Sony Considers Outsourcing Cell Production

Gamasutra reports on comments from the Sony home office, where executives are considering plans to outsource production of the expensive/complicated Cell chips that power the PS3. Executive deputy president Yutaka Nakagawa is quoted in a Reuters report, saying that when the PS2 launched there just weren't other companies to turn to. With the chip market better-developed in 2007, there are third parties Sony is now considering to take on the task of advancing/producing the Cell. Outsourcing could also help financially with their beleaguered semiconductor division. The next move for the Cell is to 45 nanometer manufacturing, from the 90/65 the company is currently using. This scale change could not only help with profits, but may eventually make dropping the price on the PlayStation 3 an easier pill to swallow.

Comments

90/65nm?

[MBCook]

Can someone explain the 90/65nm thing to me? I don't ever remember hearing about a chip that was manufactured on two scales on one chip. Does this refer to some chips are current fabbed at 90nm and some at 65nm, or are they really hybrid where some of the circuits are at 90nm and some are at 65nm on the same die?

The article doesn't contain much more than the summary, and does not explain this point.

Re:90/65nm?

[GiovanniZero]

The 90nm was the first version and they started doing 65nm production. You can read about it on wikipedia's entry on cell processors

Re:Yeah well

[__aaclcg7560]

There's a serious shortage of these systems, dispite the price.

Dude, haven't you heard? There's no PS3 shortage.

Re:I'll do it

[bunions]

I have no PS3, but I would like a canoe and to take up white water rafting instead.

voted "Most Baffling Slashdot Comment of the Day", Feb 14 2007

The real sucess

[GiovanniZero]

It remains to be seen whether or not the PS3 will catch on or not but the really success for sony may be the cell processor it self. It's been seeing use out side of gaming almost as much as it has in.

Wouldn't it be funny if Sony became a direct competitor to Intel and AMD? Next gen PCs could run on cell processors!

I don't really care as long as something gets us out of the x86 rut.

Re:The real sucess

[pionzypher]

Wouldn't it be funny if Sony became a direct competitor to Intel and AMD? Next gen PCs could run on cell processors!
That would be entertaining. I envision that Sony would claim within the first quarter that they had won the processor race, then move to introduce proprietary hardware based security- allowing only trusted devices to deal with "protected content". Then whatever mainstream OS out there would implement some sort of copy protection at the software level that would kee.. wait..... oh frack me..

*ducks and waits for the rendundant mod*

For sure

[Bullfish]

This will help them with their profits and make the PS3 more saleable, provided of course that people realize the Wii is just a fad and the 360 is never ever going to be as good as the PS3, regardless of its spiffy games like Gears of War.

Just wait until next year!

BTW: I am being sarcastic!

Re:For sure

[LWATCDR]

"The ps3 has a lot more potential than the xbox360."
I am not so sure about that anymore.
The XBox360 is much easier to program than the PS/3. History is filled with lots of systems that in theory where very powerful but where too hard to program. The Intel 860 and the Itanium are two great examples. Some of the massively parallel super computers like the Thinking Machine where also a tough machine to get the most out of.
There is potential and there is potential. If the programmer can't use it then it is useless.

Re:For sure

[LKM]

I agree. I own neither a PS3 nor a 360 and have no intentions of getting either, but from what I've seen, I'm guessing the PS3's power will remain an unfulfilled promise. PS3 developers are all going on and on about how they're only using one processor, or only a fraction of the PS3's power, but there's a reson for that: Developing massively multithreaded applications is hard, and sometimes impossible. In theory, the PS3's processor may destroy the 360. In practice, it probably never will.

Not News

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that's what Sony does best, ehh??

But seriously though, I was just going to post an asinine comment about how the Sony Rootkit was outsourced to a 3rd party overseas, and how great their programming turned out to be.

But when googling for some 'sony outsourcing' links, it looks like this isn't news:

The Outsourcing Weblog: Sony Considers Outsourcing PSP Production

The Outsourcing Weblog: New Sony CEO Could Mean More Outsourcing

Sony Ericsson moving part of R&D program to India?

Sony outsources IT development to India

Sony Europe signs up with Indian outsourcer

Sony Will Outsource Some [Battery] Replacements

Sony to outsource notebooks to Taiwan

And that's literly just the first 3 pages.

Re:IBM?

[Wesley Felter]

Some Cells are made by IBM and some are made by Sony/Toshiba.

Re:About Time

[DrEldarion]

Problems to solve, in order of priority for the company:

I'd say that NONE of those matter. There is one, and only one, thing that is making the PS3 sales so low - the games. The only must-have game out right now is Resistance, and not everyone likes FPS games. Once they start getting some more games out, the sales will follow, regardless of price, regardless of online experience (which isn't bad considering it's free), etc.