The PlayStation 3 (colloquially known as the PS3) is the next video game console in Sony's PlayStation series. Currently, PlayStation 3 is estimated to be available sometime in 2006, but recent developments suggest that it may in fact arrive as late as 2007, or as early as fall (October to December) 2005.

Technology

CPU

The PlayStation 3's CPU will be a chip codenamed "Cell", and the system will use chip-to-chip interface technology and memory technology from Rambus. Cell's technical details [1] were released at the February 2005 ISSCC. IBM has won the contract to produce Cell chips for the console. The CPU's supposed distributed processing features have been of great interest to the press, speculation being that many items in the home, with differing numbers of Cell chips, can pool their power. Cell is a very agressively timed processor that contains a core based on the IBM POWER architecture and several somewhat independent fast vector processing units called APUs. The apparent massive parallelism advantages afforded by this design have interested some, but many are skeptical that Cell may only perform well as a fast vector processor and be badly suited to run highly scalar code. Early versions of the chip will be 90-nm, with a change to a 65-nm process, if cost and performance allow. Abstracts from presentations to be presented at ISSCC show the Cell processor running at 4.6 GHz.

GPU

In December 2004, Nvidia announced that they have been in a multiyear agreement with SCEI to develop the PlayStation 3's GPU [2], a custom variant of their next-generation graphics processor. In fact, they had worked for two years on the chip before making the announcement. They were previously responsible for the GPU in the Xbox console. The GPU will be manufactured at the joint Sony/Toshiba fabrication facility in Nagasaki, Japan.

RAM

Reuters news service reports that Elpida will be supplying the RAM used in the PlayStation 3, and the company confirms speculation that the PlayStation 3 will utilize the 512 megabit version (64 Megabyte per RAM chip) of XDR DRAM , with Rambus' interface technology. Up to four can be used per Cell chip, for a maximum RAM figure of 256 Megabytes per Cell Chip.

Fixed storage

In addition to the DVD standard of the PlayStation 2, Sony has announced that it will use Blu-ray Discs. The Blu-ray drive will probably be compatible with current DVDs, enabling the console to play DVD movies and likely PlayStation 2 games. As with Xbox Next, there have been persistent rumors that the PS3 will not have a built in hard drive.

PlayStation 3 standards

Unlike the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 systems, Sony appears to have chosen publicly-available application programming interfaces and technologies for the PlayStation 3. The current list of open standards Sony has chosen includes:

• Cg, Nvidia's C-like shading language.
• COLLADA, an open, xml-based file format for 3D models.
• OpenGL ES 2.0, the embedded version of the popular OpenGL graphics API.

The list of ones they are considering includes:

• IPv6, for connection to the next-generation Internet [3].
• OpenMAX, a collection of fast, cross-platform tools for general "media acceleration," such as matrix calculations.
• OpenVG, for hardware-accelerated 2D vector graphics.

Anticipation

As the latest in a series of extremely popular game consoles, anticipation surrounding the PS3 is high. Fans have already started designing images of what they think the console will look like. However, there have not been any official designs publically released by Sony as of yet. Dedicated Sony loyalists have also formed various forums, which they use to discuss all aspects of the next generation gaming system. Sony has announced that the PS3 will appear (possibly in playable form) at E³ in 2005; it was due to be unveiled by SCEA ahead of that date[4], however public and investor showings of the console before that date have been cancelled.

Competition

The PS3 will compete for marketshare with the Xbox Next and Nintendo's Project Revolution.

References

• IBM wins PlayStation 3 contract, 12 March 2001 on BBC
• PlayStation 3 to be easy on developers, Sony vows News.com
• Sony may swap properietary API for 'Open' one EE Times
• Kronos Group
• Playstation 3 Resource Centre
• PlayStation 3 Portal

See also

• List of PlayStation 3 games
• PlayStation
• PlayStation 2
• PSX
• PlayStation Portable