're doing to fence off this memory requires a lot of memory access," he said. "It looks to me like a pretty cumbersome system. There's got to be some performance hit, and they're going to have to optimize the final design to get around that."
The keyword here is "drastically." Now, let's not be naive. Sony's been an all-around prick about security in the past, and just recently have they begun to open up their technology to more widely accepted formats (the ATRAC vs. MP3 argument readily comes to mind). Now certainly, with all the recent incredible estimations of the Cell's PS3 capabilities popping up, Sony wouldn't be willing to risk being called a liar again by restricting its fundamental hardware with security measures, would they? And even if they did, is the Cell so uber-powerful that it wouldn't even matter?
