Domestic top news Jun 20 and 2003 23:30 JST
Vice-President Sony Kutaragi: It is a new style MPU "CELL" trial product within the current fiscal year. June 20 (Bloomberg): President Ken Kutaragi (Sony vice president) of Sony Computer Entertainment (S C E) is the regular general meeting of shareholders of Sony held in the city of Tokyo, and he clarified the prospect that a trial product can be completed during the current fiscal year (term ended March, 2004) about the new model MPU under development (micro processing unit) "CELL (cell)" on the 20th.
CELL is MPU which three companies, S C E, Toshiba, and U.S. IBM, are developing jointly. Although three companies have not announced officially for details, it has the function which was suitable for the exchange of video from MPU for personal computers, such as U.S. Intel, and it is expected that it is adopted as the succeeding machine of the home video game machine "PlayStation 2" of S C E, pocket apparatus, a server, etc. Company length explained "I want to carry out deployment large-scale as future business" while saying in the general meeting, "Development is going smoothly and it can show as a trial production system during the current fiscal year."
Sony invests 200 billion yen before [ three years ] the 05 fiscal year for development and production of CELL. The Nagasaki factory of S C E is reinforced as a base from the quantity of production. Toshiba is planning to invest a total of 200 billion yen in the site of the Oita factory, and to establish a new line. Mass production is due to start construction work at the end of June, and to be started in the second half of the first half of the 04 fiscal year.
In the market, it is concluded that manufacture of a trial product has the large probability performed at the Oita factory of Toshiba. Since DRAM (it is a write-in read-out memory at any time [ which needs memory maintenance operation ]) which can process data at high speed similarly was required for CELL which processes mass data at high speed, S C E, Sony, and Toshiba concluded the U.S. Rambus company and licensing agreement of a high-speed DRAM technical development special occupation company in January, this year.
Based on the specification called "Yellowstone (tentative name)" of Rambus, Toshiba and an ERUPIDA memory are developing Present DRAM. The stock price closing price of Sony is 3520 yen of 20 yen (0.6%) ˆÀ compared with the previous day. Tokyo Takemoto Takafumi Yoshifumi Takemoto Last Updated: June 20, 2003 03:57 EDT