David Reeves drops hint of Sony's shift to 45nm PS3s
By Donald Melanson 
posted Feb 5th 2009 12:44PM
posted Feb 5th 2009 12:44PM
It's no secret that Sony has been eyeing a shift to 45nm Cell processors in the PS3 sooner or later, but the always talkative David Reeves (Sony Europe's president) has now finally dropped a bit more specificity on the matter, while naturally still leaving the company quite a bit of wiggle room. Speaking to The Guardian newspaper, Reeves said that Sony is "always looking at ways to reduce costs," and that one of those measures is "replacing the current 65 nanometer Cell chip with a 45 nanometer one probably in middle of year." Reeves also expectedly talked up the PS3's multimedia capabilities, which he says will help the PS3 compete better with the Xbox 360 in the short term without the need for drastic price cuts, although he doesn't seem to complete rule out the notion of some increased affordability before the end of the year, saying "it will make progress" in that direction, no doubt with the aid of that aforementioned 45nm Cell processor.[Thanks, Khattab]
"drastic price cuts" meaning ANY price cut would be drastic for Sony
How about some games WORTH PLAYING that AREN'T PORTS available on 360 and PC?
Little Big Planet - too short, old now
MGS4 - VERY VERY OLD SNAKE
...
God of War 3? .... WHEN?
Wow, trolling is fun, eh?
Seriously, if you don't like any of the PS3 exclusives then you either a) are a troll, or b) have a very narrow mind. The exclusives on PS3 are not only better than 360, but offer a very wide array of experiences in comparison. Not only that, but I'm pretty sure there are more exclusives on PS3 than 360.
Flashpoint you must know nothing about games or have no taste.
"exclusives on PS3 are not only better than 360"
Sorry, I shouldn't have said that without the caveat of "in my opinion". Although, one could argue that variety of experience does make the exclusives "better". But I was talking about in terms of pure fun... IMO.
I don't know how anyone could be smiling like that after their company's profits drop 95%. Sony needs to make the PS3 profitable, now. The PS3 is driving Sony into the ground.
um, yeah... because the PS3 is the ONLY reason. It has nothing to do with a downturn (recession?) in the economy and people not buying as many electronics. Not at all.
Apple and Microsoft are driving Sony into the ground
Lol if the PS3 was driving Sony into the ground i am pretty sure they would just stop selling it dude. They have been around for 50+ years your two second thought out strategy may not be the greatest you realise.
Consumer confidence is driving Sony into the ground and that derives from downturns and recessions all over the world without anybody predicting an upturn in the market.
Hurry up already!
I don't know very much about processing chips. Will a shift from a 65nm cell processor to a 45nm one cause any drop in quality? And why is a smaller chip less costly to produce? I doubt it's because of that extra 20nm of raw materials they're saving.
Savings is in material costs (30-40% less die material), the chip would also use less power .. which means it will be cheaper to cool it...
usually systems become more reliable, less heat...
45nm chips are becoming the new standard, thus getting mass produced, thus old 65nm chips will be produced less --> result 45nm are cheaper. 45nm practically means lower power consumption while maintaining the same performance.
my dear boy,
the smaller the silicon process, the more of the little beggers you can fit on a standard size silicon wafer, thus one gets more chips for the same outlay.
Hope that helps
One love
Shrinking the die allows for more chips per wafer which lowers production cost. It will not lower performance of the chip, but it will lower power consuption making it run cooler as well.
45 nm refers to the smallest feature size (usually the channel length or gate length). It's about a 30% drop in size. Now, consider that chip features are two dimensional, and you're saving that space in width and length, your size can drop drastically.
That's nice, now how about giving us a new model with PS2 compatibility.
if you want a ps2 go buy one from gamestop they are 50$, who the F#^% wants a ps2 anymore.... seriously.
if you want a ps2 go buy one from gamestop they are 50$, who the F#^% wants a ps2 anymore.... seriously.
@iroddrick & Rodd:
Wow! What are the odds that BOTH of you were thinking the same exact thing? I'd buy a lottery ticket if I were you (two).
How to turn the ps3 into a success in 3 steps:
- Make it $700
- Add 4 GB of internal memory
- Open up hardware for any other OS loaded on the ps3
Result: $750 dollar octocore, georgeos looking pc with state of the art graphical ability's.
Not exactly, the graphics card in the PS3 is the equivalent of a mid-end nvidia geforce 7xxx card.
idiot. the average consumer doesnt give a sh*t about other operating systems on a PS3. If the average consumer cared, it would already be doing pretty well.
dude ps2's are 50$ at game stop, stop being that guy that wants ps2 compatibility.... seriously leave the old generation behind... follow the apple technique... if it is a classic, keep it that way....
I WANT NINTENDO COMPATIBILITY ON MY ps3!!!!!
I'm not sure if you've ever played a PS2 on a large screen high def tv, but even with the extra component video cables it looks like hell. The backwards compatability on the older PS3 models cleans up the image a lot more and actually makes things playable. There are still a lot of good PS2 games that are worth going back to, and a lot I still haven't finished. It's kind of a big deal.
Even better you won't need a PS2 and a PS3 sitting in your entertainment center.
when you get that Nintendo compatibility can you ask for my atari 2600 too please?!
Well, if you want nintendo compatibility, then install Linux on the PS3 and go play all your favorite old nintendo games (or any other old console/arcade game)..
