Masaaki Tsuruta, CTO of Sony Computer Entertainment, says that the company is working on a system-on-chip (SoC) to underpin the product for "seven to 10 years".
He describes the architecture in broad terms: "You are talking about powerful CPU and GPU with extra DSP and programmable logic."
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"We are confident that we can now see a way and that we can use some of these advanced methods to create a new kind of system-on-chip. We think that there are the technologies today that can be taken to this project.”
The DSP is clearly the SPEs. Toshiba have already stacked the SPURS engine on top of a multi-core ARM die.
Roadrunner had x86 chips in it for a reason. They are shit at what Cell is good at, but good at what Cell is shit at. It could mean many things, but my guess it a SoC with x86 CPU and a GPU on the same die, with an improved Cell hanging off that running the show. I don't think that they will integrate the Cell within the SoC as it will be used across all of Sony's devices when it no longer needs any active cooling - one of the reasons it hasn't already been fused with RSX. They just need to improve the FlexIO such that Cell can get at the VRAM as easily as RSX can now get at the XDR. Another option is to replace the PPE with an x86 set of cores, or maybe a POWER7 derived set of cores. You can hang the SPE system of anything.
