Next PSP 'F**king Powerful,' Packs 4-Core Cell CPU

[aethm]

OK, first of all, is the cell processor so inefficient that it can't keep up with an Intel Quad, or even a dual core? As a PC gamer, you don't need more than that for ANY GAME.

Second, The GPU is going to be the deciding factor here, why even speculate until we get some info on it?

 

[Regulas]

[citation][nom]Gin Fushicho[/nom]That would be awesome. I wanna see PS2 and Xbox worthy games on a hand held console. I'm glad I've waited.I just hope the battery lasts.[/citation]
I must be getting old. I want my games on bigger screens, not smaller.

 

[Guest]

Is no one curious about the price? With so many features supposedly packed into a handheld, this thing's gotta cost quite a bit.

 

[shinmalothar]

[citation][nom]segio526[/nom]And I know that the PS3 only uses 6 of the SPEs, but again, when they first started cranking out Cells, they yields were much too low, so they finalized on 1 PPE and 6 SPEs. If a chip came off the line with a damaged SPE, it was still good to go. If all 7 SPEs were in tact, they just disabled one.[/citation]

Isn't one of the SPE's also reserved for the XMB so in actuality the games only have 1 PPE and 5 SPE's to use?

 

[bogcotton]

[citation][nom]Netherscourge[/nom]They should have it play Blu-Ray discs too.Think about it -a portable Blu-Ray player...Yes, Sony - do it. Make it a tad-bit bigger and stick a Blu-Ray player in the thing.[/citation]

Looool!!! I hope that is a joke!?

 

[fball922]

All this power... Battery life is the obvious concern, but no physical media? All this power to push, presumably, rather incredible graphics. Question: When was the last time you played a game that took less than, say, 5GB of space after install? No physical media... Where are you going to STORE all of this stuff? 64GB of internal storage maybe? Expensive, and actually quite limiting!

Battery is concerning, but what about the storage!?

 

[rooket]

I don't think they'll sell as much as Nintendo, but it is good they are competition and having an edge over Nintendo on the CPU is nice as well. Nintendo really needs to step up all of their consoles with better CPUs and better graphics. We'll see how 3DS pans out but I believe it is going to be more novelty than image quality much like all previous handhelds clear back to the game boy color.

 

[pozaks]

I'm going to call bullshit on this. The Cell didn't turn out too well for Sony -- hard to program for, hard to write compilers and optimization for, expensive, not as fast or innovative as promised (esp with the increase in multi-core gen.purp.CPUs). The idea of using it as a general purpose CPU is dead. The only reason they would put this thing into a portable is to keep marketing the processor. But it's dead as anything other than "the PS3's processor". There are other fast, cheap, power-efficient architectures available right now and more on the horizon.

 

[Marco925]

It may be cool and all,

But if it doesn't have good games then I won't buy it.

(Good is in the perception of the buyer)

 

[Darkerson]

[citation][nom]ngom52[/nom]well, since no one asked this yet............ can it play crysis? ;p[/citation]

Go die in a fire...

 

[tacoslave]

[citation][nom]Netherscourge[/nom]They should have it play Blu-Ray discs too.Think about it -a portable Blu-Ray player...Yes, Sony - do it. Make it a tad-bit bigger and stick a Blu-Ray player in the thing.[/citation]

yes so it uses even MORE battery. The only thing that they need is backwards compatibility with the original psp and the ps2 and let it make calls. Let you buy a standalone unit for cheap or the phone version from one of the major carriers. Then they would kill both Nintendo and apple. I mean they already own ericson so i shouldn't be too hard for them. I hope this thing has at least a 8 hour battery life though.

 

[nisallik]

Nice! This baby will definitely be able to play PS2 games on the go. Running out of PSX games to play on my PSP. ;p

 

[dillyflump]

Im not one for playing gaming consoles anymore, but whats got my goat is why tomshardware now sees it fit to include unneeded profanity albeit partially sensored to get readers to look at posts.

 

[mstang1988]

Per the below:

I believe it was 8 SPE's, 1 PPE, separate rambus controller. Below is a link to what the proc looks like. ALso, PS3 originally didn't plan for a GPU but added it when MS went with a massive ATI solution for the 360. I suspect the 4 core would be used as the GPU as well and not just a CPU. The GPU also eats a ton of the power in the ps3 and makes a ton of the heat. Lets say it's a 25 watt CPU in PSP2, cooling and powering that thing would still be nightmare.

http/blog.makezine.com/Cell_Broadband_Engine_Processor.jpg

segio526 :

And I know that the PS3 only uses 6 of the SPEs, but again, when they first started cranking out Cells, they yields were much too low, so they finalized on 1 PPE and 6 SPEs. If a chip came off the line with a damaged SPE, it was still good to go. If all 7 SPEs were in tact, they just disabled one.



Isn't one of the SPE's also reserved for the XMB so in actuality the games only have 1 PPE and 5 SPE's to use?

 

[Guest]

@Kelavarus
The thing to remember is that the Cell isn't doing the graphics work in the PS3. It is the RSX chip designed by Nvidia that handles graphics. The original design of the Cell was for it to do graphics as well as the basic processing. It was also supposed to use distributed processing to boost performance. The idea was that Bravia tv's would have the cell and when coupled with the PS3 it would boost its performance. The idea is in practice with Sony's Vegas Studio software. The cell proved inadequate for those needs so part of the delay for the PS3 was integrating the RSX into the design and dealing with the thermals, not solely because of bluray. Also the cell is not a true multi core chip, it utilizes several co-processors for specific functions such as floating point calculations. The idea is similar in concept to the old school x386 math co-processors.

 

[mstang1988]

*sees no possible way how it could play ps3 games*.

Games are compiled for set hardware specs and typically resolution with the GPU doing the scaling for the ps3... It's not going to have RSX I'd bet; just 4 cores CPU (one ppe and 3 spe's). If it has RSX be prepared for burned hands.

CPU is also used for tracking objects etc. Just because screen is smaller does not = less objects. Because screen is smaller does not mean AI will take less CPU horsepower. GPU = graphics and rendering.

Arggh, people are dumb.

 

[mstang1988]

*sees no possible way how it could play ps3 games*.

Games are compiled for set hardware specs and typically resolution with the GPU doing the scaling for the ps3... It's not going to have RSX I'd bet; just 4 cores CPU (one ppe and 3 spe's). If it has RSX be prepared for burned hands.

CPU is also used for tracking objects etc. Just because screen is smaller does not = less objects. Because screen is smaller does not mean AI will take less CPU horsepower. GPU = graphics and rendering.

Arggh, people are dumb.

 

[igot1forya]

4-Core Cell in a PSP and yet these tablet makers push the weakest CPU's in the world on us. Sony, why are you not getting in on this?

 

[amplexis]

I wonder what features they are going to remove after they have sold 25 million devices? Since they aren't advertising Linux, I'm putting my money on WiFi, that must be a security risk.

 

[slimkiller]

I nearly vomited by looking at that design