Toshiba wants to beat Sony with first non-PS3 Cell device
by Zack Stern 
{ Dec 22nd 2006 at 8:15PM }
Toshiba doesn't want us to forget that it -- and IBM -- shared development of the Cell processor; Toshiba intends to beat Sony with the first non-PS3 device to use the chip. Toshiba hasn't announced a specific product, and speculation in a Macworld UK article suggests that it may be 2008 before any new device uses the chip. However, the video-related horsepower of the processor lends it to TVs, DVRs, and other home-entertainment devices.We hope the Cell becomes common in many products; the increased production could drive down costs, eventually cascading to a PS3 price cut. We can dream.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
J.Goodwin @ Dec 22nd 2006 8:27PM
Or, the difficulty of producing the chip could make its use cost prohibitive in mainstream electronics well into the future...say 2008.
Rich Facial @ Dec 22nd 2006 8:35PM
I doubt that sony, the arrogant, greedy pigs that they are, would lower the price pf the PS3 if the cell chip costs would go down.
Vince @ Dec 22nd 2006 8:44PM
Sony will lower the price of the PS3 when necessary, and seeing as it barely reaches the stockroom before being bagged up and handed over the counter, that could be a while, especially as Europe will be pumping billions of Euros Sony's way come March.
Price cuts will come when it's deemed necessary - when the demand drops off a bit - circa 2008 sometime.
Bill @ Dec 22nd 2006 8:47PM
Off topic maybe.
Poor ol' Sony. I was going to be a pretty avid ps3 owner at one point. Seems like they kinda lost some of the vision that really made the playstation line of consoles shine.
I'm not really dissing heavily on the first gen games, thats pretty normal for every gen to get up to speed. The strategy of all this mess with advertising and all that, it makes the whole thing seem less about interesting games! I'm sure this will be remedied sometime here, what with Kojima and the rest of the talented and dedicated people behind it.
I would have said the same thing about the 360, but... Gears of War manages to account for alot of short comings.
Cell Processor this, PSP connectivity that, where are the beautifully entertaining and captivating games? With all these twists and turns in false advertising and marketing mumbo jumbo being the spear head of Sony's operation, I'm just becoming lightly skeptical.
The best brush or the finest paints won't always instantly mean the best painting; It would be nice if Sony started to really show us some wonderous games.
The ps2 is still pulling its weight with probably the most diverse line of games ever (save maybe the gameboy?). Says something doesn't it?
MoonfirePewPEwPEw @ Dec 22nd 2006 8:54PM
@3.
It is the holiday season, EVERYTHING is flying off the store shelfs as fast as they are put out. All the major retail stores near my have been sold out of DS lites and GBAs for over a month now. Hell, you can't even find PSPs in major stores anymore unless you get lucky.
And why do you expect some big launch in Europe compared to the US and JP? If anything, Sony would have to slow down shipments early next year to US and JP to meet a decent launch in EU.
And if you haven't noticed, the Sony hype train has died out, replaced by the Wii hype, and sales will slow down come early next year. With as much as 300 dollar costs per unit, and Microsoft dropping the price very soon, Sony is in a lose-lose situation where they need to drop the price next year but can't financially.
epobirs @ Dec 22nd 2006 8:54PM
The first non-PS3 commercial application of the Cell is already out. It's not a consumer product but will have a huge influence on the developemnt of such products.
http://www.eetimes.com/news/design/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=RYMOXW3U2HI2GQSNDLOSKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=196600979
Chip design has become a cutting edge task in terms of computational intensity. The Cell is pretty well suited to accelerating the pace of those computations. While these Cells with full 8 SPEs are expensive, for this task they take the place of four times as many top of the line x86 processors used for this task now. This means the processing array for a state of the art chip design operation will required only a quarter of the physical space and corresponding power and cooling needs. As Cell production improves the cost of this will drop substantially, making it even more competitve with far larger arrays of x86 chips.
