Sony Ditching Cell Processor? [Rumor]
Citing “industry sources”, Kotaku is reporting that the Playstation 4 will not be using the Cell processor technology that was developed for the PS3. They’ve also heard that AMD will be making the graphics chip for the PS4, instead of Nvidia who produced the graphics chip for the PS3.
The Cell processor has never really caught on with anything except the Playstation 3. It was designed in a way so that extra Cells could be added through other devices to increase the overall computational power. In fact, one of the early uses for Playstation 3’s came from universities and other outfits looking to make a cheap supercomputer, where many PS3’s were linked up to act as one big supercomputer at the fraction of the cost of a real one. However, it was that same technology to link up that frustrated developers.
It’s unknown exactly what Sony plans to do for its processor. Kotaku speculates that AMD might produce the processor as well, instead of Sony. Developers could then potentially work on PS4 games even before official development kits come out, as they can work with AMD’s Fusion technology and get an idea of what they’re doing. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with all of this.
