The rumour sprang from an article on German website Heise Online, which posted a story about an interview with IBM’s vice president of deep computing, David Turek, in which he indicated that the development of the next version of the Cell processor with dual PowerPC processors and 32 SPEs (Synergistic Processing Elements) had been halted. This led to many articles declaring the Cell processor dead.

Our immediate concern upon reading this, was the fate of the Sony PlayStation 3, so we dropped a line to IBM. Spokesperson Ron Favali returned our call and immediately assured us the PlayStation 3 was safe.

“As long as we have a contract with Sony we will continue to manufacture Cell processors for use in the Sony PlayStation.”

So don’t worry about Sony running out of chips anytime soon. IBM has them covered. As for the fate of the Cell processor technology? Well that will live on as well says Turek. “The core technology of the Cell processor will continue to proliferate throughout the IBM product line.”

Turek wouldn’t comment on upcoming product announcements regarding the future of the Cell.

SC09: IBM lässt Cell-Prozessor auslaufen [Heise-Online via Fudzilla, Gizmodo]

Well, that’s all well and good, but a different gaggle of experts (Juniper Research, this time) are casting worried glances at the non-iPhone end of the market. Apparently Java game development has “flatlined across North America and Western Europe,” although the quoted jump from $US5.4 billion in 2008 to more than $US10 billion by 2013 doesn’t sound that flatliney.

Ironically, it could be the iPhone’s fault. “The revenue share offered by Apple to games publishers is incredibly attractive,” said the report, “The danger is that if operators do not respond with a similar business model, publishers faced with low margins may simply exit Java completely”

Sales of mobile games have “flatlined” – report [GamesIndustry.biz]

What’s more, using an upgraded Cell in the PS4 would obviously lower the cost of production with a smaller chip, too. That right there could be a key factor in why Sony could very well be investigating this possibility. What’s more, it seems more in line with what Nintendo has successfully done with the GameCube and the Wii. Goto goes on to theorize if the next PlayStation will have 32 cores (compared to the current 8), but Goto doesn’t have any concrete information about Sony’s plans.

While the original Xbox had trouble trailing the PS2 (and all the PS2 developer kits that were sent out), Sony has been playing catch up against the Xbox 360. So, for example, if Sony wants to get the PS4 out in 2011 before the next Xbox, it will need a shortcut because actual chip development, Goto writes, takes 3 or 4 years.

PLAYSTATION 4は拡張版Cell搭載へ向かう [PC Watch]

The smaller processor uses around 40% less power than the current 65nm chip and generates proportionally less heat. It also costs substantially less to manufacture.

It would be lovely to think that Sony will pass these savings on to the consumer, but given the less than stellar sales of the PS3 we may just see a smaller, more slimline incarnation of the console at a similar price point.

Sony and Toshiba to begin mass producing 45nm cell processor in 2009 [Engadget]

The Sony marketing coup disguised as purchasing request reads “The processors in the Sony PlayStation 3 are the only brand on the market that utilises the specific cell processor characteristics needed for this program at an acceptable cost.” We can only assume they’re going to be running something fairly code intensive in a Linux install or that an announcement about the the War On Giant Enemy Crabs is imminent.

Presolicitation Notice: 70 — 40 GB Console Systems [FBO.gov via PS3mods]

IBM shrinks Cell to 45nm. Cheaper PS3s will follow [Ars Technica]

Wait, so we can’t get a solid framerates in Madden but my PDF files are in danger of being exposed to thousands of leet haxorz from the evil menace Anonymous? Priorities are out of whack, people.

The PlayStation 3’s relatively low price could mean password cracking and encryption busting could become much more commonplace, warns Breese. He issued a warning to software makers to increase their security efforts based on the findings.

Editor’s note: This news was covered by Kotaku AU yesterday. Includes extra bonus information.

PlayStation a hacker’s dream [The Age via Game|Life]

We all know the Synergistic Processing Units, or SPUs, in the Playstation 3’s Cell processor are capable chunks of hardware. Although the Cell chip in the PS3 has only six of its eight SPUs accessible (one is locked to improve yields, and the other handles console security), that’s still a respectable amount of grunt. 14 Tony units, to be exact.

While Nick is confident this power is more than enough to brute-force simple eight-character passwords, he says your bank account’s 128-bit SSL will give it a lot of trouble.

From the article:

The gaming console is perfect for cracking passwords because the chips it uses are optimised to rapidly perform the calculations required to model 3-D environments. The computing techniques used to crack passwords are similar.

It’s important to note that, before the invention of multi-core processors, graphics chips (GPUs) and CPUs were worlds apart. While a GPU is great at processing loads of similar tasks, CPUs do well with a few complex ones. Now, GPUs are still far better at this than any current multi-core CPU, but the gap will begin to close once Intel cracks out its 80-core behemoth (sometime in the year 2162 is my guess).

To put it simply, Cell’s hefty parallelism (like a GPU), combined with its ability to work on complex data (like a CPU), is what makes it so appealing to hackers.

The article also mentions that the PS3 is a steal if all you want is the Cell chip. The next best thing is Mercury’s Cell Accelerator Board, and last I heard, that bad boy retails for $US 8000 (or $US 7999 at selected retailers).

PlayStation a hacker’s dream [smh.com.au]

The first step was to sell off its related manufacturing assets. Now STI will officially lose its “S” as Sony pulls out of the project entirely.

According to the GameDaily story, Sony executive deputy president Yutaka Nakagawa had this to say:

“Manufacturing cutting-edge packaged IC chips is not considered as important as it once was. The most important thing is what type of chip a company decides to produce, so we will increase the number of designers depending on the chip’s purpose. The fact that we will stop operating an advanced chip plant does not mean that we are downgrading the importance of the chip business.”

If Sony’s not interested in shrinking Cell down to 32nm from 45nm, then we won’t be seeing any new PlayStation 3 SKUs for some time. Unless Sony wants to cut out more functionality.

I don’t find this move at all surprising, considering Sony is doing its best to not bleed money. Also, when you see the likes of Sun running its mouth off on its upcoming 16-core UltraSPARC chips, and Intel throwing around its research on 80-core processors, the 9 cores in Cell seem, well, piss weak.

(Yes, 9 cores – 8 SPEs and 1 PowerPC processor. Don’t be a hater.)

Sony Giving Up on Cell Chip R&D [GameDaily]