Playstation 3 supported by Foxconn
According to the Taiwan Economic News on 6 July 2002, the Taiwanese electronics giant Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd. (FoxConn) is aiming at joint development with Sony for the Playstation 3 console. Foxconn president Terry Guo announced that Foxconn, which is the largest privately held company in Taiwan for its turnover, has formed a Research & Development team for PlayStation 3 with Sony. [Taipei, July 6 2002]
PS3 console to be released in 2005
Japanese media reported on May 6th that the PS3 console is in development. The goal is to make new processor technology, called "grid" about 200x faster than current console technology. This is almost achieving their original goal of making the PS3 1000(!) times faster than the PS2. This goal was publically set by Mr Okamoto, the Senior VP and Chief Technical Officer of Sony Computer Entertainment, at the 2002 Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California.
The Cell - Power for Playstation 3 and ...more!
The heart of the Playstation3 will be a new chip (or rather chip set) developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM. The companies will collectively invest more than $400 million in the next five years to design a "supercomputer-on-a-chip" for the PS3. The name for this technology is "grid" (formerly called "cell") and appears to be targeted squarely at the possibilities of parallel and distributed computing over the internet. Grid computing is a variation of distributed computing, and presumably involves networked game machines sharing software, processing power and data. Okamoto also said that networking applications including downloadable software would be integral to Sony's Playstation3 console. A recent report (May 5 2002) from the Japanese News Agency Kyodo said that the Playstation 3 would work over superfast fiber optics connections and would be Sony's first console to run games without a digital video disc. Sony also is considering offering the new chip to other companies for use in televisions and electronics equipment, Kyodo said.
Excerpt from an IBM press release:
Code-named "Cell," the new microchips will employ the world's most advanced research technologies and chip-making techniques, including copper wires, silicon-on-insulator (SOI) transistors and low-K dielectric insulation, with features smaller than 0.10 microns -- 1,000 times thinner than a human hair. The result will be consumer devices that are more powerful than IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer, operate at low power and access the broadband Internet at ultra high speeds. Cell will be designed to deliver "teraflops" of processing power.
Present memory not fast enough for Playstation3
Kenshi Manabe, senior vice president of Sony Computer Entertainment Semiconductor division, said the Playstation3 will need memory with incredibly high speed and tens-of-gigahertz bandwidth. "I'm not sure that even what we have seen for DDR-II on the present (industry) memory roadmaps will be high enough performance for us."
"It's graphics, Jim... but not as we know it"
Richard Doherty, an analyst for Envisioneering, Seaford, N.Y., said that PS3 will not have a graphics engine as we know it. Instead, the Cell's architecture is likely to replace the traditional game console graphics processor model on which the Xbox and Gamecube are based, that use NVidia and ATI GPUs, respectively. The Playstation 3, as well as other applications that will use the Cell, will take advantage of the CPU's "self healing" capability. "Self-healing computers will be programmed not to go down," Doherty said. "Bus and processor areas are automatically corrected using a new meshed era redundancy technology." The Cell's compression engine, for example, will use a multi-processor engine to reconstruct missing pixels or other missing features due to glitches in a streaming PS3 game or video.
Sony's vision: PS3 as the all-encompassing home system?
If Sony's aspirations succeed, then the Playstation 3 will not be a pure video game console, but rather measure the amount of milk left in the fridge, record TV programs to hard-disk, automatically download new software, perform Tera-flop operations and a variety of other things. In short, if one can automate, computerize, network or electrify a process, then the PS3 should be able to take on the task.
"Playstation 3 Diet", anyone?
Today, a system like this sounds futuristic. A super-console, replacing TV, computer, game console and complete home electronics system in one wont be cheap. Rumors are making rounds that the PS3 will be sold in two versions, one that is the do-all Playstation 3 version with all the bells and whistles (perhaps including laying golden eggs as well?) and one that is, yikes(!), just a pure video game console.
Either way, the Playstation3 is still long away, and it may well be possible that the "super-do-it-all" version is eventually marketed under a different name. May we suggest Superstation? Or... Homestation? Here at psreporter.com, while not technophobic or fearing the future, we would feel more comfortable with a PS3 that does only one thing, but very well... to provide us with great video game experiences.
First off, I'm going to toss aside all the marketing talks spread on the web and leave out "Names" of chips. Also, let's toss aside rumors and vague news. I'm going to instead target a realistic machine spec for a Sony PlayStation 3 home game console ($300-$400 launch).
As you've likely seen on the web many times already, PS3 performance numbers are usually estimated around 1 TFLOPS. In case there is some tragic event that postpones that 1 TFLOPS performance, we should have a backup spec. Ya never know -- the planets might not be aligned properly for such monstrous power. Thus, prepare for much more conservative numbers below...just in case.
Ready for it? Let's ride...
Main Processor
200-250 Million Transistors with 90nm Fabrication
1.2GHz Clock Speed
76.8 GFLOPS
512KB SRAM
8MB eDRAM (76.8 GB/sec)
Graphics Processor
350-400 Million Transistors with 90nm Fabrication
19.2 Gigapixels per Second
Floating-Point Pixel Format
Draw Rate: 600 Million Polygons per Second (32-pixel triangle)
32MB eDRAM (153.6 GB/sec)
I/O Processor
300MHz EE+GS (PS2 Single Chip)
Store
256MB 3.2GHz Rambus XDR DRAM (25.6 GB/sec)
120GB Hard Disk Drive (Serial ATA)
DVD-ROM Drive (Serial ATA)
MemoryStick Pro
Launch Date: 2005
(Early 2005 for Japan; Late 2005 for North America)
An alternative graphics processor may include just 16MB eDRAM, but it could have some extra processing units included. However, I like 32MB as it allows higher resolution rendering and more on-chip texture storage.
Alternative clock speeds for the main processor may include 1.25GHz, 1.33GHz, and 1.5GHz. I went with 1.20GHz, since it has a certain glow that feels right.
You like that fat 120GB HDD, yes? It'll easily allow storing video, music, game saves, and game cache.
Again, remember that this estimation is based on the assumption that some catastrophic tragedy may not allow 1 TFLOPS and 65nm in time for PS3. Also, if you are expecting only 76.8 GFLOPS but wind up getting 1 TFLOPS, you'll be extra thrilled! And if you wind up only having 76.8 GFLOPS, you'll say, "Yeh, that's what I was expecting, so I'm no disappointed." It's a win-win situation!
You could view the "catastrophic tragedy" as having the PlayStation 3 designed by Chairman Steve, as I wouldn't have the magic possible only from Sony.
......
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