The Entertainment Station: PlaystationÆ 2 Specifications Announced!

On October 23rd, Sony announced the details on the upcoming revolutionary computer entertainment system, PlayStationÆ 2. Supporting both the audio CD and DVD-Video formats, PlayStation 2 offers consumers a wide range of music and video entertainment options. The new system is backwards compatible with the original PlayStation, bridging the gap between the two systems while legitimizing consumers' investment in their existing PlayStation software libraries.PlayStation2 will launch in Japan on March 4, 2000 with an unprecedented initial week's shipment of one million units. It is estimated it will arrive in the United States on September 9th, 2000. The system comes with ""Dual-Shock 2"" fully analog controllers (the only digital buttons are ëStartí and ëSelectí), which is also backward compatible with the original Playstation, an 8 megabyte memory card that is 250 times faster than the current Playstation, an optical digital output supporting Dolby Digital AC-3 and DTS output, a cable called the I.Link (IEEE1394) for HDTV connection, 2 USB ports, and a Type III PCMCIA slot.The Playstationís appearance was a key element when creating the actual machineís appearance. Its dimensions are 301mm (W) x 178mm (H) x 78mm (D) (12-inch x 7-inch x 3-inch), so it can stand on its side vertically or lay flat horizontally. Sony has announced that they will also be shipping a 15-inch LCD TV, that has been designed for PlayStation and PlayStation 2, in Japan. The TV comes with: AV, VGA output, Memory Stick Port, and PlayStation ports. The TV should also be giving the highest-quality picture possible for console systems. The price is around 150,000 yen, which is about $1,440 US and will be shipping next spring. The Playstation 2 SRP in Japan is 39,800 Yen, which is approximately $360-380 in U.S. currency.The ""Emotion Engine"" (What Makes It Work)In order to process massive multimedia information at the fastest possible speeds, data bus, cache memory as well as all registers are 128 bits; this is integrated on a single chip LSI together with the state of the art 0.18 micron process technology. The development of a full 128 bit CPU is the first of its kind in the world.Not only will this new CPU have application for games, but it will be the core media processor for future digital entertainment applications, and has a vastly superior floating point calculation capability compared to the latest personal computers. The new CPU incorporates two 64 bit integer units (IU) with a 128 bit SIMD multimedia command unit, two independent floating point vector calculation units (VU0, VU1), an MPEG 2 decoder circuit (Image Processing Unit/IPU) and high performance DMA controllers onto one silicon chip. The massive combined performance of this CPU permits complicated physical calculation, NURBS curved surface generation and 3D geometric transformations, which are difficult to perform in real time with PC CPUs performed at high speeds.In addition, by processing the data at 128 bits on one chip, it is possible to process and transfer massive volumes of multimedia data. CPUs on conventional PCs have a basic data structure of 64 bits, with only 32 bits on recent game consoles. The main memory supporting the high speed CPU uses the Direct Rambus DRAM in two channels to achieve a 3.2 GB/second bus bandwidth. This equates to four times the performance of the latest PCs that are built on the PC-100 architecture.By incorporating the MPEG 2 decoder circuitry on one chip, it is now possible to simultaneously process high-resolution 3D graphics data at the same time as high quality DVD images. The combination of the two allows the introduction of a new approach to digital entertainment and real-time graphics and audio processing.With a floating point calculation performance of 6.2 GFLOPS/second, the overall calculation performance of this new CPU matches that of a super computer. When this is applied to the processing of geometric and perspective transformations normally used in the calculation of 3D computer graphics (3DCG), the peak calculation performance reaches 66 million polygons per second. This performance is comparable with that of high-end graphics workstations (GWS) used in motion picture production.The SCEA - E-Distribution PlanSony will establish broadband distribution of digital content, beginning with the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 software libraries. In 2001, they will include a PlayStation 2 expansion module network adapter (PC card interface) and establish an e-distribution server. So that with an Ethernet connection to a broadband network such as digital cable, PlayStation2 users will be able to download large amounts of computer entertainment content to hard-disc drives that Sony will provide. To make Internet-based electronic distribution of digital content possible, the memory card incorporates an electronic transaction system to authenticate and encrypt data called ""MagicGate."" Building on the success of the worldwide best-selling PlayStation game console with hardware shipments exceeding 60 million units, PlayStation2 will make it possible to shop online, watch DVDs, listen to audio CDís, and play Playstation 1 and Playstation 2 games all on the same machine.