Announcement

• QSF5.com Gets Face Lift
  • Old theme was based off of WordPress 2.2; upgraded to a 2.7 compatible theme called Vigilance by Jestro
  • Lots of backend enhancements including full widget compatibility
  • Less reliance on plugins thanks to said compatibility
  • Speed improvements!
  • Rotating banner & more!
• The Pirate Bay Solid to Global Gaming Factory X AB for $7.8 million (via Engadget)
  • Going legit like Napster

Miscellaneous

• Sony Patents Emotion Engine Emulation Tech for Cell Processors (via Siliconera)
  • Apparently this was recently filed
  • Enables PS2’s Emotion Engine to be emulated with the PS3’s Cell processor
  • Early 60 GB PS3’s had the Emotion Engine and Graphical Synthesizer chips
  • Later on, the 80 GBs had only the Graphical Synthesizer chip
  • Nowadays, PS3s have no form of PS2 emulation.

PC Watch Impress, a Japanese tech news site, heard a few tidbits concerning Sony’s plans for the PlayStation 4. Supposedly. Here’s the breakdown (translated by IGN and GameCyte)

• Will use the same Cell Processor that the PS3 uses.
• Will probably stick to a similar number of cores (around 10)
• Will use standard JEDEC memory instead of XDR. (Most likely DDR3)
• Overall hardware change will be similar to the GameCube to Wii transition.

So these are the plans and according to their source, this is being sent to developers for feedback. Well, I’m not a developer, but I’ll provide my feedback anyways.

Sounds like a pretty good idea!

(more…)

LCDs and Plasmas are nice today, but something better could be just around the corner: OLED. Sony is hoping to bring OLED displays into the mainstream market sooner rather than later and by investing $204 million into larger panels; these are great first steps. Hopefully we’ll be seeing screens larger than 11 inches in production.

I’m personally excited for this technology and to see any company invest money into its development is always a plus.

In other news, Sony is selling off their Cell chip production facilities to Toshiba. Toshiba will be taking over the Cell processor and RSX chip manufacturing for both the PlayStation 3 and other products which include Toshiba’s.

To me, the Cell Broadband Engine is a fascinating piece of technology with a vast amount of computing power and potential. One of the pitfalls of the Cell processor aside from being notoriously difficult to program for, is the chip’s rather power hungry appetite. Well, since IBM announced that the 65 nm version of this monsterous beast is already in full swing, it should nto be surprising to find out that a 45 nm version is in the works.

The 65 nm version of Cell (available only in 40 GB PS3 at the moment) already helps slice the power consumption of the PS3 from 200W to 135W. By switching from the 65 nm to the 45 nm process, Sony hopes to cut the power consumption of the Cell by 40 percent. Will this mean we will be seeing PSThree Slims in the not so distant future? One could only hope!