Comments on: PS3 consoles to ship with defect Cell chips

by: Thad

Tue, 16 Jan 2007 10:04:46 +0000

Read carefully. The chip is designed with 8 SPU's plus the core processor, but of the 8 SPU's, one is disabled which brings the manufacturing cost down dramatically, and here's why: Imagine that there's a 10% chance of any given SPU being defective. With 8 SPU's, it means there is an 80% chance of at least one of the SPU's being defective. If you allow for one being defective, you would improve your die yield (the number of usable chips on a wafer of silicon) from a miserable 20% to better than 90%

by: me

Wed, 22 Nov 2006 04:44:13 +0000

i heard that it wont play 8000 of the old games but i think that is fine who spends 1000 dollars on a system to play ps and ps2 games

by: Chris

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 23:58:34 +0000

Just to clarify... they aren't making it with 8 cells so they have an extra for redundancy.. the chip design is supposed to have 8 working cells. However, actually manufacturing a chip with 8 fully functioning cells is pretty tough.. I read in another similar article something about the ratio being something in the ballpark of 10-20% chance that when they make a chip that all eight cells work. Taking that into account the PS3 is designed to only require 7 of those cells to work to be a functional PS3. This means if they crank out a number of chips and of most of them only 7 cells work they can still put it in the PS3 and ship it off. In a nutshell it's not about redundancy for the consumer, but about allowing for a margin of error in a manufacturing process that's still relatively new.

by: Nick S.

Mon, 13 Nov 2006 21:56:37 +0000

Good way to recycle minor errors…

by: Matthew

Sun, 25 Sep 2005 06:24:24 +0000

If there's enough of a risk of a chip failing for sony to implant a backup (and you can be sure they wouldn't spend more money on every console for anything less then a high risk) then the risk for the consumer that more then one chip will fail in the console is just too great and sony should be responsible and choose another chip that is more reliable, or some people WILL get screwed..... there is enough technology in the world that people who spend money on goods shouldn't have to even think that there may be a risk that something will go wrong!!..... Who will disagree with that? Aside from the makers!! I don't worry that my microwave will go NUCLEAR!!!

by: Arrrrghhhhh

Mon, 19 Sep 2005 18:51:23 +0000

Wow! Half of you read at a 3rd grade level. Ken is saying that he built in a redundancy. If one SPE fails, then no worries because there's an extra one just in case. But understand, that's only IF one fails (still a high probability of failure). The system is designed to run with 7 SPE's not 8, so I don't suggest hacking it. Let me say it again, number 8 is an extra just in case. Here's an example now: Let's say your Sony discman needs 2 AA batteries, but you go to the store and buy a pack of 4 because that's all you can find. You slide those 2 AA's in and voila! But a day later you realize that the charge is really low. So you replace the fault battery with another from the pack. Full power. It would seem that one battery had lost it's charge pretty quickly. It was a good thing you bought that pack of 4 instead of having to go to the store again. It's the same idea, basically. It would seem though that if 2 SPE's fail, you've got a problem. I think it's a great idea. The benefits are less returns and warranty issues. I think that increases the consumers satisfaction level as well.

by: CJ

Sun, 18 Sep 2005 05:24:27 +0000

Well, only 7 are needed so if one is defective, it still works perfectly

by: deborah choi

Sat, 10 Sep 2005 01:00:30 +0000

the price isn’t the big factor but the fact that it only comes with seven working cell units out of the eight…dat’s cheap. it’s just like asking…w […] more

by: ChewY

Fri, 09 Sep 2005 04:47:19 +0000

Its kinda crappy if you are using 7 SPEs if all of them are functional, and im sure a linux hack will allow use of the 8th (if they work fine) but this should lower cost a shitload. Personally i think using a ZIF socket for an SPE, testing each one independently and then having someone stick the chip in would be the best solution, but then the PS3 would cost more.

by: peter

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 01:34:05 +0000

what Kutaragi means is that it’ll work with 7 SPE’s and the other one is for reserve in case that one SPE is faulty, i think that it really doesn’t ma […] more