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Sony & Toshiba Disclose Cell Fab Plans
sean23007 writes "InfoWorld is running an article about Sony and Toshiba's plans for new fabrication plants to build the 'Cell' chip jointly developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM for use in the Playstation 3 and other home entertainment uses. The new fabs will be located in Nagasaki and Oita, and both companies plan to spend $1.7 billion over the next 3-4 years in their construction. They will be capable of using 300 mm wafers with a 65 nm process. The chip is slated to be the first 1 teraflop consumer device."
...but a Beowulf cluster of these 1 teraflop phones might just be my cup of tea.
And if they charge under their own vibrations, I'm getting them.
Why slashdot? Why not?
Sony and Toshiba Monday each announced plans to build advanced semiconductor plants for the fabrication of faster and more complex chips as they look ahead to the next-generation PlayStation video gaming console and other broadband network products. ADVERTISEMENT The two companies each disclosed plans to build cutting-edge factories capable of handling 300-millimeter wafers at a production rule of 65 nanometers. The latter number refers to the smallest track or gap width on a chip's surface. Sixty-five nanometers is about a thousandth the width of a human hair, and about half the width that most of the world's most advanced semiconductor plants are capable of today. A smaller number means semiconductors can be made physically smaller, because everything can be made to take up less space, or made more powerful, because more can be crammed into a given space. The companies need such advanced production technology to produce the "Cell" microprocessor, which is being developed jointly by Toshiba, IBM and Sony Computer Entertainment (SCEI) to form the basis of the PlayStation 3 video gaming console and other future consumer electronics products. The chips are being developed as part of a five-year project that began in 2001 and has as its goal a 1 teraflop-class consumer microprocessor. If successful, the result would be a processor that could be fitted into household electronics yet is more powerful than IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer. Announcing its plans on Monday, Sony said it will spend $1.7 billion over the next three years. Toshiba said it will spend a similar amount over the next four years in building 65-nanometer production lines. The Sony line will be constructed at the company's Nagasaki plant, while the Toshiba line will be at that company's Oita plant, both in Japan . The two companies also said that Sony is considering supporting Toshiba's investment in the new Oita line. However, a final decision on whether to provide funds to Toshiba and on how much to provide has yet to be made. Separately, SCEI said it plans to move production of the main chips for its PlayStation 2 console to a more advanced 90-nanometer production line later this year. That will enable the chips to be manufactured with 4Mbytes of memory embedded on the same silicon as the main and graphics microprocessors, which should result in lower power consumption and improved performance.
It would greatly benefit the Open Source developer to have such a chip with such a vast potential.
Another article elsewhere already reported that this chip would not be available in time for use in the Playstation 3. - NCDave
I want my PS3 now!
It is official; Linus Torvalds now confirms: Linux is dying.
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Linux community when Linus Torvalds confirmed that Linux market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all operating systems. Coming on the heels of a recent FreeBSD survey which plainly states that FreeBSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along: Unix systems are collapsing in complete disarray.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Linux's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Linux faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Linux because Linux is dying. Things are looking very bad for Linux. Red ink flows at Mandrake like a river of blood.
All major surveys show that Linux has steadily declined in market share. Linux is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Linux is to survive at all it will be among dirty, smelly hobbyists and those too poor to afford a copy of Windows XP. Linux continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Linux is dead.
Fact: Linux is dead.
According to IGN anyhow... To quote - Online news sites are reporting that the spring 2003 issue of Electronic Design Chain, an electronics trade magazine, features PlayStation creator Ken Kutaragi on the cover, and also contains very surprising news about the Playstation 3. According to the reports, Kutaragi mentions that final production of the "Cell" chip, originally thought to be used in the PlayStation 3, may not be ready until 2007. He also confirms that the CPU in the PlayStation 3 will in fact not be the Cell processor, contrary to earlier reports. With a targeted PlayStation 3 launch in 2005/2006, delayed production of the Cell processor may have caused Sony to find a different solution for their next-generation console.
[UID-HeinzIntel]
I guess this answers all of the speculative questions on when the PS3 will be able to come out. If Toshiba needs four years for its 65nm production lines, then 2007 is the earliest point that wafers could start coming off the line. So Christmas 2007? Looks like the PS2 still has a very long life ahead of it.
They will be shipping all new phones with a vatof vaseline so that Cowboy Neal will be able to remove them from his rectum easier. He likes to shove 'em up there set on vibrate, and then post his number in men's restrooms.
Very nice, I guess they are trying for a more advanced game station, ot media environmnent for tomorrow's home.
Go calculate something
...the "cell" chip won't be in the PS3.
Seen any BadMarketing lately?
i expect that there will be lots of sony consumer electronics (dvd players, entertainment systems) embedded with ps3 technology. scea has been fighting to keep the ps series as a game console only, but MS is forcing them to integrate the ps3 with dvd/music/internet technology...
conversely, sometimes i wonder if MS is striving to be the north american Sony (tablet pc, xbox, windows ce, keyboards, mice, etc...)
That's an awful lot of detail. Do you indulge in that practice as well?
