More details about the highly secretive "Cell" processor--slated to power the upcoming Sony PlayStation 3 game console--emerged Monday.

The new chip, touted to be a thousand times more powerful than the processor in a PlayStation 2, will be built on an advanced fabrication line in Japan, according to Sony.

The plant will use industry-leading circuitry widths of 65 nanometers, compared with the 90-nanometer widths found in today's most advanced chips. Reducing the circuitry widths allows more transistors--and hence more processing power--to be squeezed into the core. The plant will also try to cut costs by using large, 300mm wafers.

"Cell will be the basic processor for building networks," Ken Kutaragi, Sony's executive deputy president, told a news conference. "In addition to expanding its use in new applications inside the Sony group, we want to take it outside the home and expand it to a variety of areas."

Sony, together with PlayStation maker and sister company Sony Computer Entertainment, will invest $1.6 billion in the new plant in the Nagasaki Prefecture.

This puts the earliest date of release of the PlayStation 3 at late 2005, or more likely 2006, considering the amount of time needed to develop the process technology and mass-produce the new chip.

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