Cell Processor abilities may be luck of the draw
In a recent interview at DailyTech, they sat down with IBM vice president of Semiconductor and Technology Services Tom Reeves. He discussed the abilities of the cell processor and, more importantly, the inability to successfully create many working 8-core units. The cell processor is so complex that "IBM even accepts chips that have only four out of the eight cores working." Egads! Hopefully those aren't going into our PS3's, right? No worries. However...
Sony won't allow cell processors with less than seven working cores. But they aren't clear when it comes to using seven or eight. Will it be a throw of the dice when we buy a PS3 as to whether we have a working 8-core processor or one with only 7 working bits? Would making the lower SKU accept the 7-core be any better? If that seventh one shorts out and you had the PS3 with only seven working cores, you have to send it back to Sony or IBM or Toshiba to get it fixed. That's a pain and it depends on your warranty. No matter what, they need to get these things working because November is pretty close.
