Toshiba's Silicon Role in PS3(?)

C

Carl B

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...the story is that Toshiba is saying revenues and profits wil be up sharply in their chip division due to involvement with PS3.

(article for reading: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aLJAp2BdvTK4&refer=home )

Now, what I'm wondering - since the article isn't exactly clear - is where exactly these revenues are coming from. Is it Toshiba's portion of royalties for Cell production? Is Sony sourcing XDR from them? Is Toshiba helping to fab the RSX? (I know OTSS is supposedly on RSX duty)

I just found it surprising, and wondered if there was a manufacturing role for involvement in PS3 that I have missed or overlooked wrt Toshiba.

One other interesting tidbit from the article though...

The Cell will be introduced to Toshiba's products in 2008, Muromachi said without elaborating.
Click to expand...
 
I can't find the sentence that ascribes the revenue increase to PS3-related products...
 
Ok yeah, I think I may have misunderstood the title as refering to source of revenues rather than just as a descriptor. But even so...

"Toshiba Says Profit to Rise at Unit Making Chips for Sony PS3"

What chips exactly are they making for PS3?

And whether the title is just confused or not, here's the first paragraph:

Toshiba Corp. said profit will rise at its System LSI unit, which makes the processor powering Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3, as Japan's largest chipmaker produces more semiconductors for flat-screen televisions and digital cameras.
Click to expand...

And forget PS3 for a minute; is Toshiba fabbing Cell themselves as well? I hadn't heard of any fab commitment from them up until this point, and thought that they were going to be sourcing their chips from Sony and IBM...
 
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xbdestroya said:
And forget PS3 for a minute; is Toshiba fabbing Cell themselves as well? I hadn't heard of any fab commitment from them up until this point, and thought that they were going to be sourcing their chips from Sony and IBM...
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I think your estimation in the OP is accurate, RSX and XDR are probably two things Toshiba is directly involved with. Maybe Cell can give them some royalty revenues too.

As for Cell in Toshiba products, they keep postponing SED introduction, so I don't get my hopes up too much for them.
 
They may be manufacturing some core logic for the PS3 to support IDE, USB, Ethernet, etc.
 
Toshiba has been saying that they want to put Cell in their TVs and other electricals for ages... Maybe they were actually serious? :???:
 
one said:
I think your estimation in the OP is accurate, RSX and XDR are probably two things Toshiba is directly involved with.
Click to expand...

From our current understanding of the RSX there should be be no purpose for Toshiba to be involved. Perhaps they might be helping fab some of the chips, but when it comes to design work what aspect of the RSX could they have helped with?

Are you suggesting they helped Sony and NVIDIA with the design of the RSX? Because if so, it would be very interesting to know what they contributed.
 
One of the reasons I find this interesting is because a while back Toshiba was helping Sony design a GPU before they decided to let NVIDIA do the job. I'm interested if perhaps any of that technology was incorporated into the RSX instead of just thrown away.
 
slider said:
Super-Companion Chip? Bah, dream on...
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I'm sure that as others have mentioned it will just be Cell Royalties, but I don't think it was ever absolutely confirmed that the SCC never made it into PS3.

I can't wait to see those guys that tear-down these things to get a BOM go to work on it, incidentally, any further news as to whether EE+GS is in there for BC.
 
Well I don't think there's a SuperCompanion chip in there - there seems no need among other things. As for the royalties, when I originally posted this, it's partly due to an interpretation on my part that the article was implying Toshiba would be providing actual components for the PS3 based on this article title:

Toshiba Says Profit to Rise at Unit Making Chips for Sony PS3

Now, basically I go over all the things I think it might be in the first post, and indeed I think Toshiba is getting Cell royalties as well. It's just that in that instance, the article title becomes slightly misleadign by implying actual manufacture.

And of course, an error in word choice is something I'm fell well willing to believe at this point. Really I was just wondering if there was someone that could point out anythign obvious I wasn't taking into consideration, but as it stands, I don't think it's worth reading into too much.
 
A long time ago Tosiba's Media Embedded Processor's were mentioned whenever the CELL processor was mentioned.

http://www.semicon.toshiba.co.jp/eng/prd/micro/prd_inf/mep.html

Here is the link to a much older thread on this forum.

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11341

The MeP core will also work with the Sony's Cell processor. "By combining a Cell processor as a host and MeP for multimedia application processing, the combination should increase performance and meet wider applications," said Toshinori Moriyasu, executive vice president of Toshiba Semiconductor.
Click to expand...

Could it be that we might see a couple specialized MeP cores (which could be very small, cheap, and low voltage) in the PS3?
 
xbdestroya said:
Really I was just wondering if there was someone that could point out anythign obvious I wasn't taking into consideration, but as it stands, I don't think it's worth reading into too much.
Click to expand...

TB6814FLG?

Power Supply System for Cell Broadband Engine
TAKEI Hiroshi/TAKEMOTO Akihiko/YAMAGUCHI Daisuke
Toshiba has developed the TB6814FLG pulse width modulation (PWM) controller for 5 V input DC-DC converters and the TB7003FL multichip module (MCM) for installation in power devices operating at 1 MHz frequency. These technologies enable the optimal power supply system for Cell Broadband Engine to be constructed, securing high accuracy, rapid response, a compact structure, and high efficiency.
Click to expand...

Source: http://www.toshiba.co.jp/tech/review/2006/06/index.htm

Can't see that being an expensive part & not sure whether it quite counts as a Chip in this context (It is described as part of Toshiba's Cell Reference Chipset alongside Cell & SCC though) but make anything in PS3 volumes and it's gonna add something to your revenue.
 
Hmmm.... hey who knows! Interesting find though, and good to keep in the knowledge base with regard to 'everything Cell.' :cool:
 
Excuse the ignorance, but is this scenario below how it works...

Three partners in a chip design. One partner uses the chip and has to pay the other two royalties for it? (I mean ignoring any payments for manufacturing.) How is that royalty split worked out?

I know there was talk of Toshiba really pushing for the SPE's to be "structured" as they are, does that equal a 33% stake? I'm really confused...
 
slider said:
Excuse the ignorance, but is this scenario below how it works...

Three partners in a chip design. One partner uses the chip and has to pay the other two royalties for it? (I mean ignoring any payments for manufacturing.) How is that royalty split worked out?

I know there was talk of Toshiba really pushing for the SPE's to be "structured" as they are, does that equal a 33% stake? I'm really confused...
Click to expand...

From what I've gathered, they would pay royalties to STI... STI would then split it up amongst the patent holders and all that jazz (which would be Sony, IBM, and Toshiba). The amount each company gets hasn't be disclosed (at least not that I've seen).

Sony using Cell chips wouldn't necessarily just write out a check to IBM and Toshiba... They'd pay the royalty fee for Cell usage/fabrication/etc. to STI and then STI would pay everyone (some of which would go right back to Sony).
 
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