Cell down to 45nm, PS3 production costs to slim too

by James Ransom-Wiley on Feb 7th 2008 1:55PM

IBM's Cell processor continues to shed those nanometers, soon down to a bony 45nm, reports Ars Technica. Of course, the smaller you become, the less energy you consume, and after trimming off 34% of its die area, the new Cell is practically starving itself. Can you believe this thing lives off a mere 80 watts? And to think, some of us have PS3s bulging with 90nm chips that scarf up 200 watts!

Not only are we talking less power consumption, the 45nm chip will be cheaper to produce than the current 65nm version, and when coupled with the incredible shrinking Blu-ray laser, Sony is poised to make PlayStation 3 manufacturing actually profitable – imagine that! Question is: when do all these savings get passed on to the consumer?

Source

Tags: 45nm, cell, ibm, PS3

Reader Comments (72)

Nevermind the blind 360 fanboys, Sony took a gamble and did some great things with the PS3, they pushed the envelope from the gate and less than 2-years out prices are falling and sells are climbing.

Love having all 3 consoles and really enjoy the benefits of these three big companies going at each other. Now if something would happen to drive down costs of building a new gaming PC every 4-5 years... :(

That will never change my friend, it is and always will be a labor of love.

Guess it really shows that Sony is a hardware company. I would have never thought that they'd cut costs so quickly. Hopefully we'll see another price drop in the near future, although I think they are pretty comfortable at the moment.

This always irked me about the 360, it's gotta be a lot cheaper to produce than the PS3, yet it's price doesn't really reflect that, not in the way you'd think. I guess RRoD is to blame for all of that.

Oh and don't get me started on Wii hardware... They're just fleecing people. :s

The 360 sold at a loss, the PS3 sold at an even bigger one...

Cell processor is made by IBM. Sony had nothing to do with the die shrink other than an e-mail to IBM that said "Shrink the die to 45 nm plz, kthxbai"

Cost of a PS3 is at $400. Cost of a 360 is about $300.

They LAUNCH at a loss, then it's a race to profit...

Actually, a big factor in keeping the PS3 costs up was the YIELDS of the Cell. The early Cells had yields of only 30% (i.e., they had to throw away 70% of them). The chief architect of the Cell said this at a talk at my Univ. Has the yield improved?

45nm will save power because of smaller transistors. It will be cheaper because more of them can fit on a die. What their yields are with their 45nm process will play a big role in determining how much profit they make.

Oh I agree dude. Sony in the last year has made much better progress on the hardware side of things than Microsoft. Granted Sony is trailing Nintendo and MS in the North America and obviously are more desperate then the other two. Still, despite the current inferior game library the PS3 support (when compared to the 360) I still believe they are the best bet. The PS3 is, and continues to be, the best hardware on the market. I'm also confident that Sony will catch up on the software/network side.

Mr. TWIMDBP,

I don't speak moon language.

now if they could just make it perform like they claimed it could! ZING!

a functional PS3 still plays games better than a RRoD 360. zing.

Vote me down too for sinking to jsn's level :(

I wouldn't mind trading in my 90nm heat blowin power chompin 60gb PS3 for a new 45nm version. As long as it isn't a 40gb model. I use the media reader all the time and I want more storage space. Don't care about BC anymore.

Just wait for them to officially announce the 120 or 160 GB versions.....shouldn't be too long away.

Man this is impressive. Like, almost Nintendo impressive.

Are you the new Fernando?

Maybe you remember him from last time. Florida Gator mascot and a lil in front of the Co.

That's right FidliousWong! Very observative.

Hell no Vidikron (FU), don't associate me with that guy. Our love for Nintendo is the ONLY thing in common.

I remember when somebody told me a few years back that in order to get a better processor we'd have to... boy, i'd like to meet my physics professor now and have him comment on this article.

we'd have to... what?

Incomplete thought process FTW?

I remember wayyyy back when I was 16, and I met this girl, and we...

...man, I'm glad that turned out the way it did.

"My ex-boyfriend came over last night and yadda, yadda yadda, I'm really tired today."

...
...
... The end.

The girl who taught me how to ride a motorcycle called this type of thing a brain fart.

PS3: More price drops and models in 1 year than you can shake a wiimote at.

It's to bad all the SKU revisions are costing them money. Maybe if they could keep one longer than 6 months sales would pick up. So much for the E3 promise of one SKU cause that's all you need.

how do you know its costing them money?

It seems to me that the new SKU's are released to save them money.

You don't just tell one guy to put a 120GB harddrive and be done with it. They do market research, hardware testing. You have to retool factories somewhat to handle new parts. New parts have to be made. Marketing has to redo their campaigns. It's not free.

Well, in all fairness, stuff like the hard-drive is an off-the-shelf OEM slimline/notebook HDD so they don't actually have to retool factories.

Still, how do you know they are loosing money on new sku's?

And here I could have sworn Ken Kuturugi stated PS3 would be an evolving platform while drawing parralels to the PSX (ultra super megazord PS2 ranger) in Japan...

silly me.

yeah, as opti has stated, the differences point to saving money and not costing more. Cheaper parts, LESS parts, factories shouldnt need to be retooled because they arent adding new parts, they are removing parts. and marketing shouldnt have anything to do with it since they change campaigns anyway...

