Cell Hits 45nm, PS3 Price Drop Likely to Follow

Septimus writes "At this weeks ISSCC, IBM announced that the Cell CPU used in the PlayStation 3 will soon make the transition to IBM's next-gen 45nm high-k process. '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 (this means fewer warrantied returns). Also affecting Sony's per-unit cost is the reduction in overall die size. A smaller die means a smaller, cheaper package; it also means that yields will be better and that each chip will cost less overall.'"

Comments

Because the die is smaller...

[sirwired]

It isn't the smaller process that increases yields, it is the fact that the ensuing smaller die takes up less space on the wafer. Less wafer real-estate == less chance that a defect in the wafer will occupy the space of a particular chip.

For instance, say one 300mm wafer has 50 defects evenly distributed over it's surface, and one wafer can hold 100 chips with the old process, 200 with the new. The 10 defects result in a 50% yield with the old process, a 75% yield with the new process.

That said, yes, almost all new processes take a little while to work out the bugs. But after the bugs are worked out, you can achieve much higher yields...

SirWired

Re:Since when?

[willy_me]

Since when does going to a smaller process increase yields?

Because the die size is reduced at the smaller process. If you normally get 100 dies from a wafer then you will now get 150. Of course this doesn't take into account flaws in the silicon. If you have 20 flaws then you could lose ~20 dies. This results in a loss of 20% at the larger process and 13.3% at the smaller process.