Cell Hits 45nm, PS3 Price Drop Likely to Follow

Septimus writes "At this weeks ISSCC, IBM announced that the Cell CPU used in the PlayStation 3 will soon make the transition to IBM's next-gen 45nm high-k process. 'The 45nm Cell will use about 40 percent less power than its 65nm predecessor, and its die area will be reduced by 34 percent. The greatly reduced power budget will cut down on the amount of active cooling required by the console, which in turn will make it cheaper to produce and more reliable (this means fewer warrantied returns). Also affecting Sony's per-unit cost is the reduction in overall die size. A smaller die means a smaller, cheaper package; it also means that yields will be better and that each chip will cost less overall.'"

The Little and the Big

[cthulu_mt (1124113)]

I don't know what it is about measuring things in nanometers and terabytes that gives me such a hardon.

Thank you IBM.

PS: Please don't put Skynet online.

Re:The Little and the Big

[Goblez (928516)]

This same comment in a few years will sound perverted if updated to use larger scales of magnitude.

"I don't know what it is about measuring things in picometers and petabytes that gives me such a hardon".

Re:

[adpowers (153922)]

The only thing I can think of after reading your comment is Europe's Large Hardon Collider.

Effect on cost

[noidentity (188756)]

Cell Hits 45nm, PS3 Price Drop Likely to Follow

"[...] The greatly reduced power budget will cut down on the amount of active cooling required by the console, which in turn will make it cheaper to produce and more reliable (this means fewer warrantied returns). Also affecting Sony's per-unit cost is the reduction in overall die size. A smaller die means a smaller, cheaper package; it also means that yields will be better and that each chip will cost less overall.'"

My only question is, will this reduce the cost?

Re:Effect on cost

[hansamurai (907719)]

Of course it will reduce the price of the Playstation 3. Why do you think when consoles are first released they're $200-$300 (last generation for example) and then five years later they're floating around $100 retail? Some of it has to do with the bottom line, but most of it has to do with the falling price of components over time due to exactly what was listed in the summary, exactly what is happening here. This one event might not directly lead to a price drop, but enough of these do.

Re:Effect on cost

[Cheeko (165493)]

I don't think that anyone is debating whether the price of the PS3 will drop over time.

I think the general slant of the question was whether the price drops now as a result of this, or does Sony put the saving toward reducing their losses on each system sold.

Essentially the 2 options are 1) go for market share and keep taking a loss or 2) try to get each box profitable, and then worry about lowering the cost to the consumer as future improvements drop the cost further.

I have a feeling Sony will split the difference and sit on the increased profit margin for as long as their market share stays stable or until they have an exclusive to release. Then they'll pass a portion of the savings on to the customer in line with their eventual goals on margin for the boxes. (pass something like 85% of the savings on when they do drop it down the line a bit)

Re:Effect on cost

[McNihil (612243)]

You would be correct if Xbox 360 nor Wii didn't exist. Prices will certainly drop or the units will be packed with more of other kind of technology (PVR) for the same price.

Re:Effect on cost

[Moonpie Madness (764217)]

I agree that Sony is likely to drop price again before the end of March.

But I kinda think you're wrong about the value of a PS3 blu-ray player. They aren't that expensive compared to an average blu-ray player, and you have to keep in perspective that these blu-ray players often sit next to expensive televisions. I have to add that the PS3 needs a sound system to deliver the kind of sound most people want, so there might be a huge advantage to buying a normal bluray player if you lack a modern sound system. And of course many have to buy a USB IR device of some kind to use a remote control (I just use my PS2 remote).

I do not see a lot of living rooms relying on a PC or laptop for DVD playback, and perhaps this will begin to change more, but I doubt the PC is a statistical competitor to PS3s and normal players in the living room.

Note that the PS3 streams content very nicely, plays a lot of free demos, will probably be capable of renting movies online, and is future proof relative to other blu-ray players. And it's technically a PC if you add linux (and I do use my PS3 for MAME and word processing, so it's a legit point for a tiny set of the market).

