If the latest rumors pouring out http://kotaku.com/5889410/playstatio...-wild-theories are to be believed, the PlayStation 4 will not make use of Sony's Cell processor. This would be quite the boon to developers who have complained far and wide about how difficult it was to develop on the rather complex CPU.
Sources tell this to Kotaku following word last week that ATI would supply the GPU for the next Sony console, a change from the Nvidia GPU in use with the PS3. Naturally, the speculation train took off from the Kotaku station going full speed ahead.
Naturally, Sony has not uttered a single confirmation or denial about this rumor. Furthermore, there has been zero mention of a PlayStation 4 even being in existence in either a physical or conceptual form.
Then again, we are just a small gaming news site, so who are we to shoot down a massively speculative article such as this from Kotaku?
Sources tell this to Kotaku following word last week that ATI would supply the GPU for the next Sony console, a change from the Nvidia GPU in use with the PS3. Naturally, the speculation train took off from the Kotaku station going full speed ahead.
One theory I've heard is that AMD will provide both the CPU and GPU for the PS4, meaning that AMD, not Sony, would engineer the main processing and graphics chips for the machine. Should AMD be doing that, they could go with the AMD Fusion architecture, which puts CPU and GPU on the same chip. AMD has already been putting chips like this out (one was considered for the MacBook Air), which would enable Sony to turn to developers and say: you could be working with the PS4 architecture right now; just work on an AMD Llano chip or something. Would developers like that? They'd have to prefer it to Cell and—what do you know—here's one of gaming history's best programmers, id's John Carmack, saying in an interview with PC Perspective last year that AMD Fusion-style chip architecture is "almost a forgone conclusion" for the future of computing.
Naturally, Sony has not uttered a single confirmation or denial about this rumor. Furthermore, there has been zero mention of a PlayStation 4 even being in existence in either a physical or conceptual form.
Then again, we are just a small gaming news site, so who are we to shoot down a massively speculative article such as this from Kotaku?