The other os function sdidnt use a dedicated core.
8 cores, one of turned off to increase chip yeild, (it replaces a nother core if it dies) And another core is security. It handles all of the encryption for blueray and game code atc. The other 6 cores are free for developer use. You can see in some Uncharted 2 dev videos they have a video of spu usage, there are 6 bars.
If they opened up the reserve spu, suddenly thousands of ps3's would stop working, because they already use the spu in place of another, defective one.
This is how the gpu and spus play together. The gpu is much more powerful, say a certain effect takes 12 ms on the gpu. On an spu that same effect takes 36ms. But, if you spread the processing for that effect over the six spu's now it only takes 6ms.
Adding another spu wouldnt make a huge difference. The reason ps3 games dont look even better isn't because of processing power, its because of avaiable RAM.
There are two ways to produce a 3d image actually run. You can either cut the amount of detail until the image takes half the time to draw, or you let the image draw in twice the time and cut the framerate in half.
That said, less detail is less noticable in 3d. Also, a game build for 3d has this draw two images thing in mind, so it's optimized.
Ps4 just refers to the 3d capability. And hopefully ps4 wont require glassed for 3d!
I don't want a ps4. Im still broke from buying my ps3!
