Sony's PSP Revealed

Scruff

Still over a year away but its sound sweet!

From Gamespy news

At a press event in Japan today, Sony Computer Entertainment finally revealed some concrete specs on the new PlayStation Portable (PSP) device that it unveiled at E3 2003 in May. The PSP will be Sony's first foray into the extremely lucrative handheld video game market, which is currently dominated by Nintendo's Game Boy Advance.

The specs that were announced today are stunning for a portable system. Sony claims the PSP will be almost as powerful as the PS2, and the machine'll rely on two MIPS R4000 processors for its main computing tasks. The second CPU is referred to as the "PSP Media Engine" -- no word on what that indicates yet. Perhaps it'll help handle functions like video playback?

We also have to speculate as to what the dual CPUs will mean for the PSP's ease of development. Multi- processor consoles have been notoriously hard to program for in the past -- witness Jaguar, Saturn and even PlayStation 2. Hopefully Sony's made provision to avoid this problem in the PSP. It's quite possible that the second R4000, the "Media Engine", is of secondary importance to the first R4000, so perhaps they won't need to be carefully programmed in tandem.

On the graphical side, Sony is claiming 33 million textured and lit polygons per second. It claimed the PS2 could do around 38 million, but the most graphically intense PS2 games currently sit at around 15 million. So, it'll be interesting to see what the PSP's "real world" numbers turn out to be. Whatever they might be, it'll still be a far cry beyond the GBA's feeble polygonal abilities.

As was revealed in May, the new miniature disc format, Universal Media Disc (UMD) will hold about 1.8 gigabytes of data -- about three times the capacity of the average CD-ROM. According to today's info, it seems the discs will be region-encoded, which means PSP will be the first portable game system to restrict the playing of games from other regions of the world. Unfortunate, but probably inevitable.

Perhaps the most interesting bit revealed today is that the PSP's controls will be based on the popular DualShock standard seen in Sony's regular consoles. In this case, that means X, Circle, Square, Triangle and two shoulder buttons will be present. Directional inputs will be done via a single analog stick -- goodbye, d-pad.

In any case, you can see the full specs listed below. You'll doubtless agree that PSP looks to be an amazing step forward in portable hardware power. Unfortunately, Sony won't actually unveil the machine until E3 2004 (May), while the initial games won't be shown until the 2004 Tokyo Game Show (September). So, Nintendo has a fair amount of time to ready itself for the PSP's barrage. In fact, rumors abound of game-enhancing chips that Nintendo will be building into future GBA cartridges. Whatever might occur, it's definitely an exciting time for portable gaming.

Announced PSP Specs (Preliminary)

UMD(Universal Media Disc)
60mm
Laser Diode: 660nm
Dual Layer: 1.8GB
Transfer Rate: 11Mbps
Shock Proof
Secure ROM by AES
Unique Disc ID

PSP CPU CORE
MIPS R4000 32-bit Core
128-bit Bus
1 - 333MHz @ 1.2V
Main Memory: 8MB(eDRAM)
Bus Bandwidth: 2.6GB/sec
I-Cache, D-Cache
FPU, VFPU (Vector Unit) @ 2.6GFlops
3D-CG Extended Instructions

PSP Media Engine
MIPS R4000 32-bit Core
128-bit Bus
1 - 333MHz @ 1.2V
Sub Memory: 2MB(eDRAM) @ 2.6GB/sec
I-Cache, D-Cache
90nm CMOS

PSP Graphics Core 1
3D Curved Surfaces + 3D Polygons
Compressed Textures
Hardware Clipping, Morphing, Bone(8)
Hardware Tessellator
Bezier, B-Spline(NURBS)
ex. 4x4, 16x16, 64x64 sub-division

PSP Graphics Core 2
"Rendering Engine" & "Surface Engine"
256-bit Bus, 1-166 MHz @ 1.2V
VRAM: 2MB(eDRAM)
Bus Bandwidth: 5.3GB/sec
Pixel Fill Rate: 664 Mpixels/sec
max 33M polygon/sec(T&L)
24-bit Full Color: RGBA

PSP Sound Core: VME
Reconfigurable DSPs
128-bit Bus
166MHz @1.2V
5 Giga Operations /sec
CODEC
3D Sound, Multi-Channel(7.1)
Synthesizer, Effects Machine, etc.

AVC Decoder
AVC(H.264) Decoder
Main Profile
Baseline Profile
@Level1, Level2, Level3
2Hours(High Quality) - DVD movie
4Hours(Standard Quality) - CS Digital

I/O
USB 2.0
Memory Stick
Extension Port(reserved)
Stereo Headphone Out

Communication
Wireless LAN(i802.11)
IrDA
USB 2.0

DiscoStu

batteries? a feckin nuclear reactor would struggle to power that thing.

xen

To BE Honest it sounds crap but what more would you expect from SONY or should I say SORNY!!!