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What has Sony done inside the Super Slim PS3?

by on03 October 2012

ps3 slim

Cost reduction not coming from die shrinks, it would appear

Everyone seems to want to know what is inside the new PlayStation 3 Super Slim, and the answer might surprise you. It would seem the stability of the current console comes because the company is using pretty much the same thing we saw in the last Slim PS3 unit.

Sony has elected to combine the Cell CPU and the RSX graphics core onto one chip, which is what Microsoft did in the latest 360 in order to achieve cost reductions while also improving the thermals over the previous generation of the Xbox 360.

While combining the two chips might sound like a good idea on the surface, it is a very complex process; and apparently Sony was not able to get it done for this round of cost reductions. The Super Slim PS3 uses the same Cell CPU and RSX. The chips would appear to be at 40nm. While it is scaled down, most of the hardware on the inside is unchanged from the Slim model.

It is clear that Sony has looked to other areas to save money, such as using cheaper plastics and doing away with the slot load Blu-ray drive. We suspect, however, that a move to 32nm (or maybe directly to 22nm?) is coming at some point for the Super Slim to be refreshed; this will help Sony squeeze more out of the console in order to drive the price even further down. Don’t look for it to happen soon, but it will happen at some point next year, we suspect.

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