PSP NEWS!

[McFly]

Yeah a lot like Flipper...


Except for the part about a HW Tessellator which is more DX9 style

I wonder if the gap between the max polygons and the real world number is smaller with all those HW supported functions that on the PS2. If yes, then we can maybe expect nearly the same amount of polygons after all. I can see a GT4 port as a launch game.

Fredi

 

[Paul]

Hmm....does this mean the CELL idea isn't working as well as SONY would've liked? Wasn't PSP supposed to use a downscaled version of CELL?

It was beyond3d speculation that PSP would use a downgraded version of Cell, Sony never said anything.

I guess we were wrong.

 

[London Geezer]

Hmm....does this mean the CELL idea isn't working as well as SONY would've liked? Wasn't PSP supposed to use a downscaled version of CELL?

It was beyond3d speculation that PSP would use a downgraded version of Cell, Sony never said anything.

I guess we were wrong.

it would have been pretty cool though... i'm sure that PSP and PS3 will be connectable in one way or another

 

[V3]

I wonder when the first PSP/GameCube comparisons will surface. Graphics Core 2 looks a lot like Flipper on paper... only clocked slightly faster. Fun times ahead

Well congrats buddy, you're the first one

 

[marconelly!]

So is it correct to assume that the PSP is about 50% as powerful as a EE/GS@90nm or slightly less powerful than a DC?

From those specs, I'd say yes. It might even do more polys/sec than DC, and less textures. It's maximum specced polycont is 33MP/s, so the ingame count could peak at 7-10M which is half as much as what we get in PS2 games today.

As for FSAA on such a tiny screen, why to heck would you need that? Pixels will be super-tiny by themselves. PSOne games look MUCH better on a tiny LCD screens, than they look on a big TV.

Emulating this thing won't be easy, btw... 2XR4000 @ 333MHz + two custom GPUs... it looks more complex than DC hardware to me.

 

[akira888]

Marco, I don't know if you notice this on your screens or not but at least on the LCD I use at school/work aliasing is actually much worse than on my CRT at home, so I see an increased need for solid AA despite the small screen. Another consideration is that small text on a small screen looks much clearer with AA applied.

And it looks pretty close to what I guessed, a bit more ram and a larger raw triangle rate, but still very nice if they can keep the price down and the battery life up. And they are using compressed geometry/textures, that should rectify a main PS2 flaw. Another thing I'd like is some sort of Integer MAD/loopback unit on the rasterizer to implement effects such as normal-perturbed reflection and specular correct bump mapping. That and the device would be perfect as far as I care. Finally, Nintendo looks to have some good hard competition, and Sony looks to have bounced back nicely in the hardware design field.

 

[nondescript]

There must be something wierd with those specs, something that triggers a bug in the matrix.

Fredi

it must be THE password!!! the one that will set us free!!!

Now we just need to find out how to use it. 8)

Neo? Any hints?

Fredi

*tries to divide by zero*

"Hey! I didn't crash!"

*goes on with every day life*

 

[Deepak]

Link

Sony Hand-Held PlayStation Offers Wireless Network
1 hour, 11 minutes ago Add Technology - Reuters to My Yahoo!

TOKYO (Reuters) - Sony Corp (news - web sites) (6758.T) said on Tuesday its new hand-held PlayStation console would be equipped with a wireless network system which allows users within a close area to play games together and download game characters.

Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE), Sony's game unit, mapped out technical details of the upcoming "PSP" hand-held platform, which will compete head-to-head with Nintendo (news - web sites) Co Ltd's (7974.OS) dominant Game Boy Advance handheld console.

"We will be using some challenging technologies including wireless (news - web sites) LAN," SCE President Ken Kutaragi said at a meeting of game software makers and retailers.

"The PSP is a product with huge potential, following PlayStation and PlayStation 2 (news - web sites). The video game market may change in a big way," he said.

Kutaragi said the PSP, scheduled to debut in the fourth quarter of 2004, would employ "the latest and the most cutting-edge technologies" including two powerful micro-processors and an advanced 3D-effect graphics engine.

The new device will process data ten times faster than the original PlayStation console, SCE said.

Kutaragi also said the PSP would adopt advanced security technology which will help protect the copyright of game developers.

