PlayStation 3
The Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) will be the new upcoming video game console in Sony's PlayStation series. IBM has won the contract to produce microchips for this new console. Sony said that there are hopes that the PS3 will be 1,000 times as powerful as the PlayStation 2 (PS2), though such a claim may be exaggerated as it would be far ahead of what Moore's Law would predict.
Sony will be using a chip codenamed "Cell", which has now taped out, and chip-to-chip interface technology and memory technology from Rambus. The first public demonstration has been announced for the 2005 E3 conference.
Simplex Solutions has said that they are developing the GS (graphics synthesizer) chip that will go with the PS3. It will be a 0.18 micrometre chip about twice the size of the PS2 version. Also, it will feature 256MB of DRAM and will be able to handle 75 million polygons per second with a rate of up to 2.6 billion pixels a second. The DRAM will be XDR-DRAM which will begin production mid-2005.
Instead of using 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 it to play DVD movies and Playstation 2 games.
"This isn't just an extension of what we've done in the past. We're aiming to create something fundamentally different," said a Sony spokesman.
Fans have already started designing of what they think the console will look like. However, there have not been any official designs fron Sony as of yet. Dedicated Sony loyalists have also formed a , which they use to discuss all aspects of the next generation gaming system.
Currently, PlayStation 3 is estimated to be available sometime in 2006, but recent developments suggests that it may in fact arrive as late as 2007.
PlayStation 3 Standards
Unlike the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 systems, Sony appears to have chosen publicly-available application programming interfaces for the PlayStation 3. The current list of open standards Sony is either investigating or has chosen includes:
