Japanese website PC Watch has reported that in order to save money on the PlayStation 4, Sony "has begun seriously considering" reusing the Cell processor which powers their current system, the PlayStation 3.
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. — Gamecyte
Yes, that GameCyte. I don't know Japanese, and the Google translations fry my brain. A lot of people joke about the Wii being two GameCubes duct-taped together (actually, a lot of those people aren't joking at all, scary as that is). So then, would this effectively be the equivalent of having two PlayStation 3s taped together?
