New 40nm PS3 slims spoted in the wild

[joeorc]

drkohler said:

czecherychestnut said:

I predict that the PS3 will plateau at $199, which is a good price for a console anyway. And it'll end up with a 22nm Cell, and a 28nm RSX. Given that RSX is on bulk silicon and Cell is SOI, I doubt we will ever see a combined Cell/RSX chip like we did with EE+GS on PS2, as a redesign of RSX to work with Bulk (or vice versa) is a fairly major undertaking.

I don't think there is enough incentive to go below 40nm in the forseeable future. All these sub 40nm processes are very expensive and keeping high yield 40nm lines in operation makes more sense than investing huge amounts in smaller redesigns (an equally major undertaking) - which in the end would probably mean to save another $2 on the power supply. There is a reason why PC Southbridges are manufactured on "Stone-age" 110-130nm lines, it's simply not worth economically to go lower. Better invest your time and money into sub-30nm PS4 components.

though embedded system's do benefit on smaller nm scale v's ic packages in PC component's.

getting to that smaller nm scale does help in reduction of not only the power supply but also the active/passive cooling system, and weight in shipping the unit. those cost's cutting is wotrh it in the fact that these are produced in such massive number's on a month by month basis.

so it's not quite the same thing, yes there is going to be a point when it does indeed net you very little return but that's after you have reduced the weight and the overall size of every component that you can inorder to shave off cost's , which right now the PS3 is not close to that point in my opinion anyway.