PS3 Cell chip speed unveiled

[Grave_Addiction]

http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/7511/Cell-Processor-to-Run-at-46-Ghz/

When Sony reveals the technical details of the highly-anticipated advanced microprocessor code-named Cell, they will announce that the new processor will run at 4.6 gigahertz. IBM, Sony and Toshiba will present four technical papers next month at the International Solid State Circuits Conference to be held in San Francisco.

The Cell is a multicore chip comprising a 64-bit Power processor core and multiple synergistic processor cores capable of massive floating point processing. Cell is optimized for compute-intensive workloads and broadband rich media applications, including computer entertainment, movies and other forms of digital content.

Sony plans to use the Cell to power its next generation PlayStation as well as home servers for broadband content and high-definition televisions.


Other highlights of the Cell processor design include:

* Multi-thread, multicore architecture.
* Supports multiple operating systems at the same time.
* Substantial bus bandwidth to/from main memory, as well as companion chips.
* Flexible on-chip I/O (input/output) interface.
* Real-time resource management system for real-time applications.
* On-chip hardware in support of security system for intellectual property protection.
* Implemented in 90 nanometer (nm) silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology.

-----------------------------------
That makes my 1.8 ghz Dell pee in its pants.

[Reality's Fringe]

So......can I play games on it?

[RelentlessRolento]

sweet... even I feel obsolete now...

[whiteboy]

theres my new compu...er... i mean playstation.

[Alpha2]

Is it thinking?

:P

[FriskyTanuki]

Why is an Xbox site releasing specs on the PS3? There's something not right about that, but I'm liking it. 4.6 GHz is "holy shit" speed, and I can't wait to see what it can do.

[RaekwonThaChef]

4.6? Meh.
From all the hype about the amazing new technology that the cell processor was, I expected more.

[Tromack]

My bet is that it is akin to the PS2. Very powerful but very clunky and hard to take full advantage of.

[Wshakspear]

...."The new Playstation 3 name is HAL"

"In and ugly mix-up today, the PS3 mugged Deep Blue after just barely loosing a chess match..."

"Buy the New George Foreman Playstion...play the newest games AND quickly cook multiple hamburger patties!"

"It's actually the PS4 now"

sorry, amusing myself

[Sarang01]

My bet is that it is akin to the PS2. Very powerful but very clunky and hard to take full advantage of.

Exactly. Who cares how powerful it is if it's a pain in the ass to program for? Sony better pray this isn't like the PS2x10 or more in programming difficulty.

[alongx]

Touche Sony, I thought I'd be underwhelmed with your Cell like I was with the Emotion Engine, but I am rather impressed.

[Kaijufan]

But will the PS3 version run at 4.6 Ghz? Right now the Athlon 64 4000+ costs over $700. Even with prices decreasing I wouldn't be supprised if a 4.6Ghz processor costs $700 a year from now.

[Reality's Fringe]

Can it warm up my pop-tarts?

[epobirs]

If you think the PS3 is going to run at that speed I've got a bridge to offer you for a once in a lifetime price.

This is pure rumormongering that treats a lab demo from IBM as a product announcement. Running a chip in the lab at speeds unheard of in the market is not a big deal. The trick is mass production of chip providing even two thirds of that speed. when chips come off a production line they are tested for reliability at increasing speeds. It is only after this testing that the speed grade at which the chip will be sold can be determined. This is why you have an identical CPU sold in different speed grades by Intel and others. Once in a while a chip will come off the line that is remarkably free of the tiny errors and contaminants that affect operational speed. Those typically get put aside for PR demos since they cannot be reliably mass produced at that quality.

It should be remembered that this is the same IBM that is having great difficulty delivering 2.5 GHz 970 processors to Apple. Almost three years ago Intel did a demo at IDF of a Pentium 4 running at 4 GHz aircooled. The previous year this required liquid cooling. But you still cannot buy a 4 GHz PC today. The extremely deep pipelining required to produce these speed in mass quantities proved to have severe performance penalties along with horrible power usage and heat problems.

It is more than a little suspicious that this speed would be touted for a low margin consumer product when such clock rates are nowhere on the roadmap for the very high margin mainframe POWER line of system. I'll believe IBM expects to mass produce 4.6 GHz chips for consumer products when Sony is shipping real development kits running at that speed to developers.

