Sony playstation
The PlayStation is a video game console of the 32-bit era, first produced by Sony Computer Entertainment in the mid 1990s. The original PlayStation was the first of the PlayStation series of console and hand-held game devices, which has included successor machines including the PS one (a smaller version of the original), PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, and the forthcoming PlayStation 3.
PlayStation 3
Sony has unveiled its new PlayStation 3 console, calling it "a supercomputer for computer entertainment". The console is powered by a powerful new processor dubbed Cell, which Sony says is 35 times faster than the chip inside the current PlayStation. The machine is due to go on sale in spring 2006 at an as yet unknown price.
History
The PlayStation was launched in Japan on December 3, 1994, USA on September 9, 1995 and Europe on September 29, 1995. In America, Sony enjoyed a very successful launch with titles of almost every genre including Toshinden, Twisted Metal, Warhawk, and Ridge Racer. Almost all of Sony's and Namco's launch titles went on to produce numerous sequels.
The console was extremely popular, spawning the so-called "PlayStation Generation". Among many other games, the PlayStation is well known for the Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, Tekken, wipEout, Gran Turismo, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, and Metal Gear Solid series of games. As of 18 May 2004, Sony has shipped 100 million PlayStation and PS one consoles throughout the world. As of March 2004, there were 7,300 software titles available with cumulative software shipment of 949 million.
Nintendo asked Sony to develop a CD-ROM add-on called "PlayStation" for the SNES. However after Sony revealed that they were developing it, Nintendo instead went to Philips. This caused Sony to consider abandoning their research, however instead they used what they had developed so far and make it into a full blown console. This led to Nintendo filing a lawsuit claiming breach of contract and attempted, in U.S. federal court, to obtain an injunction against the release of the PlayStation, on the grounds that Nintendo owned the name. The federal Judge presiding over the case denied the injunction.
Detailed specifications
Main CPU
A PlayStation motherboardMIPS R3000A-compatible (R3051) 32bit RISC chip running at 33.8688 MHz
The chip is manufactured by LSI Logic Corp. with technology licensed from SGI. The chip also contains the Geometry Transformation Engine and the Data Decompression Engine.
Operating Performance of 30 MIPS
Bus Bandwidth 132 Mbit/s
Instruction Cache 4 kB
Data Cache 1 kB (non associative, just 1024 bytes of mapped fast SRAM)
Geometry Transformation Engine
This engine is inside the main CPU chip. It gives it additional (vector-)math instructions used for the 3D graphics.
Operating Performance of 66 MIPS
360,000 Flat-Shaded Polygons per second
180,000 texture mapped and light-sourced polygons per second
Sony originally gave the polygon count as:
1.5 million flat-shaded polygons per second
500,000 texture mapped and light-sourced polygons per second
These figures were given as a ballpark figure for performance under optimal circumstances, and so are unrealistic under normal usage.
Data Decompression Engine
This engine is also inside the main CPU. It is responsible for decompressing images and video. Documented device mode is to read three RLE-encoded 16×16 macroblocks, run IDCT and assemble a single 16×16 RGB macroblock. Output data may be transferred directly to GPU via DMA. It is possible to overwrite IDCT matrix and some additional parameters, however MDEC internal instruction set was never documented.
Compatible with MPEG-1 and H.261 files
Operating Performance of 80 MIPS
Directly connected to CPU Bus
Graphics Processing Unit
This chip is separate to the CPU and handles all the 2D Graphics processing, which includes the transformed 3D polygons.
Maximum of 16.7 Million Colours
Resolutions from 256×224 to 640×480
Adjustable frame buffer
Unlimited Colour Lookup Tables
Maximum of 4000 8×8 pixel sprites with individual scaling and rotation
Emulation of simultaneous backgrounds (for parallax scrolling)
Flat or Gouraud shading, and texture mapping
Sound Processing Unit
Can handle ADPCM sources with up to 24 channels and up to 44.1 kHz sampling rate
Could perform digital effects including:
Pitch Modulation
Envelope
Looping
Digital Reverb
Could handle up to 512 Mbit of sampled waveforms
Supports MIDI instruments
PC file name format: .PSF
Memory
Main RAM: 2 Megabytes (4 Megabytes on "Blue" development console)
Video RAM: 1 Megabyte
Sound RAM: 512 Kilobytes
CD-Rom Buffer: 32 Kilobytes
Operating System ROM: 512 Kilobytes
PlayStation Memory Cards have 128 Kilobytes of space in an EEPROM
CD-ROM
Originally Single Speed, later replaced with a Two Speed drive, with a maximum data throughput of 300 KB/s
XA Compliant
XBConnect.org
XBConnect is software that runs on your PC and will let you play Microsoft Xbox games and Sony Playstation (PSP) games with players from around the world. Imagine plugging your Xbox or PSP into a LAN that went around the planet. Load up Halo, Halo 2, Rainbow Six 3 or any other compatible game and you can play with people all over the world. Thats what it does for you. You dont have to pay for expensive online gaming services anymore. Gone are the days of being stuck with career modes. If you got a PC, broad band internet and a game console, then all you need is XBConnect.
