Playstation 3 CPU Speed Downgrade Rumor – Redux

Remember my earlier post dissecting an alleged PS3 Rude Q&A? There’s just something about a finely honed – yet evasive – turn of phrase that sets the Spidey-sense tingling, and I’m getting that feeling all over again around the rumor of the Playstation 3’s main CPU speed being downgraded.

First a bit of history. Back in June Kotaku posted an IM conversation with an alleged PS3 developer. That developer stated that CELL yields were low, and that the already reduced 3.2 GHz CPU speed (from a promised 3.5 GHz) could end up being as low as 2.8 GHz. (He also stated that there would likely be an external power supply, which I 100% believe to be the case.) Anyway, at the time I found the conversation a fascinating read because it struck me as very credible.

I don’t know how much you know about the CPU manufacturing process, but a good summary can be found here. The key aspect I want to highlight is that any new manufacturing process has a ramp-up period where a lot of sub-par or dud units are made. This is why new CPUs from AMD, Intel, and IBM are always more expensive and hard to find early on. It’s simply a matter of supply and demand, and the supply tends to be a lot less early on because yields haven’t been perfected yet. Every silicon manufacturer faces this issue, and IBM (and hence Sony) also faced this issue when manufacturing the CELL processor. The majority of CPUs off the line were likely subpar or duds, and fewer than desired would run at the target speed. (What that target speed was is a matter of debate, but if you look back over the last few years of Sony announcements the CELL was originally targeted to run at 4 GHz+, dropped to 3.5 GHz, and then dropped to 3.2 GHz.) Because of this, it’s extremely likely early Sony development kits didn’t run at full speed. Any game developer will tell you that this is very common in console development, so it’s not necessarily a negative. The key is to accurately tell developers what the final silicon would run at so they can target their games appropriately. Anyway, to wrap up this little bit of history, Gamesradar also picked up on the rumor a few days later, and the web’s message boards were set aflame.

Several days later Sony’s PR team swung into action, and stated the following:

“Developers have been working with PS3 dev kits for anywhere between eight and 12 months, and to suggest that we’d now take the decision to downgrade the hardware at such a late stage, is, well, ridiculous.”

Remember my spidey-sense? Read the above statement carefully, and notice the finely-crafted wording. In particular, notice that the response specifically discusses PS3 dev kits, and doesn’t mention final retail hardware – this is key, as we’ll see later. Summarized, it states that the suggestion Sony would “downgrade the hardware [PS3 dev kits] at such a late stage” is ridiculous.

Fair enough. While not necessarily “ridiculous,” it would be an immense PR blow to drop the system’s speed at this late point. That said, think back to the conversation we just had about CPU yields, and how it’s extremely likely early PS3 dev kits were running at a slower speed. What if that slower speed were, say, 2.8 GHz? And what if Sony had intended to upgrade the CPU but found it couldn’t due to poor yields? Then the fine bit of word-mongering above suddenly makes a ton of sense. Sony never technically downgraded the development kits because they were always at this speed… but the end result is a effective downgrade to the final, shipping, retail systems because this is what developers have to target their games to. And once the console ships at a certain clock-speed, it’s fixed for the life of the console – there are no do-overs.

I think I’ve made my disappointment about game journalism abundantly clear, and unfortunately, it appears none of the press picked up on this verbal dodging. In fact, it appears many sites just ran with the Sony party line and promptly forgot about it.

So where does this leave us? Simply put, I believe the primary CPU in the Playstation 3 (the PPE, or PowerPC-based CPU) currently runs at 2.8 GHz in game development kits, and that final retail consoles will also reflect that lowered speed. It’s my hope that some of the gaming press might use their contacts and ask developers the very specific question of how fast the CELL runs – my guess it’s slower than we all might hope. We’ll find out in the end, even if it’s in Fall when the box will (supposedly) ship. But it would sure be interesting to find out beforehand.

Oh, and the final quote of interest?

“Worse still is the suggestion that we couldn’t fit all the technical components into a plastic box.”

I think you fit everything into a plastic box, Sir… but then it melted.

[Edit: digg this article if you found it interesting!]

Related posts:

1. Gamesindustry.biz Email Update: Sony Begins PS3 Manufacturing
2. Blu-ray Drive Speed More Relevant to Games Than Capacity
3. Rose-colored Glasses
4. Playstation 3 begins manufacturing?
5. Official Playstation Blog Arrives!