16 cores =/= fast

You could put a few thousand 80386s on a chip and it still wouldn't be fast. I'm guessing each core will not be powerful on its own (comparable to a mobile phone CPU core), and so it will be hard to port from the PC directly. No idea why they would do this.

i'll sleep on it, and wait for the next rumor.

USC Fan at NeoGaf posted this, it seems to add up:

Putting all rumors together is looks like they a using 2 SOC. http://www.fudzilla.com/processors/i...ct-run-is-real

So you get 2x 8 core CPU with 7000 built at 32nm.

2Gb per soc for 4GB total ram

You get 16 cores and dual gpu

I'm guessing the dual GPU thing is just for the dev kits though, they'll use something else for the final version.

We should have a rumor creation thread in the forums for people to come up with their best next gen console rumor that they completely make up, choose the best and float it around to see who bites.

I remember clearly how early this gen people went on and on about the GPU capabilities of the 360 and the Cell CPU capabilities of the PS3 and how, in the end, those advantages weren't clear to most of us. Even when the official specs are announced, people will go on and on about potential and theoretical possibilities and, in the end, like ALWAYS, it'll come down to the games and what developers can actually pull off. More than this gen, graphics won't be enough, so we'll find out who the true innovators are out there and hopefully see some new ones arise.

I seem to have to quote myself because you guys keep going on and on about a 2 8 core Power7's when there already exists a 16 core PowerPC chip.

I can kinda see why Nintendo is washing their hands of the tech race.

There's no way you could sell a piece of hardware comparable to this for $300.

I'm not sure what the point of that would be. Most developers struggle to use 4 threads/cores and I can't imagine a 16 core 65 Watt CPU would offer particularly great single thread performance. Admitedly don't know much about the chip though.

16 core processor... what for?

If we take a look at the CPU usage in PC games, a 4 core processor is more than enough to run a game, and it does it while also taking care of a full OS like Windows and the plethora of programs than we don't notice but are still there.

So why do they 16 cores? Kinect and the system OS can't be that power-hungry. And even if they are, they could go with a 6 core processor and use 4 of those cores for the games, 1 for Kinect and the other one for the OS.

They should focus on the GPU. That's where every extra bit of power can be appreciated.

Strictly speaking it has 9.

1 PPE Main Core

8 SPE Satellite Processors

However 1 SPE is disabled to improve chip yields and 1 is reserved for the OS leaving 6 for gaming

Yields. A sixteen core Power7 chip is enormous and would cost several hundred a chip wholesale. Two smaller chips can be a lot cheaper, see AMD Magny-Cours.