Sony and Toshiba entering a deal?

[GaryPen]

Come Gary, lighten up. This stupid format war is not life or death.

That's been my whole point!!!

A little brevity is needed from time to time.

I'll try to make my posts shorter, then. I will use more "levity", as well.

 

[CochiseGuy]

Looks like Toshiba is already moving ahead in finding new, profitable applications for it's share of the Cell Processor - from Yahoo News -

Sept. 20 2007

San Francisco (IDGNS) - Toshiba on Thursday revealed a new high-performance chip aimed at multimedia applications such as video processing in consumer devices.

The new chip, called SpursEngine, uses cores derived from the Cell microprocessor, which was developed with Sony and IBM.

Toshiba plans to show off the capabilities of the new chip in laptop PCs to be unveiled at the CEATEC Japan 2007 technology trade show at Makuhari Messe, which starts Oct. 2. The company will demonstrate the stream processor's capabilities in 3D image processing and manipulation. In rendering changes to an image of a face, the chip can immediately transform hair styles, make-up, and change facial expressions, position and angle in video and render the changes as computer graphics, Toshiba said in a statement.

The SpursEngine works alongside a microprocessor to process video streams, recognize and process images, and tackle other multimedia chores. The multicore chip uses Toshiba's own image processing technology.

The prototype of the SpursEngine operates at 1.5GHz and consumes 10 to 20 watts of power. It uses Rambus' XDR DRAM memory due to high data transfer rates required by multimedia applications.The company plans to market SpursEngine after the CEATEC trade show finishes. Toshiba has already started developing products using the processors, and will sell the chips to other companies for use in their products as well.

Development of the Cell microprocessor architecture started early this decade to create a new processor with expanded multimedia processing capabilities. Its first major commercial success was in Sony's PlayStation 3 game console.

Meanwhile - while not so profitable - Sony continues to struggle to find success with it's application of the Cell Processor -
FCC filing reveals new PlayStation 3 model - Pocket-lint.co.uk - gadget news and reviews

25 September 2007 22:54 GMT - Despite Sony's recent semi-denial of a 40GB PlayStation 3, first reported on Pocket-lint, the cheaper model, rumoured to be coming soon, just got a little bit more real thanks to a PS3 with a new model number making its way through the Federal Communications Commission testing process.

Most of the pertinent information, and all photographs of the product, have been withheld in order to "avoid premature release of sensitive information prior to marketing or release of the product to the public" and are not available for public view for 45 days from September 4th.

The test diagram submitted reveals that our predictions of a less-specced, or paired down model, appear to be true, with the new PS3, dubbed the "PS3 Lite" by the blogosphere, featuring only two USB ports and no memory card slots.

The main "Points of Difference" between this model and the "original" model have also been kept as confidential which means a direct comparison is not yet possible.

Obviously this is not conclusive evidence that the cheaper model is definitely on its way, but it could certainly be seen to suggest that we can expect a new model of PS3, likely an entry-level version, within the next 24 days...

 

[JoeSp]

Nice find CochiseGuy. Looks like Sony has been listening. They do not need 4 usb ports as the controllers are Wireless and you only need to hook them up to charge them. Most gamers do not need the memory card slots and they probably did away with the Wi-Fi along with the PS2 chip. It will be interesting to see what the price will be. A $399 price tag would make this a real nice product for Xmas especially if they keep the ablility to change out the Hard Drive on your own.

 

[diogen]

...They do not need 4 usb ports as the controllers are Wireless and you only need to hook them up to charge them. Most gamers do not need the memory card slots and they probably did away with the Wi-Fi along with the PS2 chip.

It will probably be the first CE device in history (I'm not even talking about consoles) that lost half of it externel connectors during first year of life.
Writing firmware upgrades for so many SKUs will be a nightmare...
Thank God the initial idea of 2 HDMI ports, 10USB ports and 3 ethernet ports (router function) was killed before PS3 was released.

Diogen.

 

[JoeSp]

I do not see any nightmare here. Most people just use the USB ports for charging their controllers. Having two less will not make a firmware upgrade difficult just because some PS3's will have 2 and some will have four. Heck, you can add a USB bridge and have as many USB ports as you want. I don't see the problem here?

 

[diogen]

Right.
Kutaragi must have been completely brain dead when talking about 10 USB ports.
Good thing he was fired...

Diogen.

 

[JoeSp]

What the heck would you hook up to 10 USB ports?

 

[meStevo]

10 USB lights.

I'd then hang ornaments and put presents underneath it.

 

[GaryPen]

Yeah. Like another PS3.