Ottawa, CANADA - November 14, 2006 - Semiconductor Insights (SI) the leader in technical and patent analyses of integrated circuits and electronic systems, today revealed the insides of the just available Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3). "Increasingly, it’s the gaming industry that is driving the performance-power limits of today’s most advanced processors", stated Jenn Markey, SI’s VP Marketing. "And it’s IBM that’s leading the charge with a ‘triple play’ in the gaming console space. IBM supplies the processor for all three major platforms including Sony’s PlayStation 3, Microsoft’s Xbox 360, and the about to be launched Nintendo Wii."
The PlayStation 3 is the first SI has seen of the 90nm IBM Cell processor, a joint venture with Toshiba and Sony. The PS3 is optimized for power and performance, with the bottom of the board dedicated entirely to power management. "Arguably, however, the most interesting aspect of the PlayStation 3 board layout is the four Elpida XDR DRAM that are hooked directly into the Cell processor. XDR, a Rambus-owned technology, eliminates the high latency problems associated with early forms of RDRAM. In addition, the routing between the Cell and memories is carefully laid out with strong attention given to impedance matching and noise considerations", said Geoffrey MacGillivray, Technology Manager, Memory for SI. "It is believed that the PS3 Cell processor will be different from the Wii design, in which the XDR interface will be replaced with a DDR2 memory interface." Let the gaming wars continue.
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