Christ,  I really need to edit that post. its so sloppy.  although the
thrust of what I was saying still holds water, dispite how hastily i
wrote that.

EDITED version.

CELL sounded promising, when a version of it (assumed for PS3) called
the
Broadband Engine, would contain 36 processors on one chip.

4 PowerPC  (ala PUs aka PPEs) cores  plus 32  APUs (aka SPEs) on a 65nm
process, with 64 MB eDRAM (likely in the hundreds of GB/sec bandwidth)
to support the massive bandwidth needs, and not just relying on
*external* Rambus XDR memory which would be ~26 to ~51 to at most, 1~02
GB/sec.
(its on the  low end of that scale with the final PS3, 26 GB/sec)

the 36 processor Broadband Engine  (4 CELL Processor Elements) would've
been capable of one Teraflop/sec, from the 32 APUs alone, each running
at 4.6 GHz. not counting the 4 PowerPC cores.

I'm not making these things up. anyone who has followed the STI CELL
patents over the last 3-4 years probably knows what I am talking about.

CELL in PS3 is no longer exciting because the performance has come down
SO much.

(recent rumors suggest only 6 are active but that's not confirmed)

the core clockspeed has dropped from 4.6 GHz (announced ISSCC 2005)  to
3.2 GHz
(announced E3 2005 for PS3 version) to now, reportedly 2.8 GHz for
final shipping units.

Even if the clockspeed stays at the announced 3.2 GHz, that doesn't
mean much since most of the processing guts (PowerPC cores and
APUs/SPEs) have been ripped out, compared to the patents of 2002-2003.

Also, Sony dumped its ambitious in-house or co-developed Toshiba GPU
which, while would have only had Shader Model 2.0 capability, it
would've almost certainly have had FAR, FAR higher rendering
performance & bandwidth than the RSX GPU from Nvidia, which can be
concidered a mid-range GPU, not bleeding edge as far as performance.

the kind of processing power that PS3 was supposed to have, will not
become a reality in a Playstation, until PS4.

It now turns out that the Xbox360 is more or less, on par with PS3.  In
many areas, the Xbox360 is a better/stronger architecture.

PS3's advantages over Xbox360 are fewer than Xbox360's advantages over
PS3.

Sony put the majority of the budget for each PS3 into Blu-ray.

PS3 is a Blu-ray player with much more modest CPU/GPU/Bandwidth
capability for playing GAMES than what Sony was talking about years 7
ago, and perhaps attempting to partly/mostly  implement 3-4 years ago.
until it became apparent that 65nm process would not happen in 2006,
thus the 4 CELL Processor Elements had to be dropped. Even the single
Processing Element (1 PowerPC, 8 SPEs, 4.6 GHz) was reduced in
performance to bring yields up. (1 PowerPC, 6 or 7 active SPEs, 2.8~3.2
GHz), depending on the final PS3 specification which SONY REFUSES to
give out.  all of their latest spec sheets have dropped all talk of
what's in CELL and RSX. or their clockspeeds.

the only positive for developers is, the GPU being based on a commen
Nvidia architecture (NV4X)  will make getting decent graphics out of
the PS3 a breeze. just do not expect anything mindblowing or truly
"next-generation".

we've already seen the kind of graphics that PS3 can do, in PCs and on
Xbox360.
more or less.  CELL will be able to pull of some tricks for physics and
even for graphics but I really doubt we're going to see or play
anything head & shoulders above Xbox360.

by the time developers get the 6 or 7 SPEs coordinated and pushing PS3
to the limit, the NEXT Xbox will be out, and it will make PS3 look like
a joke,  the 3rd-gen Xbox will probably be out 2 years before PS4.

the real killer is the price. it doesn't matter if the PS3 was a crappy
architecture, if the price was $300, the masses would buy it. but at
$500 or $600????   lol.good luck Sony, you will need it.