PlayStation Portable Chip Details

boarder8925 writes "The Register posted an article today that detailed the PlayStation Portable's chip specs. The CPU will run at up to 333MHz, and its frontside bus at up to 166MHz. The graphics system, operating across a 512-bit bus, will be capable of rendering 664m pixels per second and 35m polygons per second. Its core, operating at 166MHz, will include 2MB integrated buffer DRAM."

Re:90nm fab

[suyashs]

Sony's got a habit of boasting about their products before releasing them at lower specs... I doubt that the PS3's processor will be 65nm considering that the major chipmaking companies are having a hell of a hard time with 90nm anyway and there really isn't a need for the chip to be 65nm right now anyway...

Battery life?

[chrispyman]

Maybe it's just me, but it sure doesn't sound like the PSP is going to be that energy efficient with specs like that. What good is an impressive portable system that sucks batteries worse than a Sega Game Gear?

Re:I Bet...

[antifoidulus]

The goal is never really to defeat piracy, most sane people concede that it's impossible to defeat. What you want to do though is raise the bar high enough that most potential pirates buy the game instead of copying it. Having no copy protection would be just plain dumb, it will be beat, but Sony is hoping that it will be so difficult only a handful of skilled people will be able to do it, and they won't be able to mass produce anything that will allow laymen to pirate.

Reminds me of GameGear..

[beesquee]

seriously, this things is gonna draw way too much juice. 333mhz processors, huge screen, optical drive, etc... No matter how good the systems specs are, if battery life doesn't cut it, its going to be smoke by gameboy.

Re:90nm fab

[Frenchy_2001]

I doubt that the PS3's processor will be 65nm considering that the major chipmaking companies are having a hell of a hard time with 90nm anyway and there really isn't a need for the chip to be 65nm right now anyway...

but the PS3 is not planned until Xmas next year... that let plenty of time for the process to mature.

Re:Reminds me of GameGear..

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think the optical drive will be a major power drain. Look at MiniDisc players. They're about the same size (physically) as the PSP's drive, and they get 50-60 hours on one AA battery. I think the drive's power usage will be relatively insignificant next to the screen and processors' usage.

Re:Impressive...

[Lisandro]

It's because it's not the clock frequency that matters; it's also the ammount of work per cycle that matters. Not only that, they're not general purpose processors, they're tailored for the need. GPUs, per example, are clocked much lower than most desktop CPUs, but don't try beating them pushing polygons with your brand new Athlon.
Also, there's a lot of crud the CPU won't be dealing with - the OS is much more minimal and oriented just for games.

That being said, 333MHz it's quite a lot of processing power. I'm amazed they can get chips clocked higher and higher into portables while keeping the power consupmtion down.

Battery life really that important?

[MBraynard]

I would guess that 99% of all gameboy playtime takes place where a power source would be available.

Just thinking about where people play their gameboys. Is it really that far out of reach of a power source? Cars have the lighter ac converter and I recall always being able to find an outlet for my laptop at the airports.

Even back in the day when I had a game gear, I almost always had a place to plug it in.

Re:Impressive...[mod parent up]

[miyako]

mod parent up
The reason that you can do more with consoles than you can with PC games, even though consoles tend to have lower specs is that when you know what hardware the program will be running on you can do a lot more optimization.
When you have a single hardware configuration and the time to learn exaclty how it performs under what circumstances you can squeeze a lot more performance out of that hardware.
Another reasont that we don't see the same performance out of modern PC applications (game or otherwise) is that as hardware progresses, optimization gives way to higher level languages, coding styles, etc. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but if every application was optimized as much as console applications are (and if it were even possible given the variety of hardware), you'd be able to run $your_favorite_os, $your_favorite_office_suite, $your_favorite_media_player, and $your_favorite_web_browser all at the same time quite comfortably on a 300mz machien with 64 megs of ram.

The Cube

[Anonymous Coward]

The Cube *still* doesn't have a flourishing pirate scene because of how well Nintendo did. Small games can be loaded into main RAM over the network from a PC, or what have you, but it's such a pain in the butt it isn't worth it.

It's easier and cheaper to rent until you're done playing.

"Eliminate piracy" is a sort of statistical phrase. At least one person will eventually pirate on any system. The issue at hand is whether the pirated copies are being sold on the streets of hong kong.

Re:Battery life really that important?

[nic barajas]

Fair enough, you are always near an electric source. But isn't the main point of a *portable* to take it with you, away from electrical sources? We all know we can keep portables plugged in all the time. But the point is that when not plugged in, they can still keep a reasonably long charge. Something like 8 hours should be good for such technology, or a company shouldn't push it. It's not worth the money.

Re:Battery life?

[NanoGator]

"The DS won't play games like Gran Turismo 4. Well, it might play games kind of like it, but not as detailed."

