Aritcle/Analysis: Sony screws up with new PS3 (40 GB)

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HappySqurriel said:

Final-Fan said:

HappySqurriel said:

MikeB said:
@ couchmonkey

release a brand-new system with a more traditional architecture (no cell and maybe no Blu-ray)

Hello Gabe!

Yes let's make the PS4 a cutdown PC! Drool!!

Who really wants innovation, advanced features and product diversity when we can all have a cutdown console PC next to our oridinary PCs within our homes?!

LOL

Well, in theory, it would be entirely possible for Sony to have worked on improving the Emotion Engine and released a 4 to 8 Emotion Engine core that was running in the 2GHz to 3GHz range which would give performance in the 25x to 80x range (as compared to the PS2); developers would be familiar with the architecture, there would be tons of well known tricks to get decent performance, backwards compatibility would be 'free' and it would be trivial to improve performance (and upscale with a similar GPU architecture) existing PS2 games.

Seriously, if Sony choose DVD and the processor I described above (with a decent GPU) they could have sold the PS3 for $300 with a minimal loss and demonstrated similar performance to the XBox 360 ... But Sony choose the architecture that was going to ensure poor sales ...

I don't know hardware design ... is this scenario plausible FOR REALS?

From a theoritical perspective, yes ...

The Emotion Engine was built off of a 250nm process back in the day and we are currently working on a 90nm process; this means that the emotion engine takes up (approximately) 12.5% as much space on a processor as it once did. Now, with the necessary infastructure to create a multi-core processor it would be a challenge to build an 8 Emotion Engine core processor but it would represent the upper edge of our capability (with a 90nm process).

The 2GHz to 3GHz range is just a rough guestimate based on what we have seen similar processors do in recent times ...

I (personally) don't see what would be overly challenging about producing a 6 core emotion engine at 2GHz or a 4 core emotion engine at 3Ghz.

Well, six core EE would be 12 core (if i understood what you were meaning), since Emotion Engine has 2 processors, main processor running at 250+ MHz and co-processor running at 100+ MHz. Makes it a little harder to design, since it doesn't even have 2 similar processors. Also the 2 processor core, as far as i know, made PS2 harder to program than it's competitors.

 

Edit: But of course, using EE:s main processors, you should be able to produce processor as you described.