At the recent Rambus Developer Forum 2004 Japan that was held in Tokyo, some new details about the PS3 have come to light. According to PC Watch, the XDR DRAM chip that is being loaded onto the PS3 has been changed from a 512Mbit chip to a 256Mbit chip. One thing that hasn"t changed is that production will get underway next summer, making a launch in the first half of 2006 likely.
As to why this has been changed, some industry insiders have been saying that the change has been for cutting costs, but it may not be so cut and dry. The modification can mean one of two things: the total memory has been dropped or memory bandwidth has doubled from 25.6GB/sec to 51.2GB/sec. Both possibilities are likely and the first one would be for cost-cutting. If it"s the latter, however, then more work may be done by the Cell chip.