Console scuttlebutt: multi-core CPU for next-gen PlayStation, Intel inside future Wii
By Darren Murph 
posted December 29th 2009 7:14AM
posted December 29th 2009 7:14AM
We're but three years removed from the US introduction of both Nintendo's Wii and Sony's PlayStation 3, and already the rumors are running rampant about the future iterations of both consoles. Two separate reports from Japan's Impress touch on both units, with speculation and insider information on the former suggesting that Intel could be in talks with the Big N about powering the second Wii. Hard details are obviously tough to come by, but word has it that the two are mulling a GPU / CPU combo similar to the Larrabee; granted, we'd prefer something a touch more potent in the Wii 2, but we wouldn't be shocked if Nintendo chooses the less powerful path yet again. In related news, it seems as if Sony could be looking for an alternative to its Cell CPU in the PlayStation 4, an alternative that involves some sort of "multi-core CPU." Potentially more interesting is the notion that Sony's next-gen handheld could be out before said console, which is loosely pegged for a 2013 release. We wouldn't take any of this to heart just yet, but we're pretty certain we can't stop the dreamers from going too far.
Remmeber, IBM isnt making a Next gen Cell.
@ipxnsv CRAP. Remember*
@ipxnsv its the ps3's fault... sony destroyed ibm by selling cheaper cell's which makes the kill count of the ps3 2, since it also killed hd-dvd.
I get the feeling next generation consoles won't be backwards compatible. Emulation requires a machine about 10x as powerful ad the original, and it would be very, very expensive to include the hardware components of 360 and PS3 in new ones.
In fact, ironically because the Wii is considered "underpowered" this generation, the next Nintendo system may actually support Wii and GCN games... throw in the complete virtual console library at launch, and Nintendo has a deal that'd be hard to refuse.
There is nothing wrong with the Cell except it is so different in architecture that it is hard to port application to it from other x86 type architectures. This is no different than the Pre-Intel Mac's. Apple was smart when they went to an Intel platform and Sony is doing the same thing.
The best Cell games are the ones that are exclusive to the Cell. Sony has also provided poor developer support and support tools for the Cell.
Many developers start on the Xbox 360 and port to the PS3 for one and one simple reason -- its faster to develop and debug and Microsoft has better tools. The port to the PS3 is painfull and there are things that would have to be completely rewritten to work on the Cell.
You guys who complain about lazy developers should try doing the porting yourself before you talk. This IS NO new news. There has been discusson about how painfull this is at various times during this gen of consoles.
Game developers need to make money need to make multiplatform games. The PS3 Cell does not help or makes it more costly -- at the end of the day it is economics. You guys want, want, want but at some point someone has to pay the bills. You guys complain when studios shut down, well some do because of poor games others because of economics and it is VERY expensive to port games.
Nobody wants to hear this, but if all the consoles used the same core CPU/GPU there is STILL plenty to differentiate the platforms that nobody would care but developers could write once and test twice and be done.
At the end it economics that rules the day and people are expensive.
Also, the Cell was suppose to be in a lot consumer devices and right now we have a single HDTV due out next year that will use a cell but there is no proof it will do any better than other TVs out there right now.
More important that nobody is talking about, what happens to backward compatibility if we AGAIN get another PSx CPU?
@Zo Actually, economically speaking, the Big Three (Nin, MS, and Sony) would be better off co-creating a system. The costs for research, development, and production would be shared, meaning a much more powerful system could be designed at a lower cost to consumers. All the developers would be able to flood the single system model with games, and everyone would make huge profits.
I'm actually surprised the large game publishers don't demand it, or do it themselves.
@(Unverified)
I think what you're suggesting is akin to collusion.
Sure it's a lower cost system, but it's just one system. There's no competition and consumers will lose out in the long run.
Nintendo 64 - SGI, then ArtX splits from SGI
GameCube - ArtX, then ATi purchases ArtX
Wii - ATi, then AMD purchases ATi
"Next" - AMD? Most likely. Nintendo is all about relationships, I'd be shocked if they didn't stick with who they know and trust.
@mattcoz Man, I really hope they stick with AMD.
Wii HDii
Console gaming is going to be obsolete by the time cloud gaming services like OnLive go public. Why update your console every few years when you could just play games using a cloud rendering system? You could play the latest games on a pentium 4 with 256mb ram, lol -- and in HD as well!
@(Unverified)
I find it hard to believe that OnLive will be truly viable before it becomes vaporware.
Theoretically it's a cool idea, but that's about it.
@Brother Unit No 4
All the latest public demos OnLive has given have been a huge success...people present during the demos say they were very skeptical at first but it was really good and no lag at all...now whether or not that will be the case at home for end users...and whether they will actually go public soon...not sure...hopefully it will be before the next generation of consoles though...I am tired of buying a new console every 2 years, I Would rather pay for a subscription and then just get games on demand without having to go to the store or rent them online.
@Brother Unit No 4 My Cousin-in-law and I are both excited about On-Live. We plan on getting it.
@(Unverified) I don't know about other countries, but in the U.K., internet connections will have to dramatically improve (at least for most people who aren't in the large urban areas) if anything like ONLive is going to work well. This is regarding the connection speed and the price plans, both of which are poor.
