Something that strikes me when looking at the part list of the board is that there are so many major chips that have not been tailored/optimised for the PS3, such as the
- The SCC chip
- The Silicon Image HDMI Transmitter
- The Marvell SATA Controller
- The Complete PSTwo chipset (+ RDRAM memory)
The benefit of using all these more or less standard components is that you get some reliable and proven circuitry in there, and you may get them faster than if you were to design them ground up, the drawback is that they are pretty expensive, which result in a pretty expensive console (another popular topic:smile: ).
One conclusion from this could be that Sony do not plan to manufacture any high volumes of this console according to this spec. (not a surprise I know). Because when you go over a certain number it would have been worth the effort to design some more stream-lined custom circuits. Then you could argue that this is a hack job because Sony was under stress and they needed to get something out of the door, so they took a short track and used some standard circuitry to reduce the risk.
Maybe there is some truth in that considering the risk part, but this console has been under design for about 6 year so I think that if they wanted to have a custom made southbridge in the PS3 right from start they would have done that. I think Sony decided to concentrate some major engineering job into the first cost-reduced version instead of putting a large effort into the first PS3 version which has a limited life cycle anyhow. Mind you, the effort(cost) may have been large enough already through the design of Cell and RSX.
I am predicting some major redesign coming this fall together with the die shrinked Cell and RSX.
The PSTwo chip will diappear possibly some parts of the GS will be integrated together with a SATA controller in a new custom designed 65 nm South-Bridge. Possibly the Silicon Image chip as well, but I don´t know if there are some particular requirement of that I/O circuitry that would make it harder.
Anyway, once they´ve done that, I think Sony will ramp up the PS3 pretty aggressively and be more price competetive.
So I think Sony has the current price point just because they can, and at the same time still sell millions of units (how many remains to be seen), the current design is only intended to establish a foothold on the market and to be on that market a relatively short time and in relatively low volumes. Sony is prepared to take the piss for having an expensive console at start and save some major design efforts for the cost-reduced and high volume version coming later on, together with some attractive game titles.
Time will tell.
