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PlayStation Portable Chip Details
boarder8925 writes "The Register posted an article today that detailed the PlayStation Portable's chip specs. The CPU will run at up to 333MHz, and its frontside bus at up to 166MHz. The graphics system, operating across a 512-bit bus, will be capable of rendering 664m pixels per second and 35m polygons per second. Its core, operating at 166MHz, will include 2MB integrated buffer DRAM."
Looks like a great candidate for running alternative software/OSes. I wonder what the extent of available I/O will be?
exactly how many backpacks of batteries am I going to need to go 24 hours without a socket? /gba owner and proud of it.
What does one cow say to the other? Moo.
Granted, my understanding of electronics isn't what it should be, but I always find it amazing that the processors used in these things can be so slow considering the requirements of most PC software these days.
"Sony will also build in a dedicated security engine, which it *hopes* will eliminate game piracy and attempts to hack the system." (emphasis mine)
Oh, just like with the PS2 and PS1, right? Even the GBA has a flash card you can use to play ROMs and NES games. I understand that they need to be able to say they put effort into preventing piracy, I just found it funny they had hope.
I'm a little surprised at this statistic, when the PS3's cell chip is supposed to be 65nm fabbed.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
On a pure polygon basis, that's ~50% of a PS/2 in your pocket or about ~25% of an Xbox in pure polygon performance.
Naturally, these are meaningless numbers...but if does give you a hint (especially given the pixel real estate being small) that the PSP will have proper, immersive 3D gaming capability...which I guess has been shown to good effect with the GT4 demo.
-psy
Maybe it's just me, but it sure doesn't sound like the PSP is going to be that energy efficient with specs like that. What good is an impressive portable system that sucks batteries worse than a Sega Game Gear?
seriously, this things is gonna draw way too much juice. 333mhz processors, huge screen, optical drive, etc... No matter how good the systems specs are, if battery life doesn't cut it, its going to be smoke by gameboy.
Things are not as they appear, nor are they otherwise
maybe it'll take fuel cells? (it won't, but it's something to get thinking about. energy density wise. and no i didn't RTFA. i was going to make the same joke but you got there first, bastard ;) /also a GBA owner and Ninty fan 4-ever.
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
Just thinking about where people play their gameboys. Is it really that far out of reach of a power source? Cars have the lighter ac converter and I recall always being able to find an outlet for my laptop at the airports.
Even back in the day when I had a game gear, I almost always had a place to plug it in.
mod parent up
The reason that you can do more with consoles than you can with PC games, even though consoles tend to have lower specs is that when you know what hardware the program will be running on you can do a lot more optimization.
When you have a single hardware configuration and the time to learn exaclty how it performs under what circumstances you can squeeze a lot more performance out of that hardware.
Another reasont that we don't see the same performance out of modern PC applications (game or otherwise) is that as hardware progresses, optimization gives way to higher level languages, coding styles, etc. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but if every application was optimized as much as console applications are (and if it were even possible given the variety of hardware), you'd be able to run $your_favorite_os, $your_favorite_office_suite, $your_favorite_media_player, and $your_favorite_web_browser all at the same time quite comfortably on a 300mz machien with 64 megs of ram.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
gah, hate to reply to myself, should have used preview.... forgot a chunk of what I was going to say
You also have to consider that this hardware is designed specifically for games. Standard pc hardware is very general in nature, but console hardware is not standard PC hardware, it's put together to be able to perform in exactly the ways where games need performance.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
occurs on my laptop or desktop. ^_^
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
The Cube *still* doesn't have a flourishing pirate scene because of how well Nintendo did. Small games can be loaded into main RAM over the network from a PC, or what have you, but it's such a pain in the butt it isn't worth it.
It's easier and cheaper to rent until you're done playing.
"Eliminate piracy" is a sort of statistical phrase. At least one person will eventually pirate on any system. The issue at hand is whether the pirated copies are being sold on the streets of hong kong.
and could make one heck of a controller for HVAC systems, remote monitoring, portable data acquisition, etc. Not to say that there aren't other options, but game consoles are usually cheap, reliable, and sturdy. If I can do all that /and/ play games on it, it's another opportunity for experimentation and learning on my end.