I really don't understand how any of the other blu-ray players are selling well, and I think it's absurd to recommend anything but either a PS3 or a PC drive like you're saying to those who want blu-ray. And I have to ask what a PC does for your TV that a PS3 doesn't do? PCs and desks work very well together for work and surfing the internet in a way the living room couch can be a bit of a hassle. Why not leave the PC in the office when TVs can be in the capable hands of an xbox or PS3?

Re:Effect on cost

[Fozzyuw (950608)]

To sony this just means their profit margin got bigger.

You mean their loss margin just got smaller. They're still looking forward to making a profit. [reuters.com]

Re:

[John Whitley (6067)]

For sony, yes. For end buyers? Nope. To sony this just means their profit margin got bigger.

BZZT! Shame on you and the mod that +1 Informative'd you. Does the most blatantly obvious bullet point in the Wii's success story escape you completely? Do try to grasp basic economic reasoning: Sony is out to make more money, but what's really likely given the nature of this product (game console hardware) and how they've been beaten up over their high price point? If possible, they'll implement a price cut to increase their market share. More consoles == more people to sell games to == more profit.

Re:Effect on cost

[truthsearch (249536)]

Standard desktop OSs and applications do not yet really take much advantage of parallel processing. Once you get past 2 or 4 CPUs/cores there won't be any drastic speed improvements until individual applications are written for parallel processing.

Re:

[ToasterMonkey (467067)]

A normal multithreaded application isn't going to magically run parallelized on a Cell BE. Currently they only have one general purpose CPU with a number of specialized coprocessors.

So, yes, many applications use SMP to do parallel work, but few of those do it in a way that makes sense on a Cell BE. IOW, merely running the audio subsystem of a game in a separate thread won't scale to a system with specialized coprocessors.

Do you think there are many threaded applications out there that use a model where

Re:Effect on cost

[Amouth (879122)]

Imagine a macbook powered by something like this, 45nm, 8 cores, low power usage, cheap...

And nothing to run on it...

Re:Effect on cost

[by Anonymous Coward]

Well it IS a mac...

Re:

[Bill_the_Engineer (772575)]

There is a difference between being able to PRODUCE processors and being able to SUPPLY the cell processors. There have been more than a few occasions where Macintosh sales were hurt from CPU shortages.

With Sony and Microsoft buying these cell processors to supply a growing game console market, would Apple even have a chance?

Intel scored huge points with their ability to guaranty enough chips are available, and they sealed the deal by demonstrating their ability to customize the Core 2 Duo to meet product

Re:Effect on cost

[edwdig (47888)]

There is a difference between being able to PRODUCE processors and being able to SUPPLY the cell processors. There have been more than a few occasions where Macintosh sales were hurt from CPU shortages.

That was mostly an Apple problem. When you order large numbers of processors, you have to place your order ~6 months in advance. Apple's strategy was generally to place a very conservative initial order then demand more chips immediately.

Be nice to volume customers

[Quila (201335)]

On the other hand, IBM couldn't even keep Apple happily supplied with G5s...

The current crop of consoles are giving IBM far more volume than Apple ever did. And these customers don't constantly need faster and more capable chips to keep up with the competition, just the same chips shrunk every once in a while. The G5 was a lot of R&D and production for a relatively small run.

Re:Be nice to volume customers

[Bill_the_Engineer (772575)]

Excellent point.

This would have made Apple's position even worse. IBM would be more inclined to favor the higher profit margin/higher production run for console manufacture, than the endless performance upgrades demanded by general computing. This has always been Intel's strength.

This is not IBM's fault. Intel knew early on that the way to sell more chips was to create business/production model that depended on making the current product obsolete with the next product release.

Re:Effect on cost

[Chibi Merrow (226057)]

1) To call this a "supercomputer on a chip" shows a person to either have a complete lack of understanding as to what is meant by the word "supercomputer" or a degree in Marketing and/or Business. I'm hoping in your case it's the former, not the latter.
2) A MacBook powered by a Cell would be significantly less useful to the average consumer than the current crop of dual-core machines. Primarily because desktop applications just aren't that parallelizable. Not to mention the eight Cell cores are individually rather weak. Would you rather pull your cart with 100 Chihuahuas or 2 Clydesdales?
3) On top of there being no way for desktop software to take advantage of 8 cores, there's no software written for the Cell architecture in the first place. Except, as you said, Linux, which is great but uninteresting to 99% of the laptop buying populace.