Sony, the dominant force in the $30 billion video game market, took industry watchers by surprise in May by unveiling its plan to launch the PSP, which features a color screen and a new high-capacity optical disc created especially for it.

The move puts Nintendo and its Game Boy hand-held platform directly in its sights, just as in 1995 when Sony first ventured into the game console business.

Sony has not set a price for the PSP, a multi-media unit that also plays movies and music, but analysts expect it to sell for 19,000 to 30,000 yen ($159-$251), well above the 12,500-yen price tag for Game Boy Advance SP, Nintendo's smaller version of its hot-selling device launched in February.

SCE plans to start distributing PC-base software emulator tools to game developers this autumn, followed by the final hardware tool next spring, Kutaragi said.

"We plan to demonstrate our prototype version of the PSP at the E3 trade show in the United States next May, and a software line-up at the Tokyo Game Show, ahead of the worldwide launch in the fourth quarter of 2004," Kutaragi said.

 

[MfA]

Since the compressed texture feature is in the vertex shader rather than the rasterizer that suggests textures are read across the bus ... that is assuming they arent calling some slow indirect method texture decompression ala PS2. If textures are read across the bus there is enough memory for 2x2 supersampling. Personally Id rather have better edge AA than that though.

Now not that I wouldnt like to be validated in my opinion that the PSP wasnt going to use Cell, believe me I do, but where the hell do these specs come from and why should they be trusted?

 

[Nexiss]

Finally, Nintendo looks to have some good hard competition, and Sony looks to have bounced back nicely in the hardware design field.

I think that is largely going to depend on just how much this thing is going to cost as well is its battery life.
Anyway, the hardware certainly sounds nice.

 

[Dub Scott]

Now not that I wouldnt like to be validated in my opinion that the PSP wasnt going to use Cell, believe me I do, but where the hell do these specs come from and why should they be trusted?

They come from Sony Meeting ...
(sorry about the image size :/ )

 

[wazoo]

I do not see how you can compare it with the DC. The Dc was able to push 1.4GFlop (peak), with 0.8GF sustained according to Sega own data, a far cry from the 2.6GF of the VFPU alone of the PSP, not counting the fact that SH4 was its own FPU and PSP has tons of extra hardware.

This thing is a nice baby.

 

[ChryZ]

AV in / out ... what?
User Programmable ... what what?

 

[MfA]

It seems they will allow the PSP to be used as a video recorder, probably through some cradle you will have to buy seperately, that would also explain the 7.1 support (completely and utterly useless for portable gaming). Guess I was wrong about the writability of the format.

The support for user programming sounds interesting (excepting some parts of course, so they can guarantuee copyright protection and still force games developer to go through their expensive licensing). I wonder if it will come with a stylus.

 

[ChryZ]

Guess I was wrong about the writability of the format.

UMD RW would be great, but I'm afraid of that the only writable device is going to be a MemoryStick, which would limit the whole MP3 or external movie fun. Let's hope for UMD RWs.

 

[Squeak]

They are going to cram all that on to a single die?! Even at 0.9nm that would be an amazing feat.
It's a bit confusing though, two or is it three R4k cores? Lots of little eDRAM pools and all that other stuff. Doesn’t look very elegant or straightforward to me, not to mention that such a design must inevitably consume more power than a "cleaner" one?

 

[V3]

They are going to cram all that on to a single die?! Even at 0.9nm that would be an amazing feat.

For handheld device too

It's a bit confusing though, two or is it three R4k cores?

Two R4k cores, one with FU&VU for the main CPU, the other with AVC for video/audio.

Lots of little eDRAM pools and all that other stuff. Doesn’t look very elegant or straightforward to me, not to mention that such a design must inevitably consume more power than a "cleaner" one?

No, this is quite a straight forward design.

 

[MfA]

Apart from the second R4000 core it is a pretty standard setup. CPU, GPU(with seperate vertex-shading and rasterizer) and audio DSP.

I expect the second R4000 is there to make it easier to have a secure seperation between the programmable parts and the DRM related tasks.

 

[Squeak]

How do we know that the VFPU isn't an APU and thus forming a simple PE with the R4k core?
Well probably not, but it would make forward compatibility with future PSPs and PS3 simpler.

 

[Blade]

This system looks extremely impressive for a handheld, but price.. battery life.. and what Nintendo (and possibly MS) does to counter it are going to be very important factors in how successful the PSP is.