Sony's PlayStation 3 video game console sports hardware mainly known for two things: a Blu-ray drive that played a major role in the war against the now defunct HD DVD-format, and the renowned Cell processor. It is also known for being the most expensive of the consoles available today. This is something Sony will try to change with the next generation video game console and the answer may be Cell! According to Impress, Sony is thinking of reusing Cell with PlayStation 4, or whatever the console will be named.
Up till now Sony has gone with a new architecture for every new console, but if they choose to continue using Cell they have gained substantial ground in terms of backwards compatibility and manufacturing costs. The big question mark is the performance.
"The Cell chip itself is likely to speed up but is most likely to see a more modest upgrade than possible. Sony plans to shrink the chip from a 90 nanometer process down to 45 nanometers but is expected to at most increase the number of cores from eight to 12 and may only increase the clock speed slightly over the 3.2GHz Cell in use for the PS3 today."
If Sony decides to use the architecture with the next generation video game console we can most likely count on it using a much more powerful graphics circuits to lift it to new heights. Since PlayStation 4 isn't due until 2011 there is still plenty of time for Sony to weights its options and even go in a completely different direction.
Sony sticking to Cell with PlayStation 4?
Noctua
