Not quite a PS3 slim, but getting there
For those who haven't bought a Playstation 3 yet but are planning to, there's some good news for you: this new third generation of models will be lighter, smaller, more efficient and hopefully priced lower thanks to some work by Furukawa Electric Co. Ltd.
In the first to second generation switch, Furukawa replaced the Cell produced in 90nm process technology with one produced in 65nm; this effectively reduced the cost and power consumption of the machine. This sort of trend will continue with the third generation - replacing and rehauling until the PS3 is as good as it can be. Of course, it kind of makes you wonder why they didn't make it this efficient in the first place, but what can ya do.
The company showed off the new model at Techno-Frontier 2008, which features an additional heatsink (one for the "Cell" microprocessor, one for the graphics LSI "RSX") and the elimination of some (evidently) unneccessary wiring. Copper heat pipes were used in the first two generations (five in the first, two in the second), but this time they'll be gutted altogether. Apparently they just don't need 'em, as the heat-radiation performance is entirely adequate without the pipes.
More than 20 components were used for the sinks in the first gen and half that in the second, this resulted in a 700 and 500g weight for the components in each case, respectively. This time we'll see a mere three, a fin and pin made by aluminum and a thick aluminum plate used as a substrate, so they'll amount to 350g total.
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In any case, to the article writer. They didn't use it from the start because they didn't have the resources (at least on a cost efficient level) to do so. You need to build/modify facilities to change the dye size (for the processors), you can't just press a few buttons and presto, you've reduced the size of the processor.
Technology gets better (and smaller) as time goes on.
Trial and error are also involved, which takes time. MS for example, didn't do enough testing in their X-box 360 due to their rush to get out before their man rival Sony (and to a lesser degree, Nintendo). The result? Massive RRoD problems >_>
Yeah, there's a gigantic page on Wikipedia that show at length all the problems the 360 as. Looking at it, it's a wonder anyone buys it. They could release every favourite series of mine on it, I still wouldnt buy it.
Nobody can bloody do that, except in classic 60GB Model.
Thats why I didn't get it because I was waiting to see if Sony puts in the emotion engine like USA but instead they removed it completely.