Yes yes, I know. Today is different. I was just protesting against your high-end statement, since this gen proves that the console makers cleary aimed at high-end. I agree that they probably can't do that the next time around, for reasons you just listed.

My thoughts were that we were moving away from separate GPUs entirely and moving towards integrated chipsets. I imagine that Sony is at least going to have the CELL pull the whole workload for PS4 like it was originally intended to do for PS3, and certainly not to multi-GPU rendering.

I agree that having dual GPU in a single console is not an option due to heat, power consumption...etc. However don't you think having 2 consoles connected in a way where they can share the GPU workload could provide some benefits?

You are thinking about it form a PC perspective...and yeah it doesn't make sense for console.

I just find the idea that Polyphony digital implemented with GT5 and 4 PS3s really fascinating. I believe that king od tech should be released for developers to take advantage of...

And where is the market that would pay for it? I always try and think in economic terms, not technology.

Even if a few thousand people are prepared to pay for it, a two-tier hardware capability like this is completely against the concept of a console anyway.

I honestly don't see that happening.

I mean...sure they can try that and spend billions of dollars in developing a CPU which has the ability to substitute a GPU. In the meantime, xbox720 will just phone ATI and have them deliver a current gen GPU.

I think Sony has learned their lesson with the PS3 and all the money they lost. I read that cell's yield rate when they started making PS3s was somewhere around 25%...with 75% of the chips being a waste. And this is with the downgraded cell processor which is missing one of the SPEs...

I think that's part of what will motivate them, though. They've sunk so much money into it that they'll try to make it work like it was intended to if they can.

My original post forgot the fact that the whole concept of Larabee seems to have imploded as well.

Well if a company is making money on a console...and you need to buy 2 consoles and 2 games to make this work, then there is some potential to sell this to the public. Crytek, Naughty Dog, Epic and other top tier developers would prolly jump on the opportunity to get a performance edge in the console market.

I am not saying I have the business plan for this model or anything...but I am hoping that someone at Microsoft or Sony does :)

I'd bet heavily against it.

but if GT5 can already do it what more do you wan't? admittedly they needed 4 PS3's and 4 HD TVs and technically it just generated 4 separate images which is nothing like what SLI/Crossfire does but thats all you can really hope for with consoles anyway.

as for the PS4 using sclaed up Cell tech I don't see that happening first reason being IBM stopped developing the Cell line. Seccond since the PS3 came out there has been a strong move to make GPUs more able to perform more traditional CPU tasks especially stuff that requires parallel processing like physics and the advantages of the massive parallel processing power of modern GPUs far out perform that of any modified CPU and you get the advantage of it being highly optimised of rendering tasks is a great boon for consoles. Third is cost sony would have to foot the entire bill for the design of the advanced Cell and would probably be the only ones using it, modern GPUs are just much better at everything the Cell was meant to be good at (high bandwidth parallel processing) and modern CPU's are much better at running the kinds of processing thats left. The Cell was a dead end it's much easier to make a GPU more like a CPU than it is for them to make a CPU more like a GPU, the GTX series has 512 "cores" the most a Cell chip will have is like 28 add in the fact that more developers are familiar with using GPU architecture and there are already tools available to utilize the GPU chips and an pure Cell powered system seems more unlikely. 

Now the GT 400 series is way to hot and power hungry today but by 2012 with die shrinks and a redesign or two it something at the level of the GTX 4X0 chips will be available. 

Or what if because they have the extra processing power of another console, they don't max out the tech of only one console? I see a little of evil in this formula...