Though I'm a Nintendo fan boy, I concede that the PSP will have better graphics than the DS. However, it isn't clear yet that the DS would or wouldn't be able to do a decent port of it. That thing can more or less push the same polys an N64 can (fewer texture effects of course...), it'll do alright.

"But, there is room in my collection (if not my wallet) for the PSP, which is a very different beast."

Very different than what? The only ups it has are the optical media and it can push a few more polygons around. In terms of being 'very different', the DS easily holds that crown. Maybe I'm being too much of an optimist here, but I'm excited about that thing having a stylus screen (on a seperate display, no less) and built in 802.11. It'd be trivial to make that thing play games over the net. If they got that working, those two features together make for a damn interesting machine.

However, this is really an academic discussion. I'm not intrigued much by the PSP. But if you buy one, and you have fun with it, then nothing I say matters in the slightest. Know what I mean? Buy these things for fun. Stylus interface + 802.11 == 0 if the games aren't interesting to you. Equally, if the PSP ends up with games I'm interested in, I'd probably end up with one. (Heck, I'm finally getting a PS2 when GTA:San Andreas comes out.)

So, in short, hope ya end up happy. Just be careful about getting sucked into Sony's (or Nintendo's) hype. Go by the games, not by their silly claims about what their hardware can do.

Re:Battery life really that important?

[Guppy06]

"Just thinking about where people play their gameboys. Is it really that far out of reach of a power source?"

Spoken like someone who's never played with a WaveBird. In general, you'll never notice how much having to work around the length of a cord hampers you until you're given the opportunity to go without one.

After all, why does anything need batteries? Why cordless phones? Why infrared remote controls?

Re:NetBSD, here we come!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but I think that was more to do with the fact that the X-Box so closely resembled a PC. Unless you enjoy playing rehashes of 10-15 year old games, the X-Box's lineup is now and always has been far superior to the Cube;s.

Yes its very important to me!

[Monofilament]

Seriously. The whole reason i own a gameboy SP (and i imagine why its so popular) is because i can put it in my pocket easily and take it on travel. Plane rides, train rides, backseat of the car. ALL of those places are tough to get any sort of power plug from. Yeah ok the car you may be able to plug in the cigarette lighter but thats about all. many times you can't though. At least on my travel. I haven't traveled in a plane yet for my budget that gives me a plug in recepticle.

99% of my gameboy play is in that travel mode. I mean hell, when i'm home .. i have XBOX Computer/PS2 whatever else. Why play the portable when you're not moving.

Re:Battery life really that important?

[Fred Or Alive]

Even back in the day when I had a game gear, I almost always had a place to plug it in.

The Game Gear isn't exactly a good example for modern handhelds, the Game Boy series and other modern handhelds all have far better battery consumption levels than that battery muncher. You can actually use for reasonable lengths of time them without being chained to a power source. Although the PSP might be going back to the bad old days from some appearances...

Don't forget the media

[WapoStyle]

Yeah, those specs look cool, but they will drain the battery very quickly. Don't forget Sony is using their "minidisc' media (or whatever they call it). That's going to be spinning an awful lot for loading and such. I think that will be the biggest drain of all.

It really might not be that big of a deal, I almost always play my GBA within easy reach of a power source, so the PSP would be fine for me if your thinking about powering it. However, I'm not going to buy a very expensive new portable system just to play Metal Gear Card Battle Deluxe. If they don't get some abosolutely must have games that aren't available anywhere else then it's going to fail in a big way.

Re:Battery life?

[ivan256]

the game lineup on the GBA was the worst thing about it

The GBA is the last bastion of 2D RPGs and platform games. Some of the titles availble for GBA will end up being the last and greatest games available in those genres. Sure, there are hundreds of throwaway titles based on tired licenses and professional "wrestling", but there are dozens of gems amongst them. Considering the number of platforms out there that never made it to having 30-40 exclusive titles total, it's hard to complain about a platform that has 30-40 really excelent games mixed in among the 500-600 really terrible ones.

The only point I think you've made is that you can't pick out the good games amongst the bad.

Re:90nm fab

[Rallion]

Gah, I remember that. Nintendo was releasing their estimated polycounts with all the effects on and everything, Sony was releasing theoretical numbers with no meaning. Heh, sure, the system can draw that many, as long as it has something else doing everything besides simply drawing. That is when Sony really, really started to annoy me. Especially since it was the final nail in the Dreamcast's already-well-built coffin.

And they clamed two hours of battery life with the screen on. That translates to what, 20 minutes?

Re:Battery life really that important?

[tepples]

Just thinking about where people play their gameboys. Is it really that far out of reach of a power source? Cars have the lighter ac converter

City buses and school buses do not have available 12-volt lighter sockets, and neither does a car whose driver smokes tobacco.

Re:NetBSD, here we come!

[Anonymous Coward]

The sad thing is, those games are actually fun.

Unlike the X-Box. Hey it's got flashy graphics! Awesome.

Dude let's play rehashes of every sports game known to man.