I'm hoping on something Power7-based, with a shrunk PowerXCell 8i as coprocessor (and for backwards compatibility) backed up by the next-gen ATI Hecatonchires GPU's.
This would make porting games from the Xbox360 and Xboxnext easier and much better due to native ATI assembly, ensure Playstation 3 compatibility and not to use that crappy x86 architecture.
Sony ought to keep the Cell. It's highly scalable would maintain some form of compatibility with future releases. If anything, Sony needs to make sure it gets a better GPU, like one with a unified shader architecture and made by ATI...
let's hope it doesn't cost up the butt in price.
this is good and all as long as the games don't go above $60 each
The article is slightly misleading. Officially (and technically) the Cell has nine cores. So it's hard to say that the next big step is multicore... they will just be implemented in a much different way.
Learn your hardware, the Cell chip has 1 PPE (in essence, a multi-threaded core), and 8 SPEs (7 activated on the PS3). The PPE has control over the SPEs and can start, stop, interrupt, and schedule processes running on the SPEs. Making a 2nd PPE unnecessary since it would have nothing to do.
Some good arguments for and against Sony staying with Cell. The main argument against seems to be that it is difficult to develop games for the Cell architecture. But all major studios have already added and tweaked support for the PS3 in their engines and tool sets. Its taken a couple of years to get there (and the results were initially crap) but most have now integrated it into their tools. Sony has also (after a few years) tweaked the SDK considerably. They need to build on this and not abandon it - developers have already gone through the learning curb so why force them to start again? Now is not the time to abandon Cell as developers are finally used to it.
Sony should use the exact same architecture, but higher clock speed, more RAM, more GPU features. In fact, they MUST do this or else find another architecture that already exists because it is clear from what happened with the PS3 that they wont be able to keep up if they start again from scratch.
And that brings up the next point: staying with the same architecture allow Sony to use the same OS, XMB, and built-in apps and features. That's important because it has taken them several years to play catchup with MS. If they do a new architecture then they need to start all over again - and that doesn't make sense given the proven fact of how long it takes them to get these features built.
Staying with the same architecture also guarantees backwards compatibility at no additional cost. They took a lot of criticism for removing PS2 backwards compatibility from the PS3 but they basically had to add in additional hardware to do that emulation. If they stay with the same architecture then backwards compatibility would be inherent in the design. No egg on their faces.
Lastly, by staying with the same architecture means they can get it to market faster and at less cost. This is no small point. Aside from lack of compatibility and developers needing to learn a different architecture, the other main points against the PS3 were that it came out later than the 360 and cost a lot more. This would solve both problems.
If they don't go with Cell, then what architecture would they use exactly? Simply using standard hardware (Intel or AMD based with latest generation of GPU) isn't going to cut it because you need an SDK / APIs. So Sony will still need to roll its own (big mistake because of all of the above points) or go with some standard. DirectX anybody?? Maybe but I don't think so.... they cant win against MS at that game. And that brings up the last point: staying with essentially the same architecture (DirectX) has helped MS massively with this generation of console. Sony needs to do the same only keep backwards compatibility even tighter.
There is a wii HD in the making featuring blu-ray. But for the PS4 i think is a good idea for sony. as today there are more powerful proccesers then the Cell.
My guess? You'll see a PSP2 around 2011-2012 (I would have said early if it wasn't for the Go). But a PS4? Don't expect that until *at least* 2014. There's no reason to do a restart on that machine since its technological ceiling is much higher then the 360s and games like Uncharted 2, Killzone 2, and Heavy Rain prove that.
As for what CPU the PS3 will be rocking, my bet is they'll stay with IBM and do an iteration on the Cell that still keeps the basic idea of it, but is more similar in architecture to some of the more basic multi-core CPUs that Intel and AMD are pumping out for PCs. Once you put time into developing for the Cell, the results show.
They can vastly improve the PS3 by simply doubling the RAM, then call it PS4, and why not, it's not like all their new PSP's were actually really new.
@Wwhat
With the 360, you have 512MB of DDR3 RAM which is shared with the ATI Xenos CPU that also has 10MB of eDRAM. The PS3 on the other hand has 256MB of XDR RAM and the NVIDIA RSX GPU which has its own 256MB of XDR RAM along with being able to share an extra 224MB from the base memory. For the most part it's agreed that the first strategy is the superior one.
Personally, I"m hoping that the next revision of the PS3 isn't just a slimming, but a redesign with some new features. Aside from a RAM upgrade to 512MB, a 4x BD Drive would work wonders for load times and hard drive installs. On top of that, maybe 802.11n or something would be a nice touch.
@kenny goo with the current price on ram, they could probably rerelease the $1000 ps3 again with a 20GB ssd and 4 GB of ram, but then again the ps3 uses rambus ram so the amount of ram might be lower than that to keep it at $1000,
@(Unverified)
What? Re-release the $1,000 PS3 again? What are you talking about? The most the PS3 has ever been sold for is $600, and it's down to $300 now. Why would the release a SKU at more then 3 times the current price? Is this sarcasm or a joke or something that I'm missing?
