Having already speculated about Microsoft’s next Xbox (dubbed the Xbox 720), I’ve also written a follow-up article that imagines what a PlayStation 4 might be like.
The PlayStation 3 is based on an entirely new Cell architecture. The technology was costly and most developers haven’t come close to tapping its full potential. So I suspect that the Cell processor will be recycled in any PlayStation 4.
Considering that Sony spent around $3 billion developing the PS3, it seems likely that it will use an improved version of the Cell processor for a PS4.
IBM has already released an improved version of the Cell for its blade servers. The PowerXCell 8i is a 65nm chip, with support for 32GB of DDR2 memory and eight fully-functional SPEs (compared to seven on the PS3).
The advantage of recycling the Cell is that Sony could retain a familiar development environment and use existing code libraries. The modular design of the Cell architecture could also allow extra Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs) to be added to future chips. Twenty or more SPEs might be possible on a single 32nm Cell processor.
If I had to change anything about this article, I’d probably the sentence that reads: “there’s a strong argument for dropping an optical drive from the PS4 altogether.”
I still believe that the consoles beyond the Xbox 360 and PS3 will embrace the sort of full game downloads that digital services like Valve’s Steam currently supply.
But while this will probably become a sales option for Sony come 2012, Blu-ray will linger on, providing backwards compatibility for PS3 titles and legacy Blu-ray/DVD movie playback.
Of course, this assumes that there’ll actually be a PlayStation 4. If Sony holds true to its word about the PS3’s 10-year lifespan, we won’t get a sniff of a new PlayStation until 2016.
Everything you need to know about the PlayStation 4 [TechRadar]
