PlayStation 3: Supercomputer-On-A-Chip

Status
Not open for further replies.

Julio Franco

Posts: 9,090   +2,042
Staff member
Although we are still a couple of years away from seeing the PS3, Sony's console business is nothing but gaining more and more attention after this holiday season broke their own sales mark with over 4 million consoles sold worldwide, outselling competitors by a huge margin.

Lately we have been hearing of license agreements (like that Rambus one) and registered patents for the upcoming console which give us a slight idea of what it will offer, Gamespy has an in-depth article of what's known so far, well worth a weekend read...

Cell, scheduled to hit the market in late 2004 or early 2005, differs notably from current processors. This finely crafted chunk of silicon will contain multiple chips within a single unit, and will be able to perform in excess of one trillion mathematical calculations a second. Put into perspective, that makes it approximately 100 times more powerful than a 2.5 GHz Pentium 4 CPU!
 
Looks like an interesting system. I guess this means we will be getting plenty of PS3 hype all over the net for the next year or so.

on another note the sooner PS3 comes out the sooner I can buy a PS2 cheap.:D
 
100 times more powerful than a 2.5GHz P4? Ehh...I find that a bit hard to believe, even if it does ship in a couple years. How much is this thing gonna cost?

I wonder if I could put UD on one...
 
PlayStation 3 will be able to use its broadband Internet connection to draw additional computing power from idle processors across the Internet. If still more horsepower is required, the PlayStation 3 can even tap into a home network to enlist support from other available machines.

Nobody has a comment on that? I don't really know whether to think "cool" or "scary".
 
I found this part to be very interesting

Industry analysts have confirmed that the timeline for Cell's arrival coincides with plans to release the PlayStation 3 in 2005. However, plans are also rumored to be in the works for Cell to appear in PCs, scheduled for initial release in Sony's Vaio line of personal computers. There's also a good likelihood that this über-processor will be coupled with the new format of media playback known as "Blu-Ray Disk." It employs a blue laser and is capable of realizing a capacity of 25 to 27 GB per recording layer on a DVD. That's up to 50 GB on a double-sided disk.
 
SONY is allready launching its hype machine hoping to hurt GC & XboX sales the same way it did with the Dreamcast by boasting about the PS2 quite a while before it was even available ( in limited quantities too :eyesroll: ).

The IDLE processor idea is kinda suspect to say the least. Would the "power" be "drawn" from PS3s from other users who happen to be online ? From PS3s made "available" by SONY itself ?

& BTW, how can a console be IDLE ? A game generally uses all the console's power & being idle would mean that the console is turned on but no game is running. :confused:

SONY can announce a console 10.000 more powerfull then the fastest PC, if they don't make an easy-to-program console, that power will prolly never show. Developpers had such a hard time figuring out the PS2 architecture at first, that all the early PS2 games had a very ridiculous lifespan.

PS. There are 2.5GHZ P4s ( 100mhz FSB ) available.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back