PlayStation 3

The Sony PlayStation 3 (colloquially known as the PS3) will be the new video game console in Sony's PlayStation series. Currently, PlayStation 3 is estimated to be available sometime in 2006, but recent developments suggest that it may in fact arrive as late as 2007, or as early as fall (October to December) 2005.

Technology

CPU

The PlayStation 3's CPU will be a chip codenamed "Cell", and the system will use chip-to-chip interface technology and memory technology from Rambus. Cell's technical details [1] were released at the February 2005 ISSCC. IBM has won the contract to produce Cell chips for the console. The CPU's supposed distributed processing features have been of great interest to the press, speculation being that many items in the home, with differing numbers of Cell chips, can pool their power. Cell is a dual-core, 64-bit RISC IBM POWER derivative. Early versions of the chip will be 90-nm, with a change to a 65-nm process, if cost and performance allow. Abstracts from presentations to be presented at ISSCC show the Cell processor running at 4.6 GHz.

GPU

In December 2004, Nvidia announced that they have been in a multi-year agreement with SCEI to develop the PlayStation 3's GPU [2], a custom variant of their next-generation graphics processor. In fact, they had worked for two years on the chip before making the announcement. They were previously responsible for the GPU in the Xbox console. The GPU will be manufactured at the joint Sony/Toshiba fabrication facility in Nagasaki, Japan.

RAM

Reuters news service reports that Elpida will be supplying the RAM used in the Playstation 3, and the company confirms spectulation that the Playstation 3 will utilize the 512 megabit version (64 Megabyte per stick) of XDR DRAM, with Rambus' interface technology. Up to four can be used per Cell chip, for a maximum RAM figure of 256 Megabytes per Cell Chip.

Fixed storage

In addition to the DVD standard of the PlayStation 2, Sony has announced that it will use Blu-ray Discs. The Blu-ray drive will probably be compatible with current DVDs, enabling the console to play DVD movies and likely PlayStation 2 games. As with Xbox 2, there have been persistent rumors that the PS3 will not have a built in hard drive.

PlayStation 3 standards

Unlike the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 systems, Sony appears to have chosen publicly-available application programming interfaces and technologies for the PlayStation 3. The current list of open standards Sony is either investigating, or has chosen includes:

• OpenGL ES, the embedded version of the popular OpenGL graphics API.
• OpenVG, for hardware-accelerated 2D vector graphics.
• OpenMAX, a collection of fast, cross-platform tools for general "media acceleration," such as matrix calculations.
• COLLADA, an open format for 3D models.
• IPv6, for connection to the next-generation Internet [3].

Anticipation

As the latest in a series of extremely popular game consoles, anticipation surrounding the PS3 is high. Fans have already started designing images of what they think the console will look like. However, there have not been any official designs publically released by Sony as of yet. Dedicated Sony loyalists have also formed various forums, which they use to discuss all aspects of the next generation gaming system. Sony has announced that the PS3 will appear (possibly in playable form) at E³ in 2005, but will debut ahead of that event .[4]

References

• IBM wins PlayStation 3 contract, 12 March 2001 on BBC
• Sony may swap properietary API for 'Open' one EE Times
• Playstation 3 Resource Centre
• PS3 Portal's News Archive

See also

• List of PlayStation 3 games
• PlayStation
• PlayStation 2
• PlayStation Portable