Below is a hasty translation of the paragraph dealing with SCE talking to the third parties. I don't have any technical knowledge at all, so please excuse me if I've misunderstood anything about the Larrabee etc there.
There is more on the PS4 in the next paragraph, but it's just conjecture and stuff like Sony wants to bring about the next generation sooner than anyone else.
SCE who investigated the reaction of third parties to the use of an extension of the cell
In early autumn of last year SCE asked around each of the game vendors to gauge their reaction with regards to the PS4. SCE was sounding out what would happen if they used an extension of the Cell B.E. in the PS4. We reported on the situation at that time in our article “Playstation 4 heading towards using an extension of the cell”.
In that article from half a year ago we conjectured that SCE was having specific debates over the use of an extension of the Cell. However, in actual fact, SCE’s real intention lay in finding out what the reaction from software vendors would be if they used the Cell in the PS4. They hadn’t begun a specific hardware design with a Cell base, but rather undecided on whether to use the Cell or not, SCE was in a phase where they were trying to find out where the industry was going. We think that they were trying to find out whether they could receive support from vendors if they released a PS4 using the Cell.
However, there was a lot of negative reaction from third party vendors at that time. In contrast SCE’s first parties (SCE’s game studios) were positive towards development of the Cell. This is because the powerful first part studios are drawing out the power of the Cell. In other words, SCE is stuck between deciding whether to make use of the strengths of their internal game development by releasing a “Cell” PS4 or gain the support of third parties by releasing a “non Cell” PS4.
While SCE are investigating vendors’ attitudes towards a Cell PS4, they are also looking at other CPU/GPUs. In particular, the one which has caught SCE’s attention is the Larrabee Throughput processor announced by Intel. The Larrabee is a throughput processor extending a general use x86 CPU Core and demonstrating a performance in line with a GPU. If they put it in a console just with the Larrabee they can combine a CPU and GPU. From the perspective of a games developer, it would mean they could program for the GPU in the same was as the CPU and the gap between the CPU and GPU would disappear for the program.