Re:Effect on cost

[statusbar (314703)]

And not just general code, it falls down on any problem that requires a non-trivial amount of memory to be available to each Cell SPE. It is like each SPE is an Altivec engine running only with cache memory and you must manually manage the cache completely. It is probably cheaper and easier to just stick two quad core intel cpu's into a system, and you'll get a better price/performance ratio especially when you consider the price of development to the arcane architecture.

PLUS the astonishing thing is that you can't buy Cell chips on their own! they don't sell them! they have no datasheets on them. IBM will only sell you large quantitiess of pre-made motherboards that have a cell on them for a huge cost per board, and they'll charge you $1 million dollars to design the board in the first place. The reason is that Sony and IBM co-designed the chip (Toshiba is involved too I think) and they have agreements where IBM won't sell to anyone without Sony approving it in case it may conflict with Sony's business interest.

Yes, at first the Cell looks/looked exciting, but after we went though the whole mess with IBM it just is not worth it or good enough.

--jeffk++

Re:Effect on cost

[hamburger lady (218108)]

Imagine a macbook powered by something like this, 45nm, 8 cores, low power usage, cheap... it'd outstrip every laptop known to man.


or a group of them! a "cluster", if you will. maybe, for a lark, you could name this cluster after some mythical hero of old. that would be awesome.

imagine a gilgamesh cluster of those!

Re:

[be-fan (61476)]

Uh, the original Cell used something like 70-80 watts. So right-out for a laptop. This new Cell might use something like 30-40, which is in the ballpark for MacBooks and MacBook Pros, but something like the Air needs a processor with half that power usage.

Oh, and the performance would suck. Cell has only a single 3.2 GHz, in-order general-purpose core. The 7 SPEs are largely irrelevant for the kind of tasks run on laptops.

Re:

[Pulzar (81031)]

Not so long as the consoles continue to sell at the current price. Sony charges what they think people are willing to pay, no more and no less.

That's a very simplistic view. First, "people" is a collection of persons all willing to pay different prices. So, there's no one price at which "people" will buy, and another at which "people" won't buy.

A company selling a product will try to maximize the profits. Once the cost of production goes down, the "maximum profit" formula changes -- you will either get more

More SPUs?

[zackhugh (127338)]

This would be a great thing if they allow PS3/Linux users to access 7 of 8 SPUs instead of only six.

Otherwise, it's nice but not that big a deal...

Re:More SPUs?

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

Unless their yields have gone up a lot recently, they put all of the ones with 8 SPUs into (very expensive) blades and put the ones with only 7 working in PS3s. If they had more with 8 working, they might sell quite a few more to the scientific computing community.

Matches rumors

[orclevegam (940336)]

This fits in well with the rumors of a slim version of the PS3 in the works. See here [slashgear.com] for more details.

Pricedrop?

[DrXym (126579)]

A price drop would be nice (though the PS3 is now competitive), but the more interesting bit is when is the PS3 slim going to appear. All the pieces are in place for a slim. Sony have been aggressively shrinking the motherboard in the PS3, and the chip size has dropped from 90nm, to 65nm and now 45nm. All that means less power (smaller PSU) and less heat (less fans & heatsinks). There have been other announcements such as thinner blu ray reader headers. It can only be a matter of time before a slim and I think it will hit before the holidays this year. I think it will sell by the shitload too when it does appear. The question is will we see a slim 360 to compete with it? I think there must be a lot of empty space in the 360 too.

Re:Pricedrop?

[samkass (174571)]

Let's get realistic. Yes, the XBox360 is still beating the PS3, but they're no longer selling twice as many per month, and there are still millions of PS3s out there. And who buys games new anymore? You can get plenty of great used games at any of your mall stores these days.

The place where I think Sony screwed up is in limiting backwards compatibility with the PS2 games. New PS2 games are STILL coming out, and the PS2 is still selling very well. Sony could capitalize on that better if they'd kept backwards compatibility.

