Sony & Toshiba Disclose Cell Fab Plans

sean23007 writes "InfoWorld is running an article about Sony and Toshiba's plans for new fabrication plants to build the 'Cell' chip jointly developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM for use in the Playstation 3 and other home entertainment uses. The new fabs will be located in Nagasaki and Oita, and both companies plan to spend $1.7 billion over the next 3-4 years in their construction. They will be capable of using 300 mm wafers with a 65 nm process. The chip is slated to be the first 1 teraflop consumer device."

2007 Then

[Josuah]

I guess this answers all of the speculative questions on when the PS3 will be able to come out. If Toshiba needs four years for its 65nm production lines, then 2007 is the earliest point that wafers could start coming off the line. So Christmas 2007? Looks like the PS2 still has a very long life ahead of it.

it looks like scea will lose their way

[Luke Skyewalker]

i expect that there will be lots of sony consumer electronics (dvd players, entertainment systems) embedded with ps3 technology. scea has been fighting to keep the ps series as a game console only, but MS is forcing them to integrate the ps3 with dvd/music/internet technology...

conversely, sometimes i wonder if MS is striving to be the north american Sony (tablet pc, xbox, windows ce, keyboards, mice, etc...)

Who said anything about phones???

[jayratch]

I'm sorry, but this conversation somehow went past me.

Where in the article does any reference to wireless phones occur? And where in reality does a teraflop processor have its place in a phone?

The real question here for us ignorami like myself is, how will this processor stack up against PC processors- and will it run Linux?

Joking aside- and Beowulf clusters aside- this sounds like it could be a good idea for a versatile chip. If Toshiba's involved my guess is it will not be just for PS3, perhaps we'll now have another major plaer (or two) in the PC chip market? Hmm, Sony and Toshiba, leading laptop manufacturers, making their own chips. It's like Microsoft making keyboards and mice, I suppose, but perhaps better.

Just my .02

cost justification

[ih8apple]

I used to work for Intel in the Fab automation software department and I find it hard to believe they're can justify investing this much to start up new fabrication plants for an unproven product.

Usually, with initial chip production at this scale, they lease out fab production time from other companies. Only huge production plans (like Pentiums or PowerPCs) generally justify building entire new Fabs. Plus, with the world economy slow, there's plenty of capacity at the world's fabs. Here's a good article on fab capacity [reuters.com]

Re:Where's IBM in all this?

[sigep_ohio]

Or maybe IBM just plans on using their IT to help design the Cell, then they can make royalties off any Cell chips produced and sold by both Toshiba and Sony. I would think that is what IBM would like, saves their fab plants for other things.

Re:Make "Cell" chip Open Source!

[Dajur]

What the hell are you talking about. Even if they "open sourced" the processor, how many open source developers do you know that have access to a 65nm Fab to play around with it.

Re:it looks like scea will lose their way

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

scea has been fighting to keep the ps series as a game console only, but MS is forcing them to integrate the ps3 with dvd/music/internet technology...

More like the reverse. Sony always wanted to be a hub. MS saw that if this thing became a hub, the (relatively) cheap game console could become an alternative to a real PC, therefore an alternative to MS. Coudn't have that, came out with XBox.

Re:cost justification

[Blaine Hilton]

Very good point, also they probably have some deals they they are keeping their mouths shut about. When you are dealing with this kind of money I'm pretty sure they have a very good feeling about making a profit.

makes perfect sense...

[sterno]

Even if this chip's architecture turns out to be a dud, they'll have plants ready to produce 65 nanometer processors. Eventually they'll have some chips running at 65 nanometers, and they'll have a fab ready to produce it. Worst case scenario is that they can sell their fab capabilities to other companies that want to run at 65 nanometers. The odds that these plants won't have a long run value seems pretty small to me.