Playstation 3 accounts for more than 50% of XDR memory shipments

Based on current estimates that Sony has sold about 3.3 million PS3s to date and the fact that the console uses four 512 Mbit XDR devices suggests that more than 13 million XDR units have made their way into this product. Samsung and Elpida are the main XDR memory suppliers for the PS3.

[Maddens Raiders]

from the sale of a single PS3. Think about what I'm saying. Everyone should own a PS3.

[OC_MurphysLaw]

Really? Did you really just try and pull the "everyone" benefits card as a reason why to own the Playstation? Now that there is a classic example of "Sony Spin" if I have ever heard it. Fanboy or not...its a funny ass line to use and sincerely believe it.

[Lucidmantra]

Actually Maddens...

Sony doesn't benefit from the sales of the PS3 console. They lose money. THIS IS NOT to start a flame war. It is just the nature of the console business. If I go and buy just a PS3 and no extra controllers or games or anything... I just costed Sony like $500 (estimated).

The same goes with Xbox360... But since I bought 3 extra controllers and 6 games on launch night MS turned a profit on me for buying the console.

When I bought my Wii, I just made Nintendo money because their hardware is sold with a very minor gain. The fact that I bought an extra Wiimote, and nunchuk was icing on the cake.

[Maddens Raiders]

btw...Lucid is that really you old friend (haven't seen that avatar in a while)? Thanks guys for giving me a chance to respond.

I'm going to tell you gentlemen why I said what I said. My friend Matt has cancer. Lymphatic in fact. I love him. He's a great guy, has a great girlfriend and loves to jam on his 360 until it crapped on him 6 months in (about a 2 weeks ago). He doesn't care ~ it bummed him out a little, but I told him to come on over. He's been coming over with the misses for the past couple of weeks just gaming it up and getting familiar with the PS3 until MS finishes repairing his 360.

It makes me feel so good to see him playing on the PS3, knowing that maybe, just maybe in the wildest world of maybe's - that the machine he's on might be wholly contributing to cure his ailment. If not his maybe someone else. A truck driver, a lawyer, a teacher, a Dad, a son or daughter. I don't know. It's just my way of viewing it. If you have a chance to contribute to the cure - do it. Anything helps not just F@H. Anything. That's why I said what I said. It's an everyday struggle that to some of us is a reality ~ to deal with cancer. To think that a money losing machine can help fight against it - is almost too ironic. I think we should rally around SNE, and Honda, and Subaru, and Bill Gates, and other generous earth - friendly and human conscious companies when they do rare; selfless acts that make an absolute difference to mankind and our existence on this giant rock. Acts that not a single one of us N4G users could ever pull off unilaterally. I don't know why Sir Bill Gates and Melinda have contributed over two billion dollars to starving African children and other kids and families in impoverished nations and why they seem to care. I don't know why SNE has invested the time to even consider F@H something viable or at the very least something a bunch of "gamers" would be remotely interestes in checking out. As it turns out we all know, as memebers of N4G, what kind of impact the connected PS3's have had on the protein folding sims at Stanford U. We know what this could eventually lead to and become.

I don't know what compelled the owners / executives / heads of these companies to do what they did (in this manner) and why it continues. All I can do is judge their actions and act accordingly. Their actions speak loudly. I don't know about you - but I've invested quite heavily in MS products over my short existence on this earth and if it helped Bill G. and Melinda contribute to the aforementioned - then so be it. I don't think it's too much to ask to recognize SNE either and say that we should all own one of these machines to contribute. Is it wrong?

It's a one - time $600 investment in a machine that will continually do it's duty for F@H long after the purchase and it may even have some gaming titles coming out for it, which I've heard, look pretty promising. If Samsung and Elpida happen to benefit from this as well, then so be it. That's just more money for their retirements, kids college, the janitors, valets, everyone involved until the well runs dry.

These are two [MS / SNE] of the biggest most influential companies in the world. To say that they don't have an impact on pop-culture and mainstream is ludicrous. To discount the real beneficial aspects of a gaming machine, beyond what anyone else ever intended or imagined, simply due to a brandname is wrong. Do your part no matter what it is - however you feel fit. But we're all gamers here and the comment I made was relevant. Take from it what you will. Everyone should own a PS3. Keep gaming ALIVE.

P.S. - Lucid(360?) I understand exactly what you're talking about, but I wasn't referring to things in that way. It's a bigger picture my man. I'm pretty sure you know what I mean. =]

[Khann]

So the Ps3 is using a product nobody else wants?