A $300 console with one controller and no games could probably sell pretty well if it could play most popular PS2 games.

Re:

[h3 (27424)]

And who buys games new anymore? You can get plenty of great used games at any of your mall stores these days.

Umm....

The last couple of paragraphs are the best

[jandrese (485)]

The article mentions the cost savings to Sony (maybe they'll be passed on to the consumer...two or three years from now), but the real kicker is at the bottom where IBM apparently had to maintain cycle compatibility with the old chip to make sure they don't break any games. They didn't use the die shrink to optimize or enhance any parts of the chip like you normally would. The supercomputer folks might end up losing out a bit in an effort to keep the game console folks happy.

Smaller die also means more die per wafer

[exley (221867)]

Which is another important factor in bringing the price down. Percentage-wise with more die per wafer yields may go up as well; but in the end yields will be dependent on other things such as how good IBM is with its 45nm process.

It would be really great, IF

[wowbagger (69688)]

It would be really great that they are moving to a smaller process, (/me takes deep breath)

IF THEY WOULD SELL YOU THE DAMN THINGS!

Where I work, we approached them to try to buy Cell processors for our equipment: the SPUs would make dandy DSP replacements, and we really could use the closer coupling of the processors instead of having a bunch of DSPs and spending all our time schlepping data around.

IBM wouldn't sell us any modules, wouldn't let us design our own CPU board, nothing. They seem supremely uninterested in actually getting these out into the hands of anybody other than their own divisions and Sony.

HEY IBM! How about you guys release these in a MicroTCA formfactor, or as a module that can be integrated into a MicroTCA?

Also affecting Sony's per-unit cost

[TubeSteak (669689)]

Is the fact they've dropped hardware PS2 emulation.

Does that make for a slimmer ps3?

[jmichaelg (148257)]

If' they're dropping cooling components due to lower heat output, I wonder if that means this picture is for real. [pcworld.com]

CBE Performance

[shadowofwind (1209890)]

Relevance of CBE beyond PS3 of course depends in large degree on its computing performance. For the applications I've looked at, I haven't been very impressed. They say it does 204GFLOPS, but approaching that requires being able to use all multiply-add instructions, which count as two operations. (Some sources say the two operations per clock cycle per SPU is due to there being two pipelines, however, only one of the pipelines handles arithmentic operations and the other is exclusively for load, store, control, and a few shift operations.) Also, it seems to take a lot of select, shift, and shuffle instructions to make efficient use of the quadword (SIMD) instructions. With Xeon and Opteron, use of the quadword instructions seems to require far fewer other additional cycles. And this is with floats, with instruction related stalls completely eliminated on CBE through careful loop unrolling and other methods. (The quadword instructions have 6 cycle latencies.) I can only get performance comparable to 2 quad-core Xeons, which doesn't seem that good considering what is advertized, and considering the 4x difference in the peak performance specs. And CBE does much worse where double precision is necessary, with 6 cycle stalls being unaviodable on every instruction. It seems overblown. Comments?

"Price drop unlikely" does not follow.

[ZombieRoboNinja (905329)]

Last I heard, Sony was still losing a ton of money on every PS3 they sold. So even if this upgrade makes it significantly cheaper to manufacture PS3s, I don't see why that would lead to a drop in retail price.

If anything, I'd guess Sony wants to keep the PS3 at its current price, now that they've basically won the next-gen DVD skirmish. Plenty of people who want Blu-Ray players probably already see the PS3 as a good choice (just like I bought a PS2 to play DVDs back in the days of yore).

Re:

[feepness (543479)]

Last you heard, you heard wrong. [businessweek.com]

Die Yield Not as Important for Cell

[Doc Ruby (173196)]

A smaller die means a smaller, cheaper package; it also means that yields will be better and that each chip will cost less overall.