[epobirs]

Touche Sony, I thought I'd be underwhelmed with your Cell like I was with the Emotion Engine, but I am rather impressed.

Reserve your praise until developers actually have product to show on real hardware. We've been down this road before.

[FriskyTanuki]

...."The new Playstation 3 name is HAL"

"In and ugly mix-up today, the PS3 mugged Deep Blue after just barely loosing a chess match..."

"Buy the New George Foreman Playstion...play the newest games AND quickly cook multiple hamburger patties!"

"It's actually the PS4 now"

sorry, amusing myself

If you want something amusing, the Xbox 2 dev kits run on an Apple Power Mac G5.

[Cracka]

damn, with speeds like that it'll knock off the 10 hours of load times for each game. I'll be beating games in 2 hours.

[epobirs]

...."The new Playstation 3 name is HAL"

"In and ugly mix-up today, the PS3 mugged Deep Blue after just barely loosing a chess match..."

"Buy the New George Foreman Playstion...play the newest games AND quickly cook multiple hamburger patties!"

"It's actually the PS4 now"

sorry, amusing myself

If you want something amusing, the Xbox 2 dev kits run on an Apple Power Mac G5.

If you're planning to build a game system around PowerPC processors with a high-end ATI video video system, what else would you use for an off the shelf setup to get things started before you have working boards? Especially after IBM allowed Apple to kill CHRP and thus the market for PPC desktop systems other than Apple's.

Nintendo did the same thing for GameCube on the then current generation of Macs but this failed to make any news. Is it any wonder the world's largest Mac software developer would do the same?

[Grave_Addiction]

If you think the PS3 is going to run at that speed I've got a bridge to offer you for a once in a lifetime price.

This is pure rumormongering that treats a lab demo from IBM as a product announcement. Running a chip in the lab at speeds unheard of in the market is not a big deal. The trick is mass production of chip providing even two thirds of that speed. when chips come off a production line they are tested for reliability at increasing speeds. It is only after this testing that the speed grade at which the chip will be sold can be determined. This is why you have an identical CPU sold in different speed grades by Intel and others. Once in a while a chip will come off the line that is remarkably free of the tiny errors and contaminants that affect operational speed. Those typically get put aside for PR demos since they cannot be reliably mass produced at that quality.

It should be remembered that this is the same IBM that is having great difficulty delivering 2.5 GHz 970 processors to Apple. Almost three years ago Intel did a demo at IDF of a Pentium 4 running at 4 GHz aircooled. The previous year this required liquid cooling. But you still cannot buy a 4 GHz PC today. The extremely deep pipelining required to produce these speed in mass quantities proved to have severe performance penalties along with horrible power usage and heat problems.

It is more than a little suspicious that this speed would be touted for a low margin consumer product when such clock rates are nowhere on the roadmap for the very high margin mainframe POWER line of system. I'll believe IBM expects to mass produce 4.6 GHz chips for consumer products when Sony is shipping real development kits running at that speed to developers.

Thank you, epobirs. You are always there to take that glimmer of hope we have and crush it beneath your boot like a child squashes a beetle. :D

In all honesty, you make a very good point.

[Grave_Addiction]

damn, with speeds like that it'll knock off the 10 hours of load times for each game. I'll be beating games in 2 hours.

I still bet Resident Evil Online will have long-ass load times.

[msdmoney]

epobirs already summed it up from a more technical angle, but I can agree. Intel scrapped plans for a 4 ghz pentium and is now moving to dual cores, amd is also going to dual cores and isn't anywhere near 4 ghz (although it's not a direct comparison), the mac is stuck at 2.5 ghz(?) but suddenly sony has a 4.6 ghz processor. I will beleive it when I see it.

[bbfinster]

Any news on the release date of the PS9? I am so looking forward to eating pills that take you into games. (Anyone recall that commercial?)

EDIT: Just to keep this on topic, I think the PS3 will be the one system to rule them all. I hope I'm right. My stock in SNE is crap right now.

[Cracka]

ps9 wont be a game, its gonna be a box with a pistol, some steroids, and some painkillers in it.

[Dr Mario Kart]

...."The new Playstation 3 name is HAL"

"In and ugly mix-up today, the PS3 mugged Deep Blue after just barely loosing a chess match..."

"Buy the New George Foreman Playstion...play the newest games AND quickly cook multiple hamburger patties!"

