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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."
Sony's got a habit of boasting about their products before releasing them at lower specs... I doubt that the PS3's processor will be 65nm considering that the major chipmaking companies are having a hell of a hard time with 90nm anyway and there really isn't a need for the chip to be 65nm right now anyway...
http://chrono.posterous.com/
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?
The goal is never really to defeat piracy, most sane people concede that it's impossible to defeat. What you want to do though is raise the bar high enough that most potential pirates buy the game instead of copying it. Having no copy protection would be just plain dumb, it will be beat, but Sony is hoping that it will be so difficult only a handful of skilled people will be able to do it, and they won't be able to mass produce anything that will allow laymen to pirate.
Monstar L
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
I doubt that the PS3's processor will be 65nm considering that the major chipmaking companies are having a hell of a hard time with 90nm anyway and there really isn't a need for the chip to be 65nm right now anyway...
but the PS3 is not planned until Xmas next year... that let plenty of time for the process to mature.
It's because it's not the clock frequency that matters; it's also the ammount of work per cycle that matters. Not only that, they're not general purpose processors, they're tailored for the need. GPUs, per example, are clocked much lower than most desktop CPUs, but don't try beating them pushing polygons with your brand new Athlon.
Also, there's a lot of crud the CPU won't be dealing with - the OS is much more minimal and oriented just for games.
That being said, 333MHz it's quite a lot of processing power. I'm amazed they can get chips clocked higher and higher into portables while keeping the power consupmtion down.
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"
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.
Yeah, but I think that was more to do with the fact that the X-Box so closely resembled a PC. Unless you enjoy playing rehashes of 10-15 year old games, the X-Box's lineup is now and always has been far superior to the Cube;s.
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?
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.
Gah, I remember that. Nintendo was releasing their estimated polycounts with all the effects on and everything, Sony was releasing theoretical numbers with no meaning. Heh, sure, the system can draw that many, as long as it has something else doing everything besides simply drawing. That is when Sony really, really started to annoy me. Especially since it was the final nail in the Dreamcast's already-well-built coffin.
And they clamed two hours of battery life with the screen on. That translates to what, 20 minutes?
The sad thing is, those games are actually fun.
Unlike the X-Box. Hey it's got flashy graphics! Awesome.
Dude let's play rehashes of every sports game known to man.