The amazing, shrinking Cell chip hits 65nm in '07

Yeah...and I wonder how many people will complain now that this is a sign that the PS3 is rushed.

Umm, I doubt anyone will say it was rushed after this long. If anything it'll just be that it was stupid of them not to learn fom what another company has already dealt with.

I don't speak smart guy mumbo jumbo, so maybe I don't understand this article correctly. What I hear is wait until the PS3s produced in '07 hit the stores to buy the console. Am I wrong?

This is the line for ALL of the game processors that are made. The game chip businesses want stable performance(speed, heat, etc) over time where the Shrink is to get more chips on a wafers and make them cheaper. Sony,Nintendo etc, want games to run on every single version of the platform, not just the one built after Xdate, etc. Stability is the key.
The PC business is the opposite, where they want heat and speed improvements to drive performance, so you run out to buy a new PC every couple of years to play the latest game.

Great, I can't wait! cheap is good. Now I just have to wait for the PS3 to cost 129.00 to buy it.

Why buy an expesnive PS3 when you can wait a year and get it for cheaper and with a smaller, more effecient chip? Thats not very smart to announce this news before the ps3 has even launched. Im a bit dissapointed in my 360s Power supply. I deffenitly would of waited 1 year to buy a 360 for the smaller chip and most likely smaller power supply, and cheaper price it iwll have in the future.

When you know that there will be a fairly important update already ahead of the original design; it would lead one to believe that you may want to wait for the fanboys to buy the first boxes, and then to grab one up once the old models (strange term for something not due out for 5 months) are gone.

"ameliorate"

Nice vocabulary, Joystiq! :)

Isn't Nintendo's Broadway cpu coming on 65mm from the start?

@your right

the price of the console isnt gonna go down
the cost of making it will
just thought you should know

This seems to go against all the rumors lately that the Cell yields have been miserably low.

the irony of it all...a few months back when MS announced this for the 360, all the Sony fanboys had a heyday with it, bashing the 360 because it was getting a cpu redesign so short into it's lifecycle. While all along people kept saying this was a normal thing, the fanboys continued to bash. They refused to believe that Sony would be doing the same thing, because to them sony is perfect and infallible and would never have to do a revision to one of there consoles.

This is no big deal though, however I don't understand why when MS did it, everyone turned it into a negative thing, but when sony does it, it's regarded as just a normal upgrade.

#6

I doubt it. 65 nm production line are still few and availability is limited. Since Nintendo isn't doing anything ambitious in the Wii CPU it should be fine at 90 nm.

If, as suspected, it is primarily a die shrink of the GameCube chipset with more embedded RAM, the Wii chipset should get a big speed boost with very low power draw and cost at the the well established 90 nm process node.

For a machine targeting its low price point that should get the job done until 65 nm production is more easily available and Nintendo is seeking to push the Wii price down toward the eventual killer price point of $99.

It would be very odd if Sony and IBM weren't already underway with 65 nm development for the Cell. That product, like the Xbox 360 chipset, is much more demanding in terms of price, power, and cooling issues. One does have to wonder if there is any truth to the rumored clock rate reduction for the Cell in the shipping PS3. If this is genuinely the case, Sony will face a problem. The 65 nm part should perform as originally intended but they cannot allow the revised second gen PS3s to run faster since that will create essentially new platform that can handle things beyond the version sold to the face several million early adopters.

So hopefully there is no further cutbacks to the PS3 spec since that will become a permanent limiter to performance.

#8

Actually, it has little bearing on that problem either way. 65 nm would have been on the schedule regardless just for the cost benefits.

Remember, the PS2 chipset was designed for .18 micron (180 nm) manufacturing but nobody, including Intel, was in mass production at the time Sony needed to start making PS2 for the Japanese launch. They had .25 micron chipsets that existed for proof of concept and early dev kits but the yields stunk. Regardless, Sony was forced to use those for the Japanese launch. These machines also had the PCMCIA Type III drive slot instead of a standard 3.5" hard drive slot. (Why this ever got past design meetings is a mysteries since using that size drive would add a lot of cost. Sony ended up offering an outboard drive for those early PS2s.) The .18 micron process came online in time to begind production for the US launch and release a revised model with the intended chipset and more sensible drive slot.

To some extent this is history repeating itself.

#10
This fits in nicely with cell yield rumors. I believe they planned on using 65nm parts for the launch. If the 65nm yield is lousy they have been forced to use 90nm Cell CPU and cut the clockspeed.
It is definitely a step backwards for Sony add it adds cost.

I could however be wrong and the yield issue is for 90nm parts.

Your Right wrote "why buy an expesnive PS3 when you can wait a year and get it for cheaper and with a smaller, more effecient chip?"

They're trying to reduce cost of production not cost of the console. The savings are for Sony not for the consumers. They're just trying to make more profit, not make it cheaper for the consumer.

# 15 "They're just trying to make more profit, not make it cheaper for the consumer"

It depends on how you look at it. First remember that Sony is not making profit (yet) on the first-round of PS3s - they are taking a loss, just as M$ did. Ultimately both Sony and the consumer benefits from a smaller lower cost chip. With lower manufacturing costs, Sony's losses would be reduced. Which in turn would help them hit their quota at a quicker rate. Once they have hit their $ mark, then the consumers will benefit as we will see a price drop now that all PS3 sales are profitable.

We both benefit. Sony makes their money faster - we get our PS3s cheaper quicker.

One would assume that if they reduce the cost of manufacturing that there would be an effect on the consoles price.

#17 - Sirius - Actually, depending on how close to the vest the company has to play things, a reduction in cost of production will simply be a simply be a sign that the company is making a profit on the console as well.

Microsoft, for example, plans and/or hopes that they will be making a profit on the 360 by the end of 2006, due to increased production numbers and reduced volume cost. That obviously puts them in line for a price cut IF the market demands one - and if it doesn't, then the company makes a few bucks.

And profit is NOT a diry word.