"It's actually the PS4 now"

sorry, amusing myself

You've hit it right on the head. This is the Japanese PS4, which will be released in the U.S. as the PS3 - Easy. This will cause much confusion in the gaming community when the PS5 is released under the correct name in both Japan and the U.S.

Then, there will be at least 2 spin off PS systems and one movie.

[Reality's Fringe]

And yet....my questions go unanswered. :(

[FriskyTanuki]

...."The new Playstation 3 name is HAL"

"In and ugly mix-up today, the PS3 mugged Deep Blue after just barely loosing a chess match..."

"Buy the New George Foreman Playstion...play the newest games AND quickly cook multiple hamburger patties!"

"It's actually the PS4 now"

sorry, amusing myself

If you want something amusing, the Xbox 2 dev kits run on an Apple Power Mac G5.

If you're planning to build a game system around PowerPC processors with a high-end ATI video video system, what else would you use for an off the shelf setup to get things started before you have working boards? Especially after IBM allowed Apple to kill CHRP and thus the market for PPC desktop systems other than Apple's.

Nintendo did the same thing for GameCube on the then current generation of Macs but this failed to make any news. Is it any wonder the world's largest Mac software developer would do the same?

Thanks for missing the joke.

[Wshakspear]

And yet....my questions go unanswered. :(

Yes, but thats only one-time use

[epobirs]

...."The new Playstation 3 name is HAL"

"In and ugly mix-up today, the PS3 mugged Deep Blue after just barely loosing a chess match..."

"Buy the New George Foreman Playstion...play the newest games AND quickly cook multiple hamburger patties!"

"It's actually the PS4 now"

sorry, amusing myself

If you want something amusing, the Xbox 2 dev kits run on an Apple Power Mac G5.

If you're planning to build a game system around PowerPC processors with a high-end ATI video video system, what else would you use for an off the shelf setup to get things started before you have working boards? Especially after IBM allowed Apple to kill CHRP and thus the market for PPC desktop systems other than Apple's.

Nintendo did the same thing for GameCube on the then current generation of Macs but this failed to make any news. Is it any wonder the world's largest Mac software developer would do the same?

Thanks for missing the joke.

I didn;t miss it. I just thought it was tedious, lame, and old. It got overplayed when the information was new. Continuing to dredge it up is just posting for the sake of posting.

[Xtreme331]

Ok.... so can i play now? how about now?




now?.....



















what about now? :D

[Puzznic]

In breaking news the PS3 wil still have jaggies, 2 controller ports, and be about as reliable as an 80 year old man's erection.

[Grave_Addiction]

In breaking news the PS3 wil still have jaggies, 2 controller ports, and be about as reliable as an 80 year old man's erection.

I will shoot a small puppy if the PS3 only has two controller ports.

[sblymnlcrymnl]

* Implemented in 90 nanometer (nm) silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology.

That sounds tasty.

[BULL_Ship]

In breaking news the PS3 wil still have jaggies, 2 controller ports, and be about as reliable as an 80 year old man's erection.

I will shoot a small puppy if the PS3 only has two controller ports.

start digging lol

On the post about hard to program I would think otherwise. The graphics chip will be a nvidia chip and programmers have been working with their chips for years its not some cryptic home brew sony chip. If nvidias chip works like every chip they made since the geforce 1 the main cpu doesn't really matter.

This 4.6ghz stuff is nonsence this is a risc based chip they have always been running at much lower clock speeds than the cisc. The clock speed isn't everything though both chips get the job done.

[CaseyRyback]

damn, with speeds like that it'll knock off the 10 hours of load times for each game. I'll be beating games in 2 hours.

I still bet Resident Evil Online will have long-ass load times.

gotta love that hard drive

and the fact that CAPCOM and KONAMI are probably going to mainly develop for the PS3 had me sold before it was even finished

[SteveMcQ]

Numbers mean nothing to me.

