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Tom Reeves, VP of semiconductor and technology services at IBM, told Electronic News that the PS3 would maintain functionality if the eight-core Cell were to lose one core.
"...the Playstation 3 only uses seven of them. You’d have a spare. That isn’t implemented in Cell, but it could be. We implemented that same strategy for IBM systems. If you take a logic hit on a chip, you don’t have any impact on performance because there is enough redundancy built in."
However, should the Cell only have seven cores to start with and one blows, the system may not function.
"It’s just like a reliability failure on your TV or DVD recorder," Reeves said. "If it’s within warranty, you send it back. If it’s not, your game doesn’t work anymore. You’ll always have choices about how reliable you want to make a chip with burn-in. Most chips that go into the consumer marketplace on things such as camcorders or DVD players aren’t burned in. But you can add burn-in and improve reliability 5x to 10x. It’s extra cost. Certainly, a company like Sony adds that in."
The inclusion of the complex Cell processor is a large factor in the PS3 price tier. In Feb. 2006, Merrill Lynch estimated the cost of the Cell processor at $230.
The Playstation 2 successor will drop to retail on Nov. 17 for $499 and $599 with extras.
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