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Sony Sells PS3 Cell Processor to Toshiba

zekrahminator

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Well, it seems that Sony decided to give the keys to the Cell processor to Toshiba. By March 2008, Toshiba will own all manufacturing facilities of the Cell processor. Sony will still own some stock in the Cell processor, and the deal itself is worth an incredible $858 million USD.

You can read the official press release, Google-translated from Japanese, here.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site
 
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Deleted member 24505

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$858 million USD:twitch: that is an awful lot of money,at least the cell has made them a lot of money.they can recoup the dosh they lost on the ps3.
 

Fuse-Wire

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$858 million USD:twitch: that is an awful lot of money,at least the cell has made them a lot of money.they can recoup the dosh they lost on the ps3.

true, then fund their next product :rolleyes:
 

btarunr

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Not much for us to bother as long as the Cell stays off the desktop and sticks to gaming consoles and prototype HDTV's by Sony.

The day it steps into the PC market (if it ever will) that'll be quite a stir.
 

Fuse-Wire

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The day it steps into the PC market (if it ever will) that'll be quite a stir.

and that will be their next project no doubt lol :laugh:
 
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Imagine a cell mb with multiple sockets for adding extra cell chips :).Trouble is,the cell does'nt run x86 based,so it would be hard to port it to pc's.
 

Fuse-Wire

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Imagine a cell mb with multiple sockets for adding extra cell chips :).Trouble is,the cell does'nt run x86 based,so it would be hard to port it to pc's.

soon enough they will have the cell running x86, don't know how they will do it but if sony see a market they will shoot for it
 
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you guys hear about teh scientist who threw away his super computer array and got 8 ps3's?
 
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sony needs this money to get themselves back in the black after the cell and blu-ray development, other sources state that sony are still far short of that target yet
 
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i'd laugh if toshiba started screwing sony on the price of the chips (like nvidia did with xbox gpu's)
 

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I still remember the original Cell propoganda. Remember how Sony talked about every product they sold would have a weak Cell processor in it and as you added more Sony products to your home they would all work together to make eachother stronger...

Ah, good memories...
 
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v-zero

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Sounds like Sony are finally cutting loose on what was always a very bad idea. At least they finally got something right...
 

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Sounds like Sony are finally cutting loose on what was always a very bad idea. At least they finally got something right...

I disagree, I think the Cell Processor was a fine invention. The execution of marketting it was horrible.

They should not have introduced it into the PS3 first. If there is anywhere you are going to be pWned for a non-conforming product, it's in the console market.

They should have geared the thing up to do high level scientific calculation and marketted it to the acedemic and scietific communities, and then let the their customer base turn it into a gaming device.
 

HaZe303

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I disagree, I think the Cell Processor was a fine invention. The execution of marketting it was horrible.

They should not have introduced it into the PS3 first. If there is anywhere you are going to be pWned for a non-conforming product, it's in the console market.

They should have geared the thing up to do high level scientific calculation and marketted it to the acedemic and scietific communities, and then let the their customer base turn it into a gaming device.

I agree, if they would have done that, then maybe game dev´s would have easier now to program for the ps3.
 
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Yep,look how valve has refused to program the orange box for the ps3,and left it to ea:twitch:
 

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Toshiba enters the console market in 2010:)

I can see it now, but with the cheaper HD-DVD instead.
 
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v-zero

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I disagree, I think the Cell Processor was a fine invention. The execution of marketting it was horrible.

They should not have introduced it into the PS3 first. If there is anywhere you are going to be pWned for a non-conforming product, it's in the console market.

They should have geared the thing up to do high level scientific calculation and marketted it to the acedemic and scietific communities, and then let the their customer base turn it into a gaming device.

The Cell is a horrible piece of design. Shortcuts and time-constraint left the world with a product that will never see it's full "potential" realized.

Also, there was too much money riding on the Cell for it to be a research tool. It's just another Itanium.
 

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The Cell is a horrible piece of design. Shortcuts and time-constraint left the world with a product that will never see it's full "potential" realized.

Also, there was too much money riding on the Cell for it to be a research tool. It's just another Itanium.

Maybe Toshiba could make some changes to the Cell processor for the better. And seriously does anyone really care that this seems to be Toshibas first venture into processors? Yayyy Toshiba. :toast::toast::toast:


The PS3 is doomed to failure now that Toshiba could possibly hold something against Sony should Sony still refuse to at least discuss possible cooperation on an HD format. No cell procs--> no PS3--> no PS3 means no cheap Blu Ray disc player. lol Though I seriously doubt Toshiba would do this just based on the fact that it is a high standing company that wouldnt want to lose its image just when people are starting to recognize how truly great a company Toshiba really is.
 

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I disagree. The Cell is a fine product and one that has many uses and alot of potential. The PS3 is just the first step. As it stands, IBM is already using the Cell in alot of other ventures...
 
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v-zero

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And I would suggest that the Cell is entirely redundant, as it's main ability (stream processing) is already done far better by GPUs. It's pretty poor as a CPU, and already beaten in stream processing, where's the true value?
 

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Cells are very good number crushers. F@H on PS3 = :rockout:
 

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The Cell is a horrible piece of design. Shortcuts and time-constraint left the world with a product that will never see it's full "potential" realized.

Also, there was too much money riding on the Cell for it to be a research tool. It's just another Itanium.

Just another Itanium :wtf:. My mom's work uses servers that run like 4 Itanium chips in each server. You don't know about Itanium because it's not usually marketed to the average consumer or the company that needs a couple servers. Itanium is gear toward the large corporate size servers that have to do huge number crunching.

And what are these shortcuts? Small cache? Any console cpu really didn't have a good cache. Bad Branch Prediction? Same deal.
 
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