*woohoo! post number 1285!!!!*

[spincut]

man, for some of these technical post they sure are being a little presumptious, i'm surprised people put so much stock in them.

firslt, the Intel CPU, and MAC CPU's are two different CPU brands, the mac motoral cpu has always been known to have been clocked lower, and yes the intel has hit a wall with 4 ghz, but neither of them are the Cell CPU, Mhz may mean a totally different thing for this CPU and how it works. I'm also sure it being 90M, a process only recently implemented, could help for whatever temps such a fast speed could encounter.

also keep in mind the timeframe, this isnt slated to come out NOW, it's slated to come out a while from now (i already assume there will be production delays, just on principle and the enormity of the whole thing), so a 4.6ghz CPU doesnt exactly sound all too unreasonable, as an "equivicably" rated one will probably exist by or before then.

of course speed aside, we still have no idea how successfully the "unique" stuff about cell will function. It could just make the speed of it totally irrelevent if the dual core design of the chip is good. I'm pretty obtimistic though.

-and i hope i'm at E3 to see it.

[suko_32]

Still, why is this on a x-box site?

[XboxMaster]

If you think the PS3 is going to run at that speed I've got a bridge to offer you for a once in a lifetime price.

This is pure rumormongering that treats a lab demo from IBM as a product announcement. Running a chip in the lab at speeds unheard of in the market is not a big deal. The trick is mass production of chip providing even two thirds of that speed. when chips come off a production line they are tested for reliability at increasing speeds. It is only after this testing that the speed grade at which the chip will be sold can be determined. This is why you have an identical CPU sold in different speed grades by Intel and others. Once in a while a chip will come off the line that is remarkably free of the tiny errors and contaminants that affect operational speed. Those typically get put aside for PR demos since they cannot be reliably mass produced at that quality.

It should be remembered that this is the same IBM that is having great difficulty delivering 2.5 GHz 970 processors to Apple. Almost three years ago Intel did a demo at IDF of a Pentium 4 running at 4 GHz aircooled. The previous year this required liquid cooling. But you still cannot buy a 4 GHz PC today. The extremely deep pipelining required to produce these speed in mass quantities proved to have severe performance penalties along with horrible power usage and heat problems.

It is more than a little suspicious that this speed would be touted for a low margin consumer product when such clock rates are nowhere on the roadmap for the very high margin mainframe POWER line of system. I'll believe IBM expects to mass produce 4.6 GHz chips for consumer products when Sony is shipping real development kits running at that speed to developers.

Thank you, epobirs. You are always there to take that glimmer of hope we have and crush it beneath your boot like a child squashes a beetle. :D

In all honesty, you make a very good point.


I'm glad he crushed my hope. I don't want the PS3 taking all the attention. :D

[Eclipse]

WARNING: THIS THREAD CONTAINS ANNOYING XBOX FANBOYS

Wieerd that such info found its way onto such a site. Expected: DELAYS....Confirmed news in the future: X-box2 runs at 4.7ghz

WARNING: THIS THREAD CONTAINS ANNOYING XBOX FANBOYS

[epobirs]

In breaking news the PS3 wil still have jaggies, 2 controller ports, and be about as reliable as an 80 year old man's erection.

I will shoot a small puppy if the PS3 only has two controller ports.

start digging lol

On the post about hard to program I would think otherwise. The graphics chip will be a nvidia chip and programmers have been working with their chips for years its not some cryptic home brew sony chip. If nvidias chip works like every chip they made since the geforce 1 the main cpu doesn't really matter.

This 4.6ghz stuff is nonsence this is a risc based chip they have always been running at much lower clock speeds than the cisc. The clock speed isn't everything though both chips get the job done.

Keep in mind this is not the same sort of deal Nvidia made with Microsoft. When the Xbox was coming together there simply wasn't time to produce something distinct from the exisiting Nvidia product line. Thus the XGPU is just GeForce 3 with some of the imporvements that were under development for the GeForce 4. This still put it ahead of the competition and got the job done but also made for a more expensive chip than would have been designed given time.

In the deal with Sony Nvidia is not selling them completed chips as they do with the Xbox. They selling Sony a design that Sony will be responsible for manufacturing themselves. It seems very unlikely this is going to be just a variant on Nvidia's PC video chips.

Although the CEll's performance potential is being outrageously overhyped it is still going to be a formidable beast when it comes to vector processing. This would be pointless if you're going to pair it up with a GPU that is designed to be primary source of such operations in a system. In all likelihood wha tNvidia will deliver the specs for is a chip that will be a lot like the PS2's Graphic Synthesizer. It will do less than a Nvidia GPU but will be highly optimized for those things it does do. Meanwhile, the Cell will function much like the exisiting chip it most resembles, the PS2's Emotion Engine. A standard CPU with a bunch of specialized function units bolted on. The Cell is more advanced in its integration than the EE but with a delivery date six or more years later it should be.

