london-boy said:Mulciber said:one would hope that for something like that they would have a different asic with say 1 or 2 SPEs with half the memory on each of them, a castrated memory interface and possibly smaller L2 cache for the PPE.
such a chip would be reletively small, especially on .65 micron, and would still be quite powerful.
Why? They're gonna make millions of PS3 Cell chips, might as well keep making those and stick them in BR players. Having different chips will be more difficult than having only one chip to be used for everything.
i doubt "economics of scale" matters much when you're producing an asic that huge and then wasting it in BD players. they dont have an unlimited foundry capacity and they could easily make a chip 1/4 that size and still retain the exact same basic set of dev tools and functionality. you really thinking designing a second asic for use in more mundane tasks is such an arduous process that Sony is incapable of it?
they already plan to use these in the PS3 and in the server space. they also have intentions to use Cell in BD players, tvs, pdas, and cell phones if you believe them. I cringe at the thought of an 8 SPE cell in a cell phone or pda.