It hasn't exactly been easy to pin down the exact type of chips used in the new 40GB PlayStation 3s, but Sony's Kaz Hirai now appears to have finally put the matter to rest -- at least for now.
In an interview with the folks at Impress, he said that the new model does in fact use the swanky new 65nm process for the Cell chip after all, but not for the system's RSX graphics chip, which gets stuck with the same power-hungry 90nm chip as before.
Despite that, Hirai says that the new Cell chip alone is enough to "cut the power usage of the system considerably," an amount that had previously been been reported as 120 to 140 watts (down from 200 watts before).
In related news, Hirai also confirmed that neither the 20 or 60GB models (with their increased backwards compatibility) are in production at the moment, but he said that "depending on how the market reacts, it's possible for Sony to produce them again."