So the PS3 is shaping up to look a lot like the PS2 in basic structure. In a PC the Cell would be a bad idea since you'd have a processor with huge amounts of silicon dedicated to functions that are only needed in a small portion of PCs. Very little of the code found in standard business apps would gain any performance improvement from massive vector capability. This why those functions are better realized as concentrated within the video subsystem of a PC. For a dedicated device that will have graphics and several other functions that lend themselves well to parallel operations, like a video game console, it's a fine idea.

Just don't expect it to deliver greatly better numbers than a modern PC CPU and GPU combination. If it merely achieves parity for a lower cost, that is a big win.

[epobirs]

man, for some of these technical post they sure are being a little presumptious, i'm surprised people put so much stock in them.

firslt, the Intel CPU, and MAC CPU's are two different CPU brands, the mac motoral cpu has always been known to have been clocked lower, and yes the intel has hit a wall with 4 ghz, but neither of them are the Cell CPU, Mhz may mean a totally different thing for this CPU and how it works. I'm also sure it being 90M, a process only recently implemented, could help for whatever temps such a fast speed could encounter.

also keep in mind the timeframe, this isnt slated to come out NOW, it's slated to come out a while from now (i already assume there will be production delays, just on principle and the enormity of the whole thing), so a 4.6ghz CPU doesnt exactly sound all too unreasonable, as an "equivicably" rated one will probably exist by or before then.

of course speed aside, we still have no idea how successfully the "unique" stuff about cell will function. It could just make the speed of it totally irrelevent if the dual core design of the chip is good. I'm pretty obtimistic though.

-and i hope i'm at E3 to see it.

The laws of physics are the same for all semiconductor companies. None of them is getting any special favors from the universe, so they all face the same difficulties in ramping up clock speed. Two different architectures may produce different benchmark results for a given clock rate but both face the same difficulties in reaching that clock rate.

It isn't just a matter of reducing the manufacturing process. Every major fab operation has 90 nanometer chips coming off the line right now. (The target process for the Cell is 65 nanometer feature sizes.) This part of he issue is only a contrbuting factor. The design of the processor itself has to allow for interactions with memory and the rest of the world in a fashion that moves data and code through the chip at the designated speed. Otherwise the chip will spend a lot of time in a wait state until the rest of the system finally delivers more byte to process. This is why older designs are confined to older manufacturing processes over time. You could make a incredibly fast 6502 CPU (as seen in most 8-bit home computers and the NES) but it would very difficult to use the speed effectively. One company produced 6502 chips at .25 micron but this was primarily for a tiny package that could run for months from a single AAA battery. The application was things like remote data gathering stations that might be serviced only once a year.

The reason modern CPUs are so huge in terms of transistor counts is not merely the wider pathways throughout but because those paths are so numerous as well. The pipeline of even a so-called RISC chip like the IBM 970 (aka G5) is immensely complex compared to any single chip a decade earlier. This complexity is needed to take advantage of the speeds offered by modern maunfacturing processes. The trick is keeping everything flowing. If a branch prediction unit estimates wrong it severely stall the CPU for many clock cycles. This also requires a lot of software cooperation, too. Without a lot of work by the compiler the code produced by a human working at any reasonable speed will never allow for smooth operation. humans just aren't designed to work that way. One of the major reason developers had trouble learning to use the PS2 properly was that there were no good compilers optimized for it and it was very unlike anything most developers were accustomed to using. A lot of mental gymnastic were required that are unnecessary on most other systems.

The Cell is facing the same problem magnified. Most experience chip analysts are suggesting that the real wizardry will be in IBM delivering a compiler that prevents the Cell from being a nightmare environment in which to produce optimized software.

[willardhaven]

Hey maybe this time Sony will make some consoles that don't break...

Seriously, I'd take a more stable, durable unit over a technically advanced one any day.

[mykevermin]

The speed is not news; it's narrowing down specs (and even epobirs presents a worthwhile argument against that, even). With the PS3, would anyone expect less than what's being suggested here?