Thus it is entirely possible that the next generation of Nintendo and Micrsoft consoles will have some of their design work computations performed by Cell chips.
nick @ Dec 22nd 2006 9:11PM
This makes little sense... The first non PS3 use of the cell? Okay, that's limited to Sony. So, I guess what you're saying is Toshiba wants to be second to the market with a consumer based cell device.
The drawback to this venture, is that whatever Toshiba releases with the cell will initially be a more expensive device because of the chip.
Anonymous Coward @ Dec 22nd 2006 9:55PM
(From http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=212742&cid=17313340)
Cell just isn't that suited to gaming.
With the GPU doing graphics, one core doing AI/Gameplay, another doing Physics, another doing Audio/Networking/Input you've pretty much got all the processing power you need. If you start spreading a game out across too many cores it's going to negatively effect the speed of the game due to the fact you're going to spend all your time trying to keep threads in sync. I'd argue that this is why Sony has it wrong and MS has it right. The GPU can handle graphics, then the 3 cores can be used as mentioned above - this seems the optimal division of work in a game engine. I'm convinced that 4 physical processing units at 4ghz would be better than 8 physical processing units at 3.2ghz so perhaps that would've been a better route for Sony if they really felt the need to beat the 360 on performance.
To me the Cell seems more suited to number crunching type applications, the sort where you can offload large amounts of data to each cell and let them go on their merry way processing these chunks without having to worry about whether every few bytes of data is in sync.
I honestly wonder if Sony management just assumed that the Playstation 3 would cell like the PS2 and PS1 and hence just insisted they use it as the tool to bring down the prices of Cell and BluRay regardless of whether they were fit for purpose or not.
CKpr @ Dec 22nd 2006 10:40PM
Cool, finally the cell can be used for things it was designed for... Game code runs like crap on this thing, and obviously the Cell-as-a-GPU idea completely failed (enter Nvidia at the last minute to create a hack job).
hohoho @ Dec 22nd 2006 11:19PM
gross generalisation that all game codes would run optimally on specific number of cores. Nonsense.
>>>they use it as the tool to bring down the prices of Cell and BluRay regardless of whether they were fit for purpose or not.
more nonsense. You can fault them for being too ambitious. But it is precisely that they want to keep the market share achieved under ps1/2 so they utilised the cell.
here, read this. http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2453
by far the best technical read on 360 and ps3.
You'll know why microsoft enjoys showing off the gpu of 360 and Sony likewise on the cell.
>>> enter Nvidia at the last minute
maybe, who knows?
>>> to create a hack job
hahahaha
Skyler Jermyn @ Dec 22nd 2006 11:23PM
How is this news?
Toshiba invested hundreds of millions of dollars to help develop a computer chip and now *gasp* THEY PLAN TO USE IT!?
rfruit @ Dec 22nd 2006 11:28PM
@8 -
Yeah from what I've read and applying what I understand of microprocessors and software engineering (got a degree but it was years back) multi-threaded programming is incredibly difficult. Harnessing the 8 cell cores to create an interactive game has to be mind-bogglingly difficult. It's like what we heard about the PS2 - "Powerful but hard to harness the power". 7 years later the PS2 has been coaxed into some impressive feats, but anything better than the ostensibly less fancy GameCube did? I don't think so.
To me it appears Sony used the Cell as a marketing device, a play which may turn out to work. When the average customer thinks super-sexy tech gadget they think PS3.
In the end the tech really matters little. Good developers will make good games and we'll buy the system those games are on, cell processor or not.
SquirrelPhister @ Dec 23rd 2006 12:32AM
11. Skyler Jermyn:
"How is this news?"
who said it was news?
O_o @ Dec 23rd 2006 12:57AM
Unfortunately, by the time cell processor could be mass produced at a cheap price, there will probably be a more cost efficient and technologically advanced alternative avalaible. Even now, we have Intel pushing into the home entertainment market with Viiv and such.
SuicideNinja @ Dec 24th 2006 2:47AM
Kudos to Toshiba. While they may not push the envelope like Sony does (i.e. Blu-ray), at least they can make high quality products worth the price tag. Sony Vaio vs Toshiba Satellite? Um, throw the Sony away.