And for PS2 BC, I WANT IT.. I don't want to buy a seperate PS2, not another console under my tv please..
How is Reeves "dropping a hint" when he definitely just confirmed the switch?
The location of this location is classified!
The only way Sony will make the PS3 profitable is to stop making them.
The only way you can stop being such a tool is stop posting.
Ok, you want to make the PS3 more competetive in multimedia? Here's how you do it:
Ready?
ADD AN IR SENSOR!
You hit the nail on the head.
Amen to that!
Well, as far as multimedia capabilities of the PS3 are concerned, they suck even more than those of the XBOX-360. PS3 still sucks at streaming media from DLNA servers, loosing connectivity and peppering users with error messages. It still can't play video files with AC3 sound tracks in them (XBOX can). It still can't play about 90% of all media files at least in my library (consisting mostly of MPEG4 files - both video and audio, with some video files containing AC3 sound tracks). So even as a multimedia device PS3 sucks. The only place where it does not suck is exclusive games - those are pretty much the only thing justifying owning a PS3. All multiplatform games suck on PS3, with a VERY FEW exceptions (in fact, I can think of only two exceptions: Devil May Cry 4 and Battlefield: Bad Company), with generally lower resolution of the textures and lower rendering resolutions with no antialiasing, which results in blurry textures and jaggies.
And you have to pay twice the price of a simple Xbox-360 Arcade for it. Sounds like a great deal! :(
While I agree with your sentiment, the list of multiplatformers that work well on PS3 isn't quite that short. GTA 4 was just fine on PS3. Perhaps even better than Xbox. COD 4 was good as well.
Multimedia does sucks, both video and audio. However picture capabilities are the best of any platform I know of, including PC. Cell works very well on picture processing algorithms and it shows.
Have you seen a Blu-Ray movie?
Looks like we have a fanboy on our hands
I don't know what you use for streaming stuff, but I use(d) Tversity works fine, and streams ... well, everything
Lately I've switched to PS3 media server, it's better at streaming (in my opinion)
Sometimes I get an error message (while the video keeps on playing), but that's probably my crappy router. Also, DVD upscaling is the best, DVD's on a normal somewhat older DVDplayer makes it looks like crap, while PS3 upscales it to near HD footage, especially with the newest DVD's. Sure, it's not HD Bluray, but still, very good picture quality.
Gamewise, most games looks worse on the PS3 because most games were made on 360 and then converted to PS3 instead of developing it on the PS3 and porting it to 360, most devs agree it would improve PS3 and 360 versions.
Lowering rendering resolutions? Which games? For as far I know, most games are 720, on PS3 and 360.
Well, just my 2 cents
Nomi, who cares about Blu-ray, over on the HD side of Engadget there is an article stating that Blu-ray will be top dog for 3 to 4 years starting in 2014 and ending in 2018 when it is surpassed by VoD, Blu-ray has a has been date already set for it, and only 3 to 4 years of controlling success, in comparison to VHS and DVD which were top dogs for around 10 years each.
Streaming of Hulu and NetFlix works great on PS3 with Playon. Multiplatform games look virtually the same. Exclusives is a matter of choice. Resistance 2 is good and Killzone 2 looks excellent. LBP is a big favorite too.
Oh and here's a big advantage: no RROD. And don't compare the stripped down Arcade unit to the PS3. It's $100 more than Xbox and you get a BD drive and wireless. PS3 also uses standard hard drive so you can install any size you want.
So how does it suck? Too expensive, developer unfriendly for exclusive titles, smaller installed base of users, HOME is lame -so far.
meh hes has a point, besides blu-ray the ps3 cant do anything more than the 360. i can stream all my xvid from my pc without having any program running, it just has to be in the library of wmp which runs in the background.
oh and last time i checked you couldnt plug a memory stick into the ps3 and directly play xvid off of it, maybe you can now, but my ps3 owning buddy commented about that last time i played a video on my 360.
if you dont give two shits about blu-ray, there is no difference.
That's funny because I've never had a problem watching/listening to any media file on my ps3. Streaming is incredibly easy. And Burnout Paradise says "hi".
"if you dont give two shits about blu-ray, there is no difference."
Reliability. Otherwise I agree.
If Sony wants to compete, and edge out Microsoft in multimedia, there are a few quick changes to make:
1) Integrated Netflix/Hulu support (PlayOn works great, but the 360 doesn't need an intermediary computer. Hulu can be viewed on the ps3 web-browser, but how much of a pain is that? Put it on the XMB)
2) Update XMB media player with Matroska support, subtitles and DTS (Bluray does DTS, so there shouldn't be any licensing issues)
3) Market the fact that the 360 w/ wireless adapter costs the same as the ps3.
And the ps3 has bluray to 360's hddvd, err....dvd
Just my opinion...
Why Sony didn't put PS2 backward compatibility to PS3? Because it's difficult to make PS2 emulator.
It required an extra chip (Emotion Engine chip). They left it out to supress costs and because the emulation in the early models (that do have the chip) was far from perfect.
You can't expect full backward compatibility from a brand new platform with way different hardware in my opinion.
45nm means that if i dropped the chip into my pubes i would not be able to find it.
You might wanna think about shaving then. Not everybody has to look like Zohan.
Besides GTA IV and COD4, there's also Bioshock, Oblivion, UT3, and Burnout Paradise.