Report: Samsung manufacturing the PlayStation Vita CPU

For the PlayStation Vita, Sony is foregoing the hardware design strategies used for the PSP and PS3 -- custom, expensive, Sony-designed chips -- in favor of cheaper off-the-shelf hardware, which is one reason it can charge $250 for something that seems like it came from the future.

One example of this new strategy: a brief note on the Semiconductor Industry News site says that Samsung will manufacture the four-core ARM Cortex A9 CPU for the handheld, using a 45nm process. That saves Sony money on R&D, and saves us from having to read marketing about the purported magical abilities of another Sony chip like the "Emotion Engine" or the Cell.