These years may seem early for a story on the History Of The PS3, but these dates will
make sense as you read further into PS3 history.
(Thanks to winocm, for making me go back this far :p).
During the year 2000, Sony Computer Entertainment, Toshiba, and IBM(STI),formed an
alliance, an alliance that would see the creation of the Cell Processor, Cell is short for Cell Broadband Engine Architecture.
MARCH 2001
The STI design centre opens and begins production of the Cell processor.
Part of the above is sourced from Wikipedia.
2002
21st of March 2002
Shin’ichi Okamoto from SCE mentions that Sony is working with IBM on the next PlayStation.
Source
6th of August 2002
IBM states that their processor is well on its way to completion, Peter Glaskowsky from “Microprocessor Report” states that:
“Cell will likely use between four and 16 general-purpose processor cores per chip. A game console might use a chip with 16 cores, while a less complicated device like a set-top box would have a processor with fewer.
Some of these cores might perform computational functions, while others could control audio or graphics.”
Source
2003
4th of March 2003
In an article on siliconvalley.com, the author claims the PS3 will have 72 processors on a single chip.
“With the PS 3, Sony will apparently put 72 processors on a single chip: eight PowerPC microprocessors, each of which controls eight auxiliary processors.
Using sophisticated software to manage the workload, the PowerPC processors will divide complicated problems into smaller tasks and tap as many of the auxiliary processors as necessary to tackle them.”
Source
21st of April 2003
SCEI announced a ¥200 billion investment plan for 65-nm process technology on 300-mm wafers and that they have managed to combine the Emotion Engine and Graphics Synthesiser(EE+GS) into a single 90nm chip.
Source
2004
11th of May 2004
SCEI and IBM announce the plan to develop a digital content creation environment for the Cell.
Source
22nd of June 2004
Analysts Michael Pachter and Edward Woo release a 144 page document titled, The Definition of Insanity: Why the Next Console Cycle Will Start Off With A Whimper, in which they predict the PS3 will be released in 2006 for $500.
Source
24th of August 2004
Amazon Japan creates a product page for the PS3.
Source
21st of September 2004
SCEI announce that they will use Blu-ray Disc ROM in their next generation console.
Source
29th of November 2004
SCEI and IBM announce that they have powered on the first cell based workstation.
Source
7th of December 2004
Nvidia announce that they are working on a game console with Sony.
Source