"crippled by 640KB of memory."
Are we talking about the PS2, or the PS/2?
Completely impossible, given the fact that the PSP 'discs' are much smaller.
It seems to be something Sony themselves are trying to keep distanced from actually, they are pushing very hard to make sure developers don't just port across old PS1 and 2 games...
Seriously. The whole reason i own a gameboy SP (and i imagine why its so popular) is because i can put it in my pocket easily and take it on travel. Plane rides, train rides, backseat of the car. ALL of those places are tough to get any sort of power plug from. Yeah ok the car you may be able to plug in the cigarette lighter but thats about all. many times you can't though. At least on my travel. I haven't traveled in a plane yet for my budget that gives me a plug in recepticle.
.. i have XBOX Computer/PS2 whatever else. Why play the portable when you're not moving.
99% of my gameboy play is in that travel mode. I mean hell, when i'm home
Who makes you Sig?
So this means we can play Doom 3 on it, right?
:)
If we play In 80x50 mode, basic graphics, and turn off the extras like shadows?
Check out the best P2P sharing website: MEDIACHEST.COM
He's asking about the PS3, not the PSP. I don't think there has been word either way if the PS3 will be backwards compatible with the PS2/PS1 or not yet.
One word: NPatches.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
But they're promoting GT4 on the PSP as the killer app...
Also, they promised you'd be able to transfer saves of many games between PS2 and PSP, which only makes sense if the game the saves belong to is a port, no?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Are we talking about the PS2, or the PS/2?
it makes no difference, "640KB is enough for anybody"
"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Yes, sorry. I realised after posting this initial question that the article was about a different product. Sorry for the confusion...
RM
I have no sig yet I must scream.
Extremetech ran this 2 days ago. My story submission was denied yesterday. Heres the link:
0 ,00.asp
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,163925
It really might not be that big of a deal, I almost always play my GBA within easy reach of a power source, so the PSP would be fine for me if your thinking about powering it. However, I'm not going to buy a very expensive new portable system just to play Metal Gear Card Battle Deluxe. If they don't get some abosolutely must have games that aren't available anywhere else then it's going to fail in a big way.
I'm just looking forward to playing games with a little more action and carnage. You just don't find games like Twisted Metal and Grand Theft Auto on the GBA.
A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men... --Willy Wonka
It may also have to do with the fact that the discs are read from outside-in, instead of the other way around, like normal CDs and DVDs.
You're seeing the effects of the second layer of DVD-ROM, which is in fact read from outside-in rather than inside-out like CDs and the first DVD layer. Some of the consoles put their boot sector at the beginning of the second layer because in 2001, DVD-Rs didn't have a second layer.
And by the way: Do NOT believe rumors that some consoles' discs spin backwards.
Games that load an entire map into RAM at the start of a play session wouldn't have much of a problem, but then they'd have to store the whole background music in RAM (quite possible with Vorbis) or use tracked music (such as midi, mod, xm, s3m) like Super NES, N64, and some PS1 games used. But be prepared to see mission objectives displayed on a Loading... screen more often than you have on other consoles whose games stream parts of the map as the player approaches them.
It's easier and cheaper to rent until you're done playing.
Assuming you live within an hour's bus ride of a rental store that has a selection beyond just a dozen older best sellers.
Chances are that non-music related functions will be locked out in hardware when using the memory stick slot.
On PS1, Dreamcast, PS2, and GameCube, savegames go to the memory card. If PSP games can't access the memory card, then where will the savegames go? If not, how will Sony attract developers if all games must be played through in one sitting?
Why play the portable when you're not moving.
Because GBA has exclusive titles. Nintendo hasn't made WarioWare for Xbox, PS2, or Windows, and you haven't mentioned any GameCube Game Boy Player.
Action != violence.
If you want action, go play WarioWare. In each scene, which comprises three seconds between "action" and "cut", you have to look around, find the objective, and perform it. Try doing that 25 times in a row, and you'll realize what "action" really is.