The redundancy of the Cell's 8 SPUs (DSP coprocessors) is the main point of the Cell's design. Defective SPUs (nearly always from dust particles in the nearly - but not quite - perfect "clean rooms" in which they're manufactured) can be tested and turned off as they roll off the assembly line. The shut down SPUs are even physically disconnected from power by hard fuses, so they don't cost any performance in operation. The perfect Cells with 8 SPUs cost the most, in high-end IBM RS/6000 workstations (and some blade servers). 7 SPUs go into PS3s. The rest of the yield, supposedly down to a single SPU (but even 0 SPUs still have a 3.2GHz PPC and superfast IO), go into HDTVs and other consumer electronics. All of the yield gets sold, instead of a fraction in older manufacturing processes.

So smaller dies don't really affect Cell yields. Smaller dies just mean smaller parts of the wafer that would get spoiled by a single defect, which is already taken care of with the redundant SPUs.

In fact, smaller dies mean multiple defects are less likely to land on a single die. Which means that more Cells would turn into low-SPU, cheaper Cells. While larger dies would concentrate multiple defects into a single dies, by landing on a single die more often, leaving more perfect Cells getting the highest prices.

45nm does mean more Cells, at any defect rate, per wafer. Which means, for the same number of defects per wafer, more dies per wafer. So there is a yield increase, but not for the same reasons as traditional ones. And of course 45nm has so many other valuable benefits, like speed, and more transistors if they keep the same die size, that the move is very valuable overall.

Cell PC, Already?

[Doc Ruby (173196)]

The PS3 is interesting because it's so much power in such a cheap box, but it's subsidized by Sony. I think Sony will be lowering prices less while reducing the subsidy more.

But where are the Cell PCs already? The PS3 is cute, but it's locked down with a Sony hypervisor, it's got no PCI or other expansion, only a single SATA connector, and a puny 512MB hardwired RAM (its Cell can rip through 512MB, peforming 64bit floating point math on it all, in under 0.0025s). Its RSX video chip is locked out from Linux, so no HW acceleration (and no addon videocard is possible).

IBM is now cranking out these chips. It lost Apple, its biggest CPU (PPC) customer, to Intel. Where's a PC built on a Cell that includes PCI-e, expandible XDR RAM, Gb-e networking, and a more open nVidia graphics card (or two)? Since the Cell is cheap due to its higher yields, a $1000 Cell PC could make a $1000 Intel PC (Mac or Windows/Linux/etc) look like a 286 with its extremely high speeds. Sony has proven it can be mass manufactured with mostly commodity parts for under $750.

Since Ubuntu already runs on Cell [psubuntu.com], a cheap Windows killer could take the Cell architecture to the top of the CPU stakes in record time from release. It would be a much easier/cheaper/faster target for porting PS3 games than Intel PCs. Apple, which supposedly dropped PPC for Intel because of heat:performance limitations, would have to look seriously at a return to PPC, especially since 45nm Cell with only a few SPUs could be a perfect fit for an iPhone successor. If not from Apple, then from someone smart enough to use Cell in the biggest market of all.

Re:

[Doc Ruby (173196)]

Yes, I think that Sony would love getting the licensing fees from the ported games. All those games pay Sony a license to play on the PS3. The contracts include licensing for ports to other platforms that aren't the PS3. More sales, more money for Sony.

Also, Sony gets royalties on every Cell sold, having helped create it (and owning many of its patents).

So yes, I am suggesting "that IBM should sell processors to a computer manufacturer who will use them to make a desktop box that plays PS3 ports". Like to S

Suitability for business use ++

[mowph (642278)]

A 40% drop in heat will make a huge difference in the suitability for business application of the PS3. (Before you say that business use of a PS3 is contradictory, please consider the accommodation industry.)

The instant they can get a PS3 (or an Xbox) that does not spew heat and use fans akin to a Boeing, it will have a place in the entertainment centers in luxury accommodation suites around the world. The region free PS3 game discs will seal the deal. Surfing internet on the TV and being able to show photos straight from your memory card is also a plus.

Late last year, we tried rolling the current model of PS3s into some guest suites. In the end there was no way to accomplish this without a major retooling of the entertainment centers, costing hundreds of dollars extra per unit. In one case the excess heat generated by the PS3 caused the TV to overheat!!

The drop in power bills will also be a big plus, as guests will generally never be bothered to switch off an appliance. I had thought that the PS3s were supposed to automatically regulate the amount of processor power needed. But they seem to run as many fans even when idling at the top menu.

