And your usage of Sony buying back the cell manufacturing plant to produce more or nextgen cell is dubious at best, since it has been stated that the reason they did it is because they want it for their digital camera component production.
You expect news articles to be accurate and Sony to tell us their plans. The cost of the plant can't be justified for just digital camera components. Telling the world they bought it to produce multiple custom Cell designs for Sony CE products would tip their hand.
This is just a guess and debatable. I'm only saying that using News reports alone can be misleading. I'd only grant a SLIGHTLY greater possibility that it may be more accurate than my speculation.
The current Fab production line in the plant in question can not produce state of the art low power consumption high speed chips. It can produce cameras components and slower speed Cell CPUs designed for other than Game platforms which need high efficiency fast CPUs. For instance TVs, tablets, cell phones, Network servers can run at 1. something Ghz. At those speeds older 60nm Fabs would be efficient. I believe IBM is making Cell chips for Sony that have a smaller die size and are more efficient.
What are the benefits of the Cell and why did Sony choose to use it in the PS3. It's very good for Media codecs and encryption. It's scalable in both design and use. Need more power for a video camera than you need for a still camera, tack a couple of more SPUs on to the design. Peak performance requires 4 but idling needs one, you can idle the SPUs not being used.
There is a thread in this forum about the speculated uses for the Cell. It starts with comments from the PS3's Father. Built into the overdesigned to last 10 years PS3 is Gigabit networking which as we have seen has not been implemented or needed by any other Game console. Why does the PS3 have it?
Having the exact same core CPU in all Sony products allows Sony to share a basic OS and tools between all products. The Cell can realtime encrypt and decrypt allowing for DRM in the streams between Sony products. It can also allow for distributed processing where unused Cell SPUs and memory can be used by other cell devices. And one of the biggest features; Current CE equipment is a one off design with every year new designs requiring a new custom chip design. With the Cell as a general purpose building block, a redesign to add more features to a camera would not be needed as often, just update the firmware.
We are moving to a cloud computing model. Tablets, Cellphones and notebooks will have the power to do real world computing but will not have the memory or hard drive space needed for some functions. Servers will be needed to meet that need. Home servers and Internet Servers serving the same need. In the home a Sony Cell equipped server can serve up DRM encrypted media as well as share SPU and memory with Sony cell equipped products.
And
Android can be thought of as a super UI not an operating system on most Sony products. The basic building blocks in the Android OS are native language PD open source with drivers in native language with threading provided in a Posix Linux kernel 2.6 format. See message #405, it's nearly the same as the SNAP model. Sony model and Google model might be converging with Android 3.0 and later....probable.
Just use the same PD libraries. Did Google talk to Sony, is this a possible?
Do games require a super UI...NO so Android will not be running for games. Does the PS3 now have a modern desktop UI....NO, could it benefit from one, does it need one for webkit....yes. Will Sony provide an open source native language Sony written desktop UI for the PS3 or use Android. Until the pulling of the SNAP developer code and the "On HOLD" notice, yes Sony was going to write their own using open source code. Now there is a possibility that they are going to use Android.
Edit: Snap developer program was put on hold because the eclipse developer toolkit project was closed.
Or as I said, Sony may be rewriting the basic kernel to use a CELL and may modify and optimize the Linux 2.6 kernel for the cell.
That the SNAP program which would support ALL Sony future products and the PS3 was put on hold for ALL products has major implications. I.E. they could have put a disclaimer in that there would be a fork for other products besides the PS3 and still use the SNAP code and site for the PS3.
Edit: see above
The Nvidia Tegra 2 GPU was at one time speculated to be part of the PSP2. It is giving cell phones the graphics power to do 3D games and is shipping in cell phones NOW. That the PSP2 will be released at the end of 2011 means some other hardware component is needed for the PSP2 and I'd guess a next generation CELL processor with a die size that makes it efficient enough for a portable.
Edit: Toshiba is using the cell in their higher end 3-D TVs both shutter glass and glassless but Sony which has LG and others making and designing many of their blu-ray and TV products is probably not using the cell.
Toshiba in the coming glassless 3-D TV is using a 40nm cell which can not be made in the cell production fab in Japan just recently purchased by Sony from Toshiba. The fab plant in Japan can make 60nm cell and those can be used efficiently at slower clock speeds in other CE equipment. The same plant can also make CMOS image sensors for cameras as mentioned in the news articles and that may be the primary use for that plant. PSP2 if using a cell would require a more efficient chip with a smaller die size and that would have to be subcontracted to IBM or a IBM partner.
