Japanese tech news site PC Watch is reporting that as a cost-saving measure, Sony “has begun seriously considering” basing the upcoming PlayStation 4 on the same Cell processor that currently powers the PS3.
Though citing no sources in particular, PC Watch claims that Sony is currently soliciting developer reactions to the idea. They speculate that while Sony would like to distance themselves from the Cell in the long run, at present they might do well to make use of their existing investment and expand the technical capabilities of the PS3 only moderately — a la the hardware transition from GameCube to Wii — in order to constrain further expenditure.
In a long technical analysis following the report, PC Watch voices the opinion that the PS4’s performance would not increase significantly from that of the PS3 if this is true. While Moore’s Law and the historical rate at which Sony has shrunk processors size would suggest that the Cell processor could reach as many as 32 cores, PC Watch expects that the cost of redesigning the Cell’s layout — which has apparently remained the same as it has shrunk from 90nm to 65nm, and from 65nm to 45nm — would be prohibitive enough that Sony will stick with around 10 cores for the PS4.
PC Watch also apparently heard that Sony is considering standard JEDEC memory for this iteration, as opposed to the PS3’s expensive XDR. They believe this means that the PS4 will use DDR3.
Hardware geeks: if all this is true, how disappointed will you be? Or, perhaps more importantly, what do you estimate a PS4 like this will cost a few years down the road?
September 29th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the PS4 is simply a more cost-effective PS3, though this smacks of a Sega-esque screw-up. Sony is going to need a gimmick (a la Wiimote or something similar) to sell the PS4. If it isn’t technically superior or otherwise significantly different compared to the PS3, I doubt if developers will shell out the money to purchase new dev kits for what is essentially the same hardware.
October 29th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
will it actually have a griill on it?
November 12th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
This seems perfectly logical to me; they bump the performance of the existing architecture so to ensure backwards compatibility and more importantly, to not piss-off developers.
That doesn’t mean we wont see a “new” processor. It will be newer, faster etc but wont be a giant leap. That would be annoying for every-one.
I’d be more concerned about what graphics hardware they’ll be using.
I expect they’ll stick with nvidia but that’s anybody’s guess.
Also, the GPU industry is a shady one. Its all a question of timing with these things: when sony designed the ps3, they went with the then very high-end 7800 AFAIK, which is now, obviously, horribly out-dated.
But the upside is that games can be optimized for the hardware instead of getting it to work “ok” on every GPU available like the pc gaming industry.
So I expect it to be exactly the same next time round. We’ll get the best-ish at the time. Whatever it may be.
RAM isn’t such an issue, as in there’s always a million different flavours to choose from. DDR3 probably would have been and gone by then.
Expect to see GDDRx being used exclusively.
November 16th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
if ps4 will have cell processor like ps3 there will be only a few things different that ps4 will have and ps3 no. the graphics will be different. ps3 has the best graphics, but ps4 will have a bit good graphics. ps4 will also play blu-ray disks and it will have 4TB or 5TB. you know that psp can connect to ps3 that means that ps4 will connect with psp2 that comes in the fall of 2009 and it will have a built camera on it, backwards compatibility with ps1,ps2 and psp. psp2 will also run programs quicker than psp. ps4 will look like a ps3 with a 4 on it. hackers discovered a software program for ps3 to run copied games on it. if ps4 will have cell processor this means they will discover another program working on ps4 sooner for the date release of ps4. i hope you will not being nervous by saying me this. the ps4 would come out at the beginning of the year 2010(march,april or in the summer of 2010)
November 27th, 2008 at 12:35 am
Wow, so now the PS4 is going to suck as much as the PS3. Wonderful, sony fails yet again.
December 15th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
ps4 to connect with a psp2 wrong coz no psp2 til ps5 is out