11/25/09 WORLD EXCLUSIVE: Sony has chosen the CPU for the next generation PlayStation.
We can officially reveal in this world exclusive that SCEI has officially chosen IBM's currently in development POWER7 architecture for it's PlayStation 4 system, currently scheduled for a 2012 worldwide release.
IBM shall debut POWER7 for the server market in the summer of 2010. The PlayStation 4 shall use a cost effective version of the architecture custom designed for Sony's specific needs.
The only information FGNOnline currently has available regarding specifications and performance is that the PS4 implementation of
the chip shall use 6-8 cores, 24-32MB shared L3 Cache, Quad threading per core, and a double precision performance approaching 200GFLOPS.
The CELL chip which powers the PS3 is capable of 15 double precision GFLOPS. This would give the PS4 a performance leap of over 10 fold over it's predecessor.
Interestingly, the primary reason IBM cancelled development on the CELL based PoweXcell 8i is because of SCEI's change of stance. The company wanted to move away from the exotic architecture employed for the PS3 to a more traditional architecture favored by third party developers.
As displayed by it's choice of processors, the server based POWER7 and the
TBDR based PowerVR 6, SCEI once again has sights set for performance leadership in the next round.
Mr Zachary Morris