[VirtualGamer]

Actually it was 5.5 million shipped at the end of March, so times four 512 Mbit XDR devices = 22 million. I would say the PS3 is accounting for almost all the XDR memory.

[omansteveo]

Shipped and sold are different

[Arkham]

So, you're saying that only those PS3s sold to customers contain XDR memory units, right?

The PS3s are shipped without them, and then through some miraculous voodoo the Cell processors create XDR chips at the sales counter?

Behold the parthenogenic power of the mighty Cell!

[VirtualGamer]

Shipped units are completed, working units. Meaning all parts are paid for and assembled.

[kurac]

PS3 FTW!

[Diselage]

Why does this matter? So Sony is using memory that hasn't really found any where else to be used.

[drtysouf21]

Hmmm maybe it will be used in other things in the future.

[Vojkan]

Mybe i am stupid to understand but can someone explain me in simple words, what this means?

[Lucidmantra]

Your not stupid... But I did a little research to help you out.

There was once a type of PC memory called RDRAM (or RAMBUS DRAM) that was expensive and only a little faster than another new RAM type DDR. DDR wipes RDRAMs butt in the marketplace because it was cheaper. RDRAM had latency issues (meaning it slowed things down as the memory bus was waiting for the memory to report back to it...LAYMAN SIMPLE TERMS! I don't want to get into the whole this is how the inside of your PC works...) RDRAM when down in flames badly. The company that made RDRAM (Rambus) has made a new technolgy called XDR. It fixes the problems with RDRAM in respect to latency problems and Sony picked it up to use in the PS3 (possibly to help with the possible bottlenecking issues of the systems architecture). XDR has not had alot of adopters to this point, besides Sony and the PS3, so what they are essentually saying is that the PS3 is accounting for a massive portion (50% or more) of Rambuses business and production in XDR memory.

Hope this helps. It is a breakdown of the people who are providing parts for the PS3 and what amount of business that the manufacturing and sales of the PS3 (in this case XDR RAM) is having on the providers of the internal parts for the console.

[fjtorres]

Semi-conductor products drop in price over time in three ways:

1- yields increase and cost drops as the manufacturer gains experience manufacturing the product; the more units you make, the more you know about how to make it cheaper
2- over time, the product is redesigned and moved to different manufacturing processes that produce more units per wafer reducing the per-wafer cost
3- as products become more widely used, the various fixed costs in the manufacturing process get spread over larger amounts of product resulting in a lower unit cost

Here we have a situation where Sony is the main consumer of the product (XDR RAM) and hardly anybody else is adopting it. It means that with the PS3 selling slower than expected, the bulk of the fixed costs are borne by Sony and the unit price of the part may actually be *increasing* as production slows from launch levels. It also means that the manufacturers will be slower to recoup their initial investment and are likely to slow the migration to a new manufacturing process.

Add it all up and you end up with a slower-than-expected drop in price for the XDR RAM chips that go into PS3 (possibly even an increase) which means slower reductions in the overall manufacturing cost of the PS3 and providing a marginal disincentive for cutting the retail price of the PS3.

To put it another way; if Sony were using a very popular form of RAM, the price of the RAM chip would be dropping regardlesss of whether the PS3 sold or not because other customers would pick up the slack.

This is dangerous because, as pointed out, RDRAM lost out to DDR RAM because its price did not drop fast enough to keep up the competition; if XDR costs don't drop as fast as the costs of the DDR3 RAM used by the competition, the spread in cost between the PS3 and the competitors could actually *increase* instead of decrease. Future XDR prices will depend on PS3 sales now and future PS3 pricing will depend on XDR pricing. This is called a feedback loop and right now the loop is at best stalled and at worst tending towards higher costs rather than lower costs. Not good.

PS3 needs a price cut ASAP and everything that makes it more painful for SONY makes it less likely the cut will come sooner rather than later.

[warfed]

never mind... misunderstood something...

[DJ]

acting as if the existence of XDR RAM is somehow negative? It runs at insanely high speeds (3.2 Ghz) and is essential for powerful CPUs like Cell. As the PS3 gains popularity, Rambus will be able to spend more money on R&D for even better types of XDR RAM, especially for Cell v.2

[Lord Anubis]

although rambus tried to sell XDR to AMD and Nvidia they rejected the memory, it may have to do with Rambus previous legal cases, where they sued everyone using SDRAM

http://www.google.com/searc...

they became leeches for a while.
They sued everyone that didn't pay royalties on their patents on DDR DDR2 GDDR SDRAM and so on.

Although that doesn't take from the fact that XDR is the best of the best although its high price may put off several companies.

[DJ]

Whoa, that's pretty uh...why did they do that?