With 1 Teraflop of processing power, I hope it'll come with more than 32MB RAM this time.
Why are only Sony and Toshiba reported? Does IBM not plan to produce and Cell chips or do they already have fab facilities?
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
I made a poop come out of my poop hole! POOP! Nuthin' like the a warm cup of poop in the morning with a bowl of poop and 2% poop. Poop in your mouth makes your teeth poopy. CmdrTaco's pee sprout tastes like poop, why is that? Poopie. If you run out of poop paper just lick your poop chute clean.
I made a shit come out of my shit hole! SHIT! Nuthin' like the a warm cup of shit in the morning with a bowl of shit and 2% shit. Shit in your mouth makes your teeth shitty. CmdrTaco's pee sprout tastes like shit, why is that? Shit. If you run out of shit paper just lick your shit chute clean.
What is Apple waiting for? Get the "Cell" chip plus tons of RAM and forget about intel and G4
I'm sorry, but this conversation somehow went past me.
.02
Where in the article does any reference to wireless phones occur? And where in reality does a teraflop processor have its place in a phone?
The real question here for us ignorami like myself is, how will this processor stack up against PC processors- and will it run Linux?
Joking aside- and Beowulf clusters aside- this sounds like it could be a good idea for a versatile chip. If Toshiba's involved my guess is it will not be just for PS3, perhaps we'll now have another major plaer (or two) in the PC chip market? Hmm, Sony and Toshiba, leading laptop manufacturers, making their own chips. It's like Microsoft making keyboards and mice, I suppose, but perhaps better.
Just my
I guess Saddam can't cluster these and research Nukes...
But there's always Kim Jong Il of North Korea!
and Iran!
I used to work for Intel in the Fab automation software department and I find it hard to believe they're can justify investing this much to start up new fabrication plants for an unproven product.
Usually, with initial chip production at this scale, they lease out fab production time from other companies. Only huge production plans (like Pentiums or PowerPCs) generally justify building entire new Fabs. Plus, with the world economy slow, there's plenty of capacity at the world's fabs. Here's a good article on fab capacity
Why do I h8 apple?
...but come on Moderators! Where better to put a cell fab than in a cell phone! It sure isn't going into a vibrating PS/3!
Why slashdot? Why not?
They should just transcribe the Final Fantasy combat system into a hardware implementation. That's the only reason people buy these things anyway.
I propose that the limit break be implemented by some sort of register overflow.
They should do this in the Cell chips that are rumored, in the future, to be deployed in various home appliances. I, for one, would be impressed when my dryer finishes the tumble cycle and then performs a super-attack on the toaster.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
http://www.designchain.com/coverstory.asp?issue=sp ring03
These problems may be a few years out, though. IBM has not announced when it will release the final chip, but the Cell project was originally envisioned as taking five years, suggesting that the final product may not be ready until as late as 2007. Although Sony refuses to talk about its future plans for the chip, it does admit that the Cell chip will not be the CPU in the Playstation3, reportedly slated for release in 2005.
It won't be called the PS3 anyway, Sony will name it something else.....
Solid!
That the move to 65nm fabrication would be due to the machine that'll be running a to-be-released version of Grand Theft Auto and not some military system or huge scientific cluster ;-)
-psy
Thank you for making my eyes bleed. I've always had a theory that improper text formatting could cause physical pain, and now it's been proven.
Thank you.
Can it survive a Kah-Meh-Ha-Meh-Ha wave without a heatsink?
I made a "cell" chip come out of my "cell" chip hole! "Cell" chip! Nuthin' like the a warm cup of "cell" chip in the morning with a bowl of "cell" chip and 2% "cell" chip. "Cell" chip in your mouth makes your teeth "cell" chipty. CmdrTaco's pee sprout tastes like "cell" chip, why is that? "Cell" chip. If you run out of "cell" chip paper just lick your "cell" chip chute clean.
Considering Sony has updated the PS2 numerous times since the original, I wouldn't be surprised if they end up re-releasing it with the Cell chip just to screw with people's minds.
Websense here at work blocks this site for whatever, so I am glad that Dakryx posted this article although the formatting could have been done better.
Thank you.
I'd not before seen "Fab" used for fabricating plant, but I did know the "fab" as a sort of 3-d fax machine that re-creates solid objects (in shape anyway). It laser-scans the original, and creates a solid copy (corn starch?) at the receiving end.
The item title gave me visions of a new breed of cell phone that could spew solid objects.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Now, if only I can figure out of what country I am a citizen!!!
Yyyyyyyyyyyyiiiiiiiiiipppppppppeeeeeeeeeee!!!!
Cheers,
W00t
Get Your War On
Even if this chip's architecture turns out to be a dud, they'll have plants ready to produce 65 nanometer processors. Eventually they'll have some chips running at 65 nanometers, and they'll have a fab ready to produce it. Worst case scenario is that they can sell their fab capabilities to other companies that want to run at 65 nanometers. The odds that these plants won't have a long run value seems pretty small to me.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Hope this is not too off-topic. The device is called a fabber not a fab (but no doubt if it were ever common, it would become a noun and verb as just "fab", similar to "Fax".