Like I said, the PS3 uses XDR RAM, and yes, it is from Rambus. Performance wise, the memory in the PS3 is superior to the GDDR3 RAM in the 360, but there's still not enough of it. I don't think there's a chance in hell you'll see a PS3 revision with 1GB of XDR RAM, let alone 4GB, but 512MB is definitely reasonable. Any more then that and you'd be fragmenting the user base, or it'd be pointless since developers would be able to utilize that much memory.
As for the SSD, there's a couple of different options for that, but in all honesty it's still a long ways out. The prices of SSDs haven't come down enough, and anything that is cheap enough isn't of a big enough size. Anything around the 16GB or 32GB range isn't gonna cut it these days.
@kenny goo unfortunately no.. i just happen to live down under in australia, where they still cost $500 despite the fact that US$1 = AU$0.80.. anyways yes i am probably being a tad sarcastic as i don't see the ps3 needing any more ram than it does now, instead they probably might get better luck with a faster hdd for cache or adding in ps2 backwards compatibility as soon as sales of the ps2 start falling. Yes having another US$600 ps3 might dishearten would be ps3 owners but consider it an elite package like the xbox360 elite but with faster hdds, most likely faster blu-ray drive and a bluetooth headset or play-tv...(as i don't see ps2 sales dropping off considerably for the next 3 years lol) the $600 elite package options will probably be 10 times better than just a bigger hard drive, an hdmi cable, some headsets, and a recharging kit that should have come standard with controllers that only last 2 weeks with continuous play
@(Unverified)
My bad. I assumed you were talking in USD. Anyway, does the PS3 *need* more RAM? No, but I wouldn't be the first person to suggest such an upgrade. Aside from the Cell architecture, it's a common gripe among the development community. It'd also allow more breathing room by letting the XMB run smoother in the background (maybe adding universal custom soundtrack support in the process), and make way for a better, faster web browser (which would coincide with those Firefox coming to PS3 rumors).
The only thing I could see them doing for a storage upgrade rather then a upping the capacity is increasing the speed of the drive to 7200RPM, or maybe increasing the cache, but neither would have nearly as large of an impact in the large scheme as doubling the RAM or swapping in a 4x Blu-ray drive. And just forget about SSDs. That's just not happening, lol.
Especially considering you can swap any 2.5" SATA drive into the PS3 and have that run. I actually *just* swapped an old 80GB laptop drive into my PS3 for the original 40GB drive not even half an hour ago, lol. Really though, if you want a faster drive, hit up Newegg and get one for $50, and if you really wanna dish out the cash for an SSD your welcome to do that as well, but they shouldn't increase costs to appeal to a niche market like that. On the other hand, you can't upgrade the RAM or BD drive yourself.
As for PS2 BC, I wouldn't expect that to be coming back anytime soon, if ever. They'd much rather do upgraded ports like the GOW Collection and charge you $30-$40 for them. Plus they want to put their PSP titles out on PS2 as well, but still coax PS3 owners to buy a PSP Go and buy games from the PSN. *And* I still see them selling PS2 games on the PSN before 2010 is over. All of that withstanding, I don't expect to see PS2 BC coming back.
Don't expect to see any extra accessories put into these things though. Hard drive increases are more easily marketed the the inclusion of a Bluetooth headset or an HDMI cable. They'll cut those out as much as possible to lower costs since they aren't shown to increase sales numbers. Plus you can find them online on the cheap anyway so what's the point?
as long as Sony doesn't do something boneheaded on the PS4 like have no backward compatibility with PS3...
It IS Sony after all...
Wait, I thought the PS3 was future-proof and was supposed to be the center of family home entertainment for 10 years?
Why speculate on something that is 7 years away?
Sony just got the PS3 to a marketable standpoint with developers that are happy with them, changing to a new console iteration already would be a deathwish for SCE.
"We're but three years removed..."
Last I checked, three years represents several generations in advancements in processors and GPUs.
I can't believe they are still selling the xbox 360, which is basically the graphical equivalent just slightly below a Nvidia 7800 GT. *facepalm*
Four years should be the absolute max for an upgrade cycle.
I don't think Sony is going to turn their backs from Cell, the only, current problem with Cell is that it's hard to program for. They need to improve on that, obviously with the standard speed and memory bump. For data Sony might, or might not have other plans. What might be an obvious step is that they further develop Blu-ray and make it faster, with a higher capacity and call it Blu-ray+ or something, with support for standard Blu-ray. There's no need for higher quality movies, I estimate even by then, but for games it's an other story. So if they just improve Blu-ray and keep the legacy support, they might have a winner there. Maybe games are going to get streamed, maybe download only. But for the love of god. Please developers, release some CryEngine 3 games.
I meant "turn their backs to Cell", ofcourse
Shouldn't that be "Intel Inside future Wii"?
Firefox in PS3 would be an interesting counterpoint to Opera in the Wii.
Don't see why both sides shouldn't use 1GB as a base RAM. It's cheap enough. In fact, 1GB would allow higher-production components which would reduce cost.
apparently the next wii production and its workers will be paid in Nintendo dollars.