"There’s a set of tools called Edge that were developed on the Naughty Dog premises, actually, by a group of very, very senior games programmer, some from Naughty Dog and some from elsewhere," Lemarchand told ThreeSpeech.
"...That’s why we think we’re probably only using 30 or 40 percent of the power of the PS3 right now, and there’s this great, untapped potential."
Lemarchand called the tools "low-level libraries" and said they are available for free to third-party developers. Naughty Dog is the developer of the sharp-looking Uncharted: Drake's fortune, and is a Sony first-party studio.
Sony Computer Entertainment announced the Edge toolset in early 2007, which was developed in a partnership between WWS Europe Advanced Technology Group, WWS America ICE team and WWS America Tools and Technology group.
"Rather than overarching engine, these teams have chosen to create specialized systems that demonstrate best practices of SPU and RSX utilization," Sony said at the time.
The Cell is made up of a PowerPC core, supplemented by eight SPEs (Synergistic Processing Units).
This architecture has been described by developers as "exotic," and more difficult to develop for than more traditional hardware.
But Edge tools could make the development process considerably easier for developers, according to Lemarchand. "[Third-party developers] are going to be able to use them in their own ways, to get more and more and more out of the PS3 over the years."