Cell Processor: “Dead In The Water”

The PS3’s innovative ‘Cell’ processor won’t be used in the PS4, according to reports this morning, claiming the chip is “dead in the water”. Apparently German website Heise Online has quoted IBM’s Vice President of Deep Computing, David Turek, saying the planned successor to the current processor, slated to have two PowerPC processors and 32 SPEs, will not be released. Extrapolated, then, you can summise that the Cell processor line is terminated, with the current PoweXCell 8i the last one off the production line.

The Cell, once stated to be in everything from games consoles to food blenders, was never particular quick at certain tasks, with a 1.4GHz Niagara already running 13 times faster than the 3.2GHz Cell at ‘long string pattern matching’, for example.

http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2009/11/...-in-the-water/

Which, of course, means PS3 backwards compatibility in PS4 will cost way too much money, then everybody will complain anyway when it's stripped out for the slightly less overpriced model and the eventual PSFour.

Uhm, the successor to the PoweXCell 8i itself has been scrapped, not the Cell line (at least wait til IBM/Toshiba/Sony say otherwise before claiming Cell is dead)