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Sony dumps cell development

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A very strange story has appeared this morning about Sony pulling out of a development deal with IBM and Toshiba.

We heard a few days ago that Sony had sold the rights to manufacture the Cell chip to Toshiba, however now it appears that Sony are completely wiping their hands of it.

Sony had signed a contract to continue researching and developing the Cell chip until 2010 but it has decided to withdraw this support along with its capital investments on the 45nm Cell chip production facility.

While I am not sure why they are doing this here are my two theories.

1. They have realised the Cell processor is not the miracle processor that IBM implied it was and have now decided to pursue different options.

2. They are running out of money and are being forced to cut back on research and development

Sony Corp to exit chip development deal with IBM, Toshiba – report

Last Updated: November 8, 2007

6 Comments

  1. papa-action

    November 8, 2007 at 08:28

    I’m with you on option 2. SONY have been on a major cost cutting drive lately.

    Reply

  2. Banana hammock

    November 8, 2007 at 08:49

    A 3rd option could be that Sony wanted to drive developement of the Cell to get it done in time for the PS3 and share costs, and then once they had it for the PS3 they decided to not invest in it anymore.

    Reply

  3. LazySAGamer

    November 8, 2007 at 09:08

    @Banana, true that is another option. A morally corrupt one though… I think they would be sued by IBM and Toshiba if they did something like that

    Reply

  4. XennoX

    November 8, 2007 at 10:04

    Well isn’t there that news article (somewhere) that Sony is now going to re-focus on selling TV’s, Radios and the like? Because they are losing money on the PS3.

    Reply

  5. Banana hammock

    November 8, 2007 at 10:44

    What do morals have to do with big business?

    IBM and Toshiba also got the cell produced quickly and got Sony to pay their share, so it might not be as bad as it seems.

    Reply

  6. doobiwan

    November 8, 2007 at 15:19

    If you have a look at the other stuff going on at Sony – Kaz Hirai at odds with the engineering team etc, I think there’s a shift and a half happening. Ken Katuragi was an engineer and drove PS3 from a hardware perspective. For him, investing in “The most powerful processor” was important. The new Sony masters obviously have other idea’s.

    I think Sony finally woke up to the fact they’d been duped.

    My money says PS4’s running Intel processors…..

    Reply

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