Industry sources say Sony will ditch the heavily multithreaded Cell architecture with PS4, according to a Kotaku report.

Despite being an impressive number cruncher on paper, squeezing performance out of the Cell processor for gaming scenarios has proved to be a daunting task for many developers. In the early years, the PS3 was widely criticized as such and received a number of inferior ports compared to that of Xbox 360. Since then, PS3 SDK refinements coupled with a continued focus on dev relations have streamlined the learning curve somewhat.

If true, it’s not clear what architecture or chipset Sony will adopt with the PS4. There have been murmurs of a possible partnership with AMD on the graphics side, rather than Nvidia, which was responsible for the RSX GPU housed inside PS3.

Sony’s mindset towards extravagant hardware has seemingly changed since PlayStation father Ken Kutaragi left the building. Like the PS Vita, it’s possible Sony could be switching to an ARM-based configuration, which has become incredibly popular among mobile handsets and netbooks.

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