So, you wouldn't consider the whole vita SoC to be custom then given that it isn't an off the shelf part?
Just because I said MORE custom logic doesn't mean I consider a custom SoC to have NO custom logic, much less do I not think a custom SoC to be a substantial workload. But look at what is being compared, PSVita has:
- Cortex-A9 quad-core with NEON that's probably fully generic ARM IP
- SGX543MP4 with what likely amounts to small modifications
We don't know yet what off the shelf IP is used auxiliary to the two, ie if they use an ARM L2 controller or not. But CPU and GPU are the two most critical blocks in the SoC and they were clearly not designed for Sony. I don't know about the peripheral IP that such an SoC would have but I'd be surprised if in light of this Sony rolls their own decode blocks. We'll see if it bothers with audio hardware at all beyond the basic codec functions, or if that's not better delegated to cores.
Compare with the custom IP on the systems I listed. Note when I say "custom" here I mean not used in any other device (derivatives found in arcade hardware notwithstanding)
PS1: Geometry vector coprocessor (probably a hardcoded DSP), GPU, SPU, media decoders
PS2: MIPS core extension (128-bit integer SIMD), vector coprocessors, GPU, SPU, media decoders
PSP: Vector coprocessor, GPU, media decoders and whatever the hell is in VME
Can you really not see the point I'm getting at? While they licensed standard ISAs for their CPUs they all had custom vector coprocessors (far from a meager effort) and custom GPUs and a variety of other blocks that you can't find anywhere else.
To date PS3 would probably be the least customized design, using an IBM PPU + SPU Cell core that's hardly PS3-centric and a GPU that's just about one-off from an off-the-shelf part. But given how little Cell has surfaced in other products you can surmise that Sony at least played a bigger role in its development than say, MS did in that of Xenon's.
Re: Samsung, I would expect they're supplying the OLED display too.