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PlayStation 3

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File:Ps3logo.jpg
PlayStation 3 in horizontal position.
PlayStation 3 in horizontal position.

The PlayStation 3 (colloquially known as the PS3) is the next video game console in Sony Computer Entertainment's (SCEI) market-leading PlayStation series. The PlayStation 3 is slated for release in spring 2006. It is the successor to the PlayStation 2 and will mainly compete against the Nintendo Revolution and Xbox 360. Sony has announced that the PS3 will be backwards compatible with earlier PS1 and PS2 games. At the moment, little more is known in public about the PS3 apart from its hardware specification and reports that it will support open APIs for game development.

The PS3 was officially unveiled on May 16, 2005, in Sony's conference at E3, where the console was first shown to the public. The system's retail price in America has not yet been confirmed. In Japan, the PS3 will be released for less than 50,000 yen, which is about $465 in US dollars. Kazuo Hirai claims the PS3 will not be expensive and that it will be competitively priced with the Xbox 360. [1]

A simple comparison of the system architectures appears to indicate that the raw floating point capability of the PS3 is roughly double that of the Xbox 360.

Hardware specifications

According to a press release by Sony at the May 16, 2005 E3 Conference, the specifications of the PlayStation 3 are as follows.

CPU

Cell processor:

  • PowerPC based core (PPU) clocked at 3.2 GHz
  • 1 VMX (IBM's branding for AltiVec) vector unit for the PowerPC core
  • 512 KiB L2 cache
  • 7 SPE (Synergistic Processing Elements) are programmable vector processor units clocked at 3.2 GHz each (there are eight on the chip, but one kept unused for redundancy, leaving seven usable)
  • 7 256 KiB SRAM caches for the SPEs
  • 7 128×128 SIMD general purpose register files

GPU

Custom "RSX" design co-developed by Nvidia and Sony:

  • Clocked at 550 MHz
  • 1.8 TFLOPS floating point performance
  • Full high definition output (up to 1080p) x 2 channels
  • Multi-way programmable parallel floating point shader pipelines
  • 300.4 million transistors
  • 136 shader operations per cycle
  • 100 billion shader operations per second
  • 51 billion dot products per second
  • 128-bit pixel precision

Memory

Theoretical system bandwidth

  • Main XDR DRAM: 64 bits × 3.2 GHz = 25.6 GB/s
  • GDDR-3 VRAM: 128 bits × 700 MHz × 2 accesses per clock cycle (one per edge) = 22.4 GB/s
  • RSX: 20 GB/s (write), 15 GB/s (read)
  • System Bus: 2.5 GB/s

Overall floating-point capability

File:8784671701491003.jpg
Sony comparison of PS3 performance in FLOPS with Xbox 360.

In a slide show at their E3 conference, Sony presented the "overall floating point capability" of the PlayStation 3, and compared it to other gaming hardware. The presentation claimed the PS3 to be capable of 2.18 TFLOPS, the Xbox 360 1.15 TFLOPS, and an "average" PC about 0.08 TFLOPS. In their official press release, the same statistic was reported to be 2 TFLOPS. It's possible that the figures are rounded estimations. At this stage it is unclear how these numbers were calculated, possibly being nothing more than a creative addition of the theoretical peak floating point capabilities of all the processing units in the Cell CPU and the RSX GPU. Floating point performance is a single-dimensional metric for measuring one computer against another. This means that it should not be taken as the only indicator of one game console's capabilities over another's, but rather as a comparison of one particular facet of their respective performance.

AV output

Sound

Storage

  • Blu-ray Disc: PlayStation 3 BD-ROM, BD-Video, BD-ROM, BD-R, BD-RE
  • DVD: PlayStation 2 DVD-ROM, PlayStation 3 DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW
  • CD: PlayStation CD-ROM, PlayStation 2 CD-ROM, CD-DA, CD-DA (ROM), CD-R, CD-RW, SACD, SACD Hybrid (CD layer) SACD HD, DualDisc, DualDisc (audio side), DualDisc (DVD side)
  • Memory Stick standard/Duo and standard/mini slots
  • CompactFlash Type I and II slot
  • SD slot
  • Detachable 2.5" hard drive slot (capacity not confirmed yet)

Communications

Controller

File:ImagePs305.jpg
The new DualShock 3 controller

SCEI's press release indicates that controller connectivity to the PlayStation 3 can be provided via:

Currently there is a little bit of fan-based controversy about the new Dualshock 3 controller. Many argue it is simply untastefully designed and somewhat of an eyesore, or that the controller itself is a bad design simply for playing with, all physical attributes aside. However, other gamers suggest that the controller, while a little un-traditional in contrast to the Dualshock and Dualshock 2 controllers, will provide greater comfort for extended hours of play, and that eventually everyone will "get used to it."

As of now, unconfirmed reports suggest that the PS3 may in fact support the older Dualshock 2 controllers. The number of ports to support such backward compatibility would most likely be limited to one, although this is also an unconfirmed rumour.

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 has chosen includes:

The list of standards they are reported to be considering includes:

Possible future capabilities according to E3 PS3 conference

See also

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