Gliched, you don't know what your talking about (same as everybody else on the internet when it comes to manufacturing).

New designs require new parts require new tooling. If you're changing a design, MFG must change accordingly.

Yes but this is part all manufacturing companies, that why they have Capx budgets and financial plan meetings for. They have it in there budget on what they plan to spend on new tooling, new equipment, maintenance and supply contracts, shipping contracts, wage increases, and bonus allocations vs what they plan to make and operational costs. Believe me, they know the numbers way before they even came up with 45nm chip and already shifted a column in some number cruncher spreadsheet. And that kids is how big business suppose to works.

I am just saying...

chrono, at least i dont claim that I KNOW that it costs them more money. I'm speculating that i believe these are cost reduction measures, why else would they release new sku's; to lose more money?

Your' also on the internet talking about this, so how can you claim you KNOW that Sony's "New designs require new parts require new tooling."

one thing that I can be certain I know is that Sony's penny pinchers know more than us about what things cost. Again, why would they be releasing new SKU's if it was costing them more?

It would save them more money in the long run, ideally, but the point of OP was that if they keep making new skus, its going to keep costing them more money because there is no "long run".

Swapping out a HDD for one of higher capacity may not cost any money other than ordering different HDD, but I can guarandamntee you that a die shrink effects the entire process, from power supply to motherboard to cooling.

Bottom line, it costs more money NOW to change die size, but may recoup those loses (and then some) in the long run. However, since sony introduces a new SKU every 3-6 months, there is no "long run", so cost savings is minimal, if not zero.

From the article:

"The 45nm Cell will use about 40 percent less power than its 65nm predecessor, and its die area will be reduced by 34 percent. The greatly reduced power budget will cut down on the amount of active cooling required by the console, which in turn will make it cheaper to produce and more reliable"

Yes, thats all well and good. Are they going to keep the same heatsink on it? They could, but they'd be wasting material on the heatsink. So they design a smaller heatsink WHICH COSTS TIME AND MONEY RIGHT NOW.

No one's arguing that mass manufacturing with smaller dies is cheaper in the long run. Thats a no duh, the reason why they do die shrinks. What we saying is that if sony keeps adding new sku's, they keep adding cost to manufacture the new SKU.

I'm just gonna point out, that, the inclusion of parts that already exist, and are manufactured at other factories would require additional transport costs to move the component to the PS3 assembly factory. on top of that I am on Cronos side, More SKUs cost, however Sony has most probably been planning these for a long time, thus system components may need hardly any to no changes. if all interchangeable components can just be clipped onto the same slot, such as the hard drive then it will cost sony, the same cost if not less for the hard drive, but there are more costs involved so PS3 40gb compared to whatever higher, would be same.

I don't own a PS3 they cost like $800 in my country and I'm poor.

SO NOT FAIR!!!!

I paid full price for my 20GB PS3 and now their switching up CPU's and making it lighter, smaller and cheaper.

SONY I want a REFUND NOW!!!

Seriously though, this is great. I can definitely see Sony reaching the $299 level in no time and the 360 will have no choice but to match that price. The premie at $349 is still too pricey. It should be at $249 now that it's nearly three years old. In due time. Price wars are looming.

When blu-ray is officially the winner and I don't see any decent standalone blu-ray players for cheap, I will probably end up with a PS3 (for the movies, and games as a bonus)... Hopefully they can implement the 45nm into the PS3 production lines soon, so by the time I end up deciding on getting one or not I won't have to wait it out any longer.

Now they can afford to put PS2 compatibility back in!

PSP2 with Cell in 2010 FTW

ugliest dog in the world CONFIRMED

jesus. that's a *DOG??

With a price drop to about $299 for a 40G PS3 (or at least $349) along with some really great exclusives, 2008 will be the year that there is a "real" console war between sony and microsoft. PS2 was head and shoulders above the xbox, thus no real war. Thus far, the 360 has been head and shoulders above the ps3. But with the inevitable victory of Bluray in the high def wars, great exclusives, and a price drop, I might finally start using my PS3 as much as my 360. Of course, those are speculative, but I think any unbiased consumer will have to agree all 3 are more than likely. And this can only be a good thing, as the tighter sales figs will mean better competition and hopefully, better product. A rare case where even those with only one of the 2 systems will win. And for those of us with both, the only thing we'll be able to complain about is that we bought the systems when they were more expensive. Should be an exciting year for gamers.

Yeah its great to have all the consoles doing well for once, shows how big gaming has really become.

@pkpk
Couldn't agree with you more. +1. Rare to hear a decent thought process that isn't biased.

Question???
Why is almost everyone fine with paying over $400 for a 360 not including an extra controller, Wifi, Xbox Live or HD-DVD Drive but fuss about the PS3 and only buy it when its $299, even though the PS3 comes with an equivalent of all those other features...

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Cell down to 45nm, PS3 production costs to slim too

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