Sony has always promised the moon, and then ignored the inevitable problems when they arise (not that I think, as hardware developers, Sony is doing this alone). Ken Kutaragi was noted as having made some smarmy comment about consumers' displeasure with the PSP's square button, implying that the fans had problems, not Sony. :shock:

What I'd like to see is this Xbox site get to the bottom of all these weirdo 'cartridge' patents that Microsoft keeps filing for the Xbox 2. What gives?

myke.

[epobirs]

A simple intro to pipelining and its role in allowing higher clock rates to be applied:
http://www.laynetworks.com/Pipelining.htm

The problem is that deep pipelines can become unmanageable and result in performance losses. This is what happened tot he most recent generation of Pentium 4 (Prescott) that was intended to carry the line up to and beyond, where its planned successor, Tejas, would pick up.

Presoctt has delivered higher clock rates but only at a cost of very high power draw and heat problems. The performance gains meanwhie weren't evident due to the cost whenever the pipeline stalled. The entire Pentium 4 design was driven by high clock rates. This was very effective for a time, especially for some multiedia tasks but the barrier was hit much sooner than Intel had hoped and now they've had to re-evaluate their plans.

The multicore designs they're developing are very helpful for a multitasking environment like a PC or server but their value for single app environments like a game console is harder to find and adds a lot of complexity for developers. A more hopeful option is the Pentium M series created by Intel's design center in Israel. (You'd be amazed at how much tech comes out of that tiny country.) This uses a design much more akin to the Pentium III (which could easily have continued up through 2 GHz if Intel had chosen) and AMD's Athlon series. It has much lower clock speeds but much better performance than a P-4 at those rates. It will still be a good while before it catches up to the current top of the line P-4 and even longer before they start to serious push the clock rates again.

[epobirs]

The speed is not news; it's narrowing down specs (and even epobirs presents a worthwhile argument against that, even). With the PS3, would anyone expect less than what's being suggested here?

Sony has always promised the moon, and then ignored the inevitable problems when they arise (not that I think, as hardware developers, Sony is doing this alone). Ken Kutaragi was noted as having made some smarmy comment about consumers' displeasure with the PSP's square button, implying that the fans had problems, not Sony. :shock:

What I'd like to see is this Xbox site get to the bottom of all these weirdo 'cartridge' patents that Microsoft keeps filing for the Xbox 2. What gives?



myke.

I suspect like a lot of patents from closely watched companies this is being made to be much more than it really is. What is being described other than a memory card? Even that distinct claim is dubious considering how PS1/2 memory saves are readily transportable not only between consoles (i.e. bringing your team over to a friend's house for league play) but also between games. Golden Sun and its sequel on the GBA are good examples of moving save data from one game to another.

This looks like a defensive patent. Not intended to keep others from doing the same thing so much as preventing them from trying do it exclusively. That companies are motivated to take such action is one of the criticisms of the current patent system.

As for the Cell's speed, I'd expect it to be well under 2 GHz. Possibly lower if multiple Cells are found within a single PS3. This may sound slow to those accustomed to the hype fostered by Intel in recent years but if the design of chip delivers as intended this will drive a very powerful graphics engine of the kind needed to get consumers to buy a new game system. A highly parallel graphics system removes the need for clock speed over all else. A faster Cell will perform better than a slower Cell but that is an objective for the future. Being an effective successor to the PS2 is and that doesn't require such stratospheric clock rate by a long shot.

[Wshakspear]

Hey maybe this time Sony will make some consoles that don't break...

Seriously, I'd take a more stable, durable unit over a technically advanced one any day.

Go buy a Gamecube?

[MadFlava]

Processor is only one part of the equation. I'm wondering how much memory will it have. One of the main complaints of the PS2 was it's lack of RAM. Also, I wonder if the PS3 will use blue ray disc for it's media.

[Nirvanaguy777]

At what point does the ps3 link up with satellites and kill of the human race as we know it.

[jalu6]

yeah, the 4.6 sounds impressive, but if this thing is still 18-20 months from being on the market, and considering how Sony likes to claim that they will keep their consoles active for 10 years, this is going to be an 8-track a few years into its lifecycle.

of course by then, processor speed won't be all that much of a problem since I'll be living in a post apocalyptic wasteland after the machines take over and I'll be fighting off Terminators along with Claire Danes and that other guy.

[Grave_Addiction]

At what point does the ps3 link up with satellites and kill of the human race as we know it.