Okay, so we can keep the Bravias. Mmmmm, Bravias.
elfgirl @ Dec 24th 2006 12:57AM
@ 5
Agreed, and Sony already said that it had dropped the price and that the PS3 was a "bargain" from $800 somethin' down to $600 retail. And they can't drop the price right after launch either- bad for those who bought it on launch, heck, I'd be angry at them.
Anyway, my point is they can't drop the price after launch or right now because it's already down by 200$
Burnt Meatloaf @ Dec 23rd 2006 2:29AM
Cell is a tough sell. Dedicated chips generally work much better in embedded applications. Even HD-DVD and Blu-ray players will be getting custom processors instead of PC-like chips like Cell, or the Pentiums being used now.
Do keep in mind, however, that Cell really refers to the type of architecture. Not all of these chips have to have 8 SPEs, or even one PPE core, so the effective costs will differ.
Cuja @ Dec 23rd 2006 2:39AM
The Cell is a one shot that will soon be outdated!
Sly @ Dec 23rd 2006 3:32AM
Putting all your eggs in one basket and hope it sells. Is there a Cell 2 or 3 out there in development? You know Intel or AMD are constantly developing newer, faster, multicore processors that will soon make the Cell obsolete without bankrupting either one of them. I would rather spend $2500 on a killer PC than on some PS3 AV-centric that does everything but.
Loi @ Dec 23rd 2006 5:18AM
In response to Cell becoming outdated, I point back to the person who mentioned it's about the architecture.
They'll be able to supe up later versions of the processor, not neccessarily have 8 cores etc (8 cores for a TV? I don't think so).
It's impossible to say how fast the Cell will become obsolete, easier to say when the PS3 Cell will, but even that's up in the air until the console's been out a little longer and developers actually learn how to use it.
Luke Cashmore @ Dec 23rd 2006 10:40AM
being beaten with a cell product? thats gotta hurt. athankyou athankyou im here all weekend.
Flash Gamer @ Dec 23rd 2006 12:02PM
What does it mean to "Lend" horsepower to other devices?
Could this imply that you would have several electronic devices connected with compatible processors? Then if a device isn't being fully employed it lends processing power to other maxed out devices such as your computer.
CKpr @ Dec 23rd 2006 1:36PM
20:
Yup, this is part of the core design for the cell, though it really only works if there's a critical mass of compatible processors out there...which of course, there's not (yet). The problem with this design is latency...farming out work is great, but the drawback is slowdown. First, in applications where quick response time is critical (ie. next-gen gaming) this just doesn't work unless there's enough workers out there to get the job done within a set time. As response time degrades, performance degrades for these apps. On the other hand, this is an incredible technology for movie rendering, number crunching, etc. Response times for these apps don't need to be immediate for things to work well. Critical mass and market penetration are the 2 most important things for this tech, which is why SOny delivered it in the PS3 now, for a future PS4+ version to take advantage of later (at least that's the theory).
James @ Dec 23rd 2006 2:12PM
The general rule is that as more competition enters the market, pricing as a result becomes more fierce. This is true of every market, even computer chips. This is why Intel and AMD have been at each others throats for so long.
What Toshiba needs to make sure is that their operations and costs are of such a level as to be competitive in the long run. It must be able to handle the applications it needs to run, be effective for continual improvement, and useful in the long-run as well. Target costing techniques should handle that problem easy as it seems to be the standard these days.
Getting financing shouldn't be too hard for Toshiba as they got other sources than Sony to rely on. I am also sure they can get help from other sources if they run into difficulty.
LordMinogue @ Dec 23rd 2006 7:58PM
I would conjecture that multi-processor cores will me the norm in a few more years.
The Pentium Duo was a first step. The cores in the Duo are designed with scale in mind.
http://news.com.com/2100-1006_3-6038148.html
Pentium has stated in PC Mag that they can scale the current design to 64 processors on one chip (assuming certain developments in manufacturing).
Expect the number of cores in a CPU to obey More's Law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law
Toshiba, Intel, and AMD are gonna be sluging it out hard over the next few years.