A big article from Electronic News carries an interview (Digg) with a IBM's Vice-President of Semiconductor and Technology Services (Wow, almost as bad as Sony Entertainment's VP title...) about a few things. One thing that stands out, though, is how he talks about the Cell processor. You know... big honkin' CPU that's supposed to be the heart of the PS3? The one that's incredibly difficult to program for? Well, apparently, it's incredibly difficult to even build. To quote the article:

Electronic News: What’s the defining factor that makes some chips better than others?
Reeves: Defects. It becomes a bigger problem the bigger the chip is. With chips that are one-by-one and silicon germanium, we can get yields of 95 percent. With a chip like the Cell processor, you’re lucky to get 10 or 20 percent. If you put logic redundancy on it, you can double that. It’s a great strategy, and I’m not sure anyone other than IBM is doing that with logic. Everybody does it with DRAM. There are always extra bits in there for memory. People have not yet moved to logic block redundancy, though.

Reeves, the VP, says most chips get 95% yield. That means, out of 100 chips made, 5 will be thrown out due to various circuit failure. The Cell processor has a 10 to 20 percent yield. Out of 100 chips built, 80 to 90 are thrown out! Sony is putting, in their "industry killing machine", untested-in-the-field chips that are far from reaching mass production due to flaws in the creation process.

You can read the article for yourself, but the VP goes on to say that they design the Cell processor with eight "mini-cores" (so to speak), and that the PS3 will only ever use seven cores. This seems to be good for Playstation owners, because if one of the seven cores fails after you've purchased it, then the spare eighth core will kick on and take it's place. (Giving you the illusion that your system is fine.) It's a nice touch to include a sort of self-healing chip, and it would be an awesome idea if it didn't seem like they'd be using the spare core right out of the box!

IMDB, Kotaku, DigiTimes (Digg), as well as other places, are carrying summaries of an article from China's Commercial Times which talks about how Blu-Ray player will be delayed (again) due to the fact that there aren't enough laser assemblies. Those things that slide back and forth inside the disc drive to read the data off the disc. Actually, see, it's technically the little laser diode itself that's in shortage, so they can't even make assemblies. The little glass-looking thing that MAKES the laser. Anyway, they say that not only will this delay Blu-Ray players, but it could also affect production of the PS3. (But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out, since Sony has been blaring the fact that the PS3 uses Blu-Ray from the very beginning.)

See, Sony? This is why using expensive, cutting-edge technology is a horrible idea. It's expensive for you, it's expensive for the customer, it doesn't work and everyone loses money. Have you learned your lesson, yet? I would say "better luck next time", but I really don't see a next time for your gaming department. In fact, I don't see how this will bode well for the rest of the corporation. The entire company was in some trouble before this... they're in serious trouble now.

Let me close with an article translated from a Japanese entertainment magazine. You know Famitsu, right? Well, it appears that they've polled their readers on which system looks more attractive to them.

Gamers: 73.6% for Wii, 16.7% for PS3
Retailers: 65.9% for Wii, 18.8% for PS3
Developers: 69.7% for Wii, 27.3% for PS3

The article says analysts say Sony will win wth their names and available games. (What? Sony still has either one?) The magazine also polled female users. (Prime example of non-gamers, heheh.) Results?

Students: 37.5% for PS3, 12.5% for Wii
(not surprising... Playstation is somehow "cool" in a teen's eyes)

Business: 36.4% for Wii, 33.3% for PS3
(aha, a little better! Nintendo's targeted older audience, too)

Housewives: 42.9% for Wii, 9.5% for PS3
(...and the icing on the cake!)

Nintendo is effectively reaching their goal of catering to non-gamers. Bye-bye, Sony!