Here is a good link: fabber.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Sounds like YHBT. HAND.
PS2 will play XBox titles while XBox can't play PS2 titles...
Hand, what the heck is YBHT? Is this like doing a BLT at the YMCA during TGIF?
I mean the original PS was always able to play music CD's if i recall correctly.
So could the TurboGrafx CD, the Sega CD, the CD-i, the 3DO, and the Saturn. Had Sony not included Red Book CD audio playing in the original PlayStation, PSX buyers would have felt cheated.
Will I retire or break 10K?
YHBT, HAND = You Have Been Trolled, Have A Nice Day!
If you amend it to an item about the cell phones being all Linux-based Transmeta devices that melt if someone tries to put Windows CE on them, then you, sir, are on your way to Karma Nirvana!
YBHT!!! Hahaha, isn't it ironic? HAND!!!!
Poor Nintendo.
| - | - |
One word... NVIDIA!
""Freedom Fries" isn't patriotism, it's jingoism
It is neither. It is just a reaction to the outrageous actions of today's "Vichy" French Government, which has never met a Middle Eastern would-be Hitler anti-semitic tyrant it didn't love.
I'm waiting for the one-teraflop GPUs to get here.
If they can get the cost and heat down (and it is for a game machine), then "Reality(TM)" just may be closer than we think.
http://www.designchain.com/coverstory.asp?issue
And so does including memory and GPU with the CPU. You could imagine the desktop computer market for these babies.... if released with Linux.
Thinking of that, I wonder if they would allow hookup to a DVI connector, or replacing the BIOS, or adding PCI/ISA slots, or even producing whole chips for third party taiwanese boards that would then be built into workstations. If the chip is up to the spec, on time and reasonably priced, theres already a big Linux-based market for it, meself included. Saddams gotta steal only a FEW of these to build nukes. Wonder if an anarchist teen could do that with this christmas present.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
It won't be called the PS3
The report of Nintendo's stake in the "PlayStation" name was a hoax.
Will I retire or break 10K?
You can put in a hardware implementation of all the stereotypical character types too. Moody Teenage Hero, Overly Happy Tomboy, Gruff Loner, Tough-but-Eventually-Helpless Love Interest...
Talk about "Emotion Engine".
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Anyone know what type of process will be used to get 65 nm lines? They make a vague reference to a process designed by three or four companies. I figure that at 65nm we're beyond DUV. EUV maybe? How small can traditional laser lithography get us?
All the game console companies sell it too. Remember all the things Sony said that ps2 could do ?
Real life looking characters!
128 bit processing ! Wow.
Supercool demos.
Wait one second. Alot of the Ps2 game aren't anywhere near as good looking Sony said they would be.
Don't get fooled . I will check the games before i believe the hype about how the processor can do so many trillions of polygons and how well it does textures.
cell,cell,cell,cell,ce,cell,cell,cellll,cell,ce
And now it wont be in the new Ps3!
Another example of the media buying into everything HOOK , LINE and Sinker!
We are fricking idiots. Don't trust what the game companies say but look at their actions.
Japan, Inc. in general is sitting on WADS of cash, with little place to put it that seems even worthwhile right now. Buying a new fab is as good as anything else. It's certainly better than building unused office space or whatever else japan has been doing lately. They want to dump shaky petrodollars and own tangible *stuff* that you can actually do work with, not think about making a plan to form a committee to design a thought process that might lead to establishing a think tank to contemplate how to trade other think tanks ideas around, which is what US busy-ness is doing now. Japan has learned it's lesson, and hard, on busy-work and dot bombs, the US is now entering phase two of that economic reality, one big giant step behind japan.
Next bubble to pop, real estate in the US. It already popped in Japan. Stocks are heading to pop too,once again, from pension over-exposure and global trade re-arrangement which forgets about lost customer spending money when they yank jobs and move them around in wholesale lots based on this-quarter priority levels of awarness. Slow, very, very gradual "free trade" could work, wholesale do-it-all-right-now sure ain't..
As to the chips, no idea what they will do with them, but the world in general seems to want more chips of every description, especially newer designs. Pretty soon hammers will come with chips in them, and forks. Who knows, seems the trends though.
If this baby runs linux or windoze, I think all the scientific research based on distributed computing ie. SETI@home and Foldings@Home can replace all their server farm with a bunch of PS3s. Each work unit can probably be processed within seconds. Drool.
...dumbass.
the project was sabotaged by IBM
Nagasaki hmmm
What kind of halflife will the PS3's have?
===Insert Quality Sig Here===
The Cell chip could function as a super microcontroller. For anyone who likes to build robots this could represent a huge leap forward. If it could be connected to some type of flash ram we might be able to home build bots with speech recognition and neural nets. The cell should give new bots more on board intelligence. Let's hope they aren't too expensive (under $500?).
All glory to the Hypnotoad!
With the PS2 we were forced to purchase several machines to provide guidance for *ONE* cruise missile, this will cut our expenses in half. I'll just send Uday out to the Damascus Wal-Mart (you can't even recognize him without the mustache) to pick up a few and bang, we're back in business.