The World of Computing and Solutions

Sony wants to outdo Microsoft in just about every aspect. The company has taken more time to perfect its technologies, but it’s debatable whether some are really ready for prime time. In an address at the Tokyo Game Show in mid-September, Sony international game chief Ken Kutaragi criticized PC’s for having “bigger and bigger operating systems” and for losing their “real-time responsiveness”. he said that in the future PS3 will be able to do numerous nongame functions, such as personalized agents for shopping and search.

NEW GUI, NEW WAYS OF BROWSING:
Sony’s Kaz Hirai, president of the U.S. game division, added that the PS3’s Web browser will offer a different kind of experience. Hirai noted that the browser will enable a user to open a page and then set it aside on a portion of the widescreen TV. the user will then able able to open the subsequent Web pages across the center of the screen.
“When you see this in action, it chances the experience of static Web pages”. “We’ve always said that we are the first and foremost about entertainment. We are not necessarily looking to replace the PC, which is primary a productivity tool in the den. the PS3 is geared for entertainment in the living room in the home. We ar not overtaking the PC,”, he said.

The PS3 will have a graphical user interface that resembles the “Cross Media Bar” on the PlayStation Portable. With that interface, the user can quickly scroll through a variety of functions for various kinds of entertainment.

SUITABLE, YET MIND BLOWING GRAPHICS:

Sony’s $599 verion of the box will offer 1080p HD resolution and HDMI connectors. That will enable it to cram about twice as many pixels onto a screen than the Xbox 360.
The machines two teraflops of floating-point performance - twice that of the Xbox 360 - will drive the 3D experience. The bulk of compute cycles are provided by nVidia’s RSX graphics Chip.

Hirai says you’ll notice the details in human faces, which will look so real that you’ll be able to tell from a game character’s face whether he’s lying or telling the truth.

SONY CHOOSES BLU-RAY:
Sony’s Blu-ray HD storage differentiates the PS3 from the Xbox 360. Blu-ray discs store 50 gigabytes of data, compared wtih 9GB on an Xbox 360 DVD Disc and 30GB on Microsoft’s add-on HD DVD accessory. But it also adds several hundred dollars of cost. That’s why the high-end PS3 will debut at $599 for a version withh an 60GB hard drive, 5.1 dolby surround sound, built-in Wi-Fi, and slots for memory cards. The Cheaper $499 version comes iwth 20GB hard drive. Sony recently decided to add an HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) connector to the 1080p HD resolution it.

PlayStation 3:

Pricing: $499 (with 20GB hard drive); $599 (with 60GB hard drive,Wi-Fi, memory stick, SD, Compact-Flash slots)
Release Date: November 17th 2006.
Floating-point Operations: 218 GFLOP’s or about 2 TFlop’s
Main Memory: 256MB XDR RAM
Graphics Memory: 256MB GDDR3 VRAM
Microprocessor: Cell Broadband Engine, or “The Cell”
Description of cores/processing elements: PowerPC-based core at 3.2Ghz. One VMX Vector unit per core. Seven DSP’s (or SPE’s) at 3.2Ghz. Seven 128b 128 SIMID GPR’s. Seven 256KB SRAM for DSP’s. 512KB Level 2 cache.
Graphics Chip: RSX at 550MHz
Hard drive: 20GB or 60GB
Controller Type: Support for up to seven wireless game controllers or USB 2.0 ports
HD Support (HDMI, resolutions): 2 channels, Blu-ray support, upto 1080p