For business use the maintainability and operation costs are a much bigger factor than the original cost per unit. If they can actually get the heat under control, Sony will break into a huge new market of corporate clients.

Re:Since when?

[ThreeGigs (239452)]

Since when does going to a smaller process increase yields?

Always has.

Assume there will be 20 defects on a wafer that will render 19 large chips (out of 100) unusable. Your yield is 81%.
Same 20 defects, but affecting 20 small chips (out of 170). Now your yield is 88%, or 150 chips versus 81 chips per wafer.

The number of defect sites per wafer is generally rather constant, thus the more chips you can fit on a wafer, the better the yield.

Re:Since when?

[mikael (484)]

The size of a defect is of a fixed size. Usually it is a particle of dust that got in the way of the optical etching process. The distribution of such defects is even across the surface of the silicon wafer, so the distribution can be modelled mathematically.
Suppose there are 20 defects across the wafer. If your chip were the size of the entire wafer, it would be guaranteed to be defective.
Try half the size of the wafer, and there would be on average 10 defects. A quarter of the wafer, 5 defects. If you have a chip that is one hundredth the size of a single wafer, then the odds are now in your favour; on average 20/100 that you will have a defect, 80/100 that you will not.

The Cell processor is etched with eight processors anyway. If one is defective, they can ignore it, otherwise if all eight are working, then they will just deactivate one.

I wonder how long it will be before they start adding more processors to the chip.

Re:Since when?

[wannasleep (668379)]

Defectivity (i.e. the "dust problem") is just one of the yield detractors. There are many more and they get worse and worse. For instance, there are litho problems, etching problems, CMP problems, not to mention gate leakage, and a bunch of other parametric issues. So, you can not just look at defectivity. Even if you did, with a smaller feature size, small particles that could be tolerated in an older generation will now cause yield loss.

PS: the distribution you are talking about is a poisson distribution

Often can

[Sycraft-fu (314770)]

The reason is that wafer size doesn't change. I don't remember what is current, 8 inch I believe (that's the largest I've seen) but regardless. So when you reduce the size of an individual chip, you get more chips per wafer. Now unless the percentage of chips that fail increases, that means you get a better yield/wafer.

Well cost is based per wafer. It doesn't cost any more to make a wafer with 1000 small chips than it does to make one with 4 big chips. In either case it is the same size wafer, same mask, same process, etc.

Now yield could go down if a company has problems with a new process. Suppose that the old process yields 10% non-working chips per wafer. You get a new process that yields 20% more chips per wafer than the old one, however now 50% of them are non-working. That would equal a lower yield, despite the more chips per wafer.

However assuming a roughly equal failure rate, shrinking the die size will increase the yield.

Re:

[solarium_rider (677164)]

Actually they have been moving to larger wafers with 90nm and below. They are using 300mm wafers (about 12 inches.) I think non-submicron wafers are about 180mm in diameter for most fabs.

Re:

[timster (32400)]

Power supplies also generate a lot of heat -- notice that those bricks tend to be warm under load, even through that insulation. Put them inside the laptop and you're adding a bunch of heat to a place that you want to be removing heat from. So you need bigger fans and it takes even more space. It's just unworkable.

Re:oh, hum. What else is happening?

[bonkeydcow (1186443)]

Moore's law is dead. Atoms aren't getting any smaller. With 5 atoms thick, when you try and go to 2.5 atoms thick, let me know and I'll get far away.

Re:Isn't the blue laser the biggest cost?

[ivan256 (17499)]

That's ancient news. Since then, the blue laser shortage has ended, and Sony has gotten the costs of PS3 manufacture down to under $400 [businessweek.com].

Re:

[Cheeko (165493)]

Since when is PS3 gaining market share? every months NPD numbers that I've seen show a fairly consistant ratio of PS3360wii, with the ratio within any given month fluctuating based on game releases. 360 had big Sept, November, wii and 360 had a big december, etc.

While the PS3 is selling more units year over year so are its competitors. I'm pretty sure its market share is within a few percentage points (at best) of where it was at 6 months ago. Maybe gained a little from the price drop, but since the pri