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."

Comments

But the Cel isn't going to be in the PS/3

[BancBoy]

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.

32 MB?

[Anonymous Coward]

With 1 Teraflop of processing power, I hope it'll come with more than 32MB RAM this time.

PS3 idea

[RealErmine]

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.

Re:cost justification

[sigep_ohio]

Well with the number of PS2's that have sold so far worldwide, I guess Sony thinks the demand for Cell will be even bigger. I know Cell won't be in the PS3, but since it is a scalar architecture it can be placed in anything from cell phones to video game machines to computers. This makes the market for Cell even larger than that of a Pentium or PowerPC or The Emotion Engine in PS2.