What's the point of cell?

[greenmedic88]

NJ5 said:
@Bokal: We were talking about both, because someone suggested the PS3 was fitted with both for reasons which ignored the gaming part. Now while I agree that blu-ray was put on the PS3 because of company interest to a big extent, I'd hope that wasn't the case with the Cell. It's not like Sony as a company has a lot riding on CPUs.

It's sort of the other way around. Sony isn't using the PS3 in an attempt to market the CBE, Sony is using the fact that the PS3 uses the CBE as a marketing bullet point.

If anyone stands to gain anything from the consumer marketing of the CBE via the PS3, it's IBM. They're getting visibility in the consumer electronics field they wouldn't have been receiving had Sony not agreed to use their chip/architecture.

Sony doesn't actually get any direct benefit from sales of the CPUs they use in their consoles. Maybe if they still manufactured them in house and distributed the chips as a chip vendor, but... their production facility was sold off to Toshiba a year ago.