Why Sony dropped the BC ???

[kn]

drkohler said:

libellule said:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=29509

Any claim that this has been done for cost purposes is clearly false, because the European PS3 already emulated its predecessors in software. Some legacy chips remained on-board (but not the central processor, the Emotion Engine), but their cost is unlikely to have been much more than a dollar or two per unit - if even that.

==> feel free to comment.

LOL, a good waver chip costs you $10'000 and is probably good for 350-500 "some legacy" chips (depending on structure size). Talk about not saving... I wish these "experts" would actually at least try to understand a little bit about what they are foaming about.. wishful thinking, I know.. these idiots seem to grow on trees nowadays.

 

You apparently don't have any clue what you are talking about, either. A 12" wafer can easily hold a crapload of legacy die. I don't know the size of the playstation 2 GSX chip, but the Wii CPU which is easily as more more powerful is 19 square millimeters. Using basic math for the area of a circle, we find the formula pi*r^2 for a 300MM wafer (modern manufacturing is standard on 12" or 300MM) being a total square millimeter surface area of 70,685 MM. Divide 19 into that result and you find approximately 3720 total die. Assume a 90% yield and you get 3348 usable chips from one wafer. $9000 is a good rough estimate of the cost to manufacture a 12" wafer putting the GSX chip at about $3 each in quantity. The cost is so negligble as to prove that Sony cut every possible corner to cut costs and that there are other motives in the move to remove BC completely. Keep in mind, too, that I used the size of the Broadway graphics chip on the Wii as my size estimate. I would be willing to bet that the GSX in the PS2 is smaller still which would mean an even higher yield....

Could it be Sony is trying to increase the attach rate so 3rd parties get back on board? Who knows...