With the PS3, he’s again rewriting the rules of the game

Ken Kutaragi found his calling the day he bought one of the first 8-bit Nintendo NES videogame consoles. "I was really impressed by this machine, because it was totally program-driven," said Kutaragi, who at the time was working at a Sony information systems research center as one of about 100 dedicated chip engineers. "The graphics were very sophisticated compared with one of the TI computers of that time . . . but the sound was terrible."

Kutaragi helped design a pulse-code modulated audio chip for the follow-on Nintendo Super NES console, a design win that led to a corporate collaboration on a next-generation CD-based games machine. When the collaboration fell apart, Sony decided to go it alone and the Playstation was born.

Kutaragi rode Moore's Law to aggressive silicon designs that spelled success for the first- and second-generation Playstations, landing him a seat on the Sony board. From there, he drove a chip-centric strategy for the company, the latest centerpiece of which is the Cell pro­cessor. Co-developed with IBM and Toshiba, the Cell is de­signed for a broad range of Sony products, including the Playstation 3.

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Y.W. Chung
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Leroy Hood
Ken Kutaragi
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