Granted, it's a pain to pirate the GC, but I can't believe that's the only reason why piracy isn't more rampant. I have to think that the low number of games that are worth even pirating has to do with it. Sure there's a few really good GC only games, but who's going to go to all the trouble of hacking a HD or external DVD drive into a GC to play Metroid Prime only?
A lot of comments here have focused on battery life. I think that the integrated chipset may have another potential benefit. It may make the PSP easier to develop for. If this is the case, it will give the PSP a better chance of competing with the GBA and the DS. It has already been reported that Gran Turismo for the PSP will be a nearly straight port from the PS2 version. Assuming this is not overly difficult, it means that the PSP should be able to draw on the large library of PSOne and PS2 games for its first generation. Hopefully some brand new stuff will be made too, but living off of ports isn't so bad in the first year.
Ease of development was a big plus for the original Playstation. And the initial difficulty of development hobbled the PS2 (killed Saturn). Hopefully Sony is designing the PSP with development considerations in mind. Of course those batteries had better last more than a couple of hours too!
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Considering that the only other serious cartridge-based contenders in the history of portable gaming went under because of battery life...
:)
I'd have to say yes. Battery life really IS that important.
It wasn't technical (Lynx and GameGear were so much more advanced than a Gameboy it wasn't even funny). It wasn't game libraries (both of the Gameboy's competitors had a lot of good games for them - and this is back before the Gameboy had 1000's of titles). It was battery life, pure and simple. The Gameboy was a complete and utter piece of garbage when compared to a GG or Lynx. However, you could ACTUALLY USE IT AS A PORTABLE. Well, that and it had Tetris
Gameboy beat its competitors by the biggest margin in the industry. The PSP will have to get at LEAST 4-6 hours on a charge to survive kids taking it to school, trips, etc. And honestly, with people accustomed to the 20+ hours on a GBA, it's going to be really hard to convince people that you have to charge the thing up *every single time you use it*.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Don't forget Sony is using their "minidisc' media (or whatever they call it). That's going to be spinning an awful lot for loading and such. I think that will be the biggest drain of all.
Have you ever used a minidisc player? They have incredible battery life. My old minidisc player can last days before I need to recharge the batteries and that's with playing it most of the time.
As most of the other comments and articles point out the media IO is not going to be as big as a drain as powering the screen and the rest of the CPU.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
And I wrote software for modifying game content for downloaded gamecube games! yay!
http://gcmtool.sf.net/
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
if you stopped smoking you wouldn't have that problem.
Some handheld game players are children of smokers, and their parents provide their only mode of transportation other than between home and school. For them to suggest that a parent stop hogging the 12V socket would amount to insolence in some families, even though it would prolong the lives of both the parent and child.
It wasn't technical (Lynx and GameGear were so much more advanced than a Gameboy it wasn't even funny).
I'll give you that for Lynx; even though its screen was so much smaller (160x102 vs. 160x144 pixels for GB and GG), its CPU was faster, and its sprite engine supported sprite scaling to the point where somebody managed to coax it into hardware-accelerated texture mapping for a Wolf3D style ray caster. Game Gear, on the other hand, was just a handheld Sega Master System whose palettes had more color depth. Heck, the Game Boy and the Game Gear had nearly the same CPU (4.1 MHz Z80 vs. 3.6 MHz Z80), and the Game Boy had a more versatile sound chip.
Well, that and [the Game Boy] had Tetris
Don't tell that to a Columns fan. Also, the version of Klax on the Lynx looked so much better than the pitiful excuse for Klax for Game Boy mono, which looked more like a black-and-white version of Tiles and Tribulations than anything else. (The Game Boy Color version looks much better.)
Nintendo has had years to perfect the design of the gameboy. sony may be a bit naive by trying to cram in too much power into a battery-sucking device.
they need to balance power vs battery life
Whereas I agree with most of what you said, this last bit isn't really the case. The PS2 is the last of the big consoles to use proprietary hardware; case in point, the PSP as discussed is a series of standard issue general purpose processors (as are the DS, the PS3, the XBox and XBox Next, the Game Cube, et cetera.)
Whereas ASICs outperform GP CPUs, GP CPUs' margins allow them to be pushed harder than ASICs by a wide enough margin that GP CPUs win out in the long run.
StoneCypher is Full of BS