Sony PS4: It's never too early to wonder

Japanese site PC Watch has started the global rumor mill churning with a report that Sony's Cell BE processor that powers the PS3 could still be a viable chip for the company's next next-gen console.

Without citing sources, PC Watch appears to be saying that a technological leap of the same scale as from the PlayStation 2 to the PS3, may no longer be affordable. As a result, the article says -- showing material from recent presentations on the Cell processor family as evidence -- Sony may be considering elevating what had been called the "PlayStation 3 +" project to PlayStation 4 status.

At E3 this July, Sony Computer Entertainment of America President and CEO Jack Tretton said Sony has a ten-year life cycle planned for the PS3, so speculation about the next generation may seem more than a bit pre-emptive. Of course, the question of Sony's future in the console business has been in question since before the launch of the PS3, when Nomura Securities analyst Yuta Sakurai was widely quoted as saying "The appointment of Hirai [Kaz, SCE president replacing Ken Kutaragi] could be the start of a shift from hardware to software, I cannot now imagine a PlayStation 4."

Yet, when considering the length of time the Cell processor took to create, 2016 and the eighth generation consoles don't seem that far away. The architectural concept of the Cell was drafted in 2000; and in 2001, Sony, Toshiba and IBM opened the STI Design Center where it was ultimately completed four years later.

PC Watch brings up points that are worth considering when looking down that long road. Sony spent a great deal on the development of the Cell BE architecture (IBM says the joint investment in the design center alone amounted to $400 million), so it could stand for a long period of time. It posits that a similar investment for the next generation processor and software stack would simply be too great of an expenditure. Since shrinking the Cell processors from 90 nm to 45 nm, it shows how its design has remained the same, but says it's unlikely to reach the 32nm process.

IBM, however, recently discussed new processes related to 22 nm fabrication, and specifically mentioned the potential use of the technique for the advancements in game consoles, which could have only been a reference to the Cell processor.

As Microsoft's Xbox 360 has surged in sales, actually growing by more than double worldwide thanks to recent price cuts, SCEI does not have enough time to wait for IBM to perfect the 22 nm process if it is looking to release a new console.

Either way, the Cell BE processor offers a scalability that would allow future iterations of Sony's console to use more cores without changing the principal architecture. Sony could soon be put on a path similar to the one taken by Nintendo with the Wii, which was built upon a re-working of the previous generation Gamecube architecture.