How much do ya wanna bet their are going to be rumors of the Al Qaeda buying up hundreds of PS3s to turn our own satellites against us?

[epobirs]

Processor is only one part of the equation. I'm wondering how much memory will it have. One of the main complaints of the PS2 was it's lack of RAM. Also, I wonder if the PS3 will use blue ray disc for it's media.

You will never catch a developer complaining a system has too much memory unless he is concerned with its retail price. It is technically possible to cause severe latency issue with large amounts of RAM but you'have to bealing in gigabyte for that to become an issue on any console appearing this decade. (There were situations on the old 8-bit computers where a 48K machine would execute some memory lookup intensive functions slower than a 16K machine but those were very specific circumstances ina very slow interpreted language.)

The 32 MB of main memory in the PS2 was pretty reasonable compared to its immediate predecessor in the market, Sega's Dreamcast. The greater amounts in the GameCube and Xbox reflect their later launch dates. The Xbox motherboard had pads for 128 MB of RAM but the price was too high when the time came to freeze the design specs. If it had been affordable to include that RAM it would have made a big difference for those developers doing Xbox only titles but would have merely encourage lazy memory management for most multi-platform titles. The PS2's dominant position would have still forced developers to target it as the basis for their titles and limited the investment value of using the other consoles capabilites.

I'd expect the next generation machines to have 256 MB at the minimum but not much more at the max and that additional amount mostly in the form of localized caches for audio samples or video frames.

[MaxBiaggi3]

Who cares how powerful it is if it's a pain in the ass to program for?

Ah, but that's just it. As long as the system sells, developers won't care that it's "hard to program" for and will make the most games for it anyway (a la PS2). This generation has proved that stronger and/or easier to program for hardware alone doesn't attract the most developers.

[Indiana]

That is very strange. But if Xbox is releasing specs on the PS3 you can expect that they anticipate releasing something faster.

[epobirs]

At what point does the ps3 link up with satellites and kill of the human race as we know it.

It would do so launch day (we didn't mention that we were launching missiles?) if it lived up to its claimed performance. So we're safe.

[epobirs]

That is very strange. But if Xbox is releasing specs on the PS3 you can expect that they anticipate releasing something faster.

It's a fan site unconnected to Microsoft. A very gullible fan site, at that.

[Grave_Addiction]

That is very strange. But if Xbox is releasing specs on the PS3 you can expect that they anticipate releasing something faster.

It's a fan site unconnected to Microsoft. A very gullible fan site, at that.

I believe Teamxbox.com is the official fansite of Microsoft.

[epobirs]

That is very strange. But if Xbox is releasing specs on the PS3 you can expect that they anticipate releasing something faster.

It's a fan site unconnected to Microsoft. A very gullible fan site, at that.

I believe Teamxbox.com is the official fansite of Microsoft.

Being listed as a 'Friend of Xbox' on Xbox.com does not make their articles Microsoft Press Releases. TeamXbox's article was based on the same brain damaged Blanchard article as all the other gullible sites reporting the 4.6 GHz figure. None of them are familiar with Blanchard's past web antics that have established him as a utter crank. If it weren't for Slashdot probaably none of these site would noticed. As it is, they've shown the journalistic skills of a tree stump in turning one person of dubious distinction's speculative article into holy writ.

[jetblac]

Sounds like $449 to me

[tickdude]

4.6 GHz? Is Sony getting into the water-cooled system business, too? Maybe the processor will be elevated using maglev technology so that it doesn't burn through the case.

I have an idea...instead of bigger and better graphics, how about a revolutionary idea...good gameplay! YIKES!

[Snake2715]

Numbers mean nothing to me.

*woohoo! post number 1285!!!!*

:D :lol:

[FriskyTanuki]

Processor is only one part of the equation. I'm wondering how much memory will it have. One of the main complaints of the PS2 was it's lack of RAM. Also, I wonder if the PS3 will use blue ray disc for it's media.

Sony has said that the PS3 will utilize Blu-Ray discs.

[BULL_Ship]

Who cares how powerful it is if it's a pain in the ass to program for?

Ah, but that's just it. As long as the system sells, developers won't care that it's "hard to program" for and will make the most games for it anyway (a la PS2). This generation has proved that stronger and/or easier to program for hardware alone doesn't attract the most developers.

Yah but it hurts gamers when 90% of the games barely tax / utilize the hardware.