… will be launched around this time next year (spring 2006) 
The Sony Playstation 3 is very intriguing.
On one hand it is a game console. And I personally don’t care about those… I mean, a Computer Scientist does not have time to play games, isn’t it ???
On the other hand, the Playstation 3 is one hell of a machine according to its specs :
Let’s see.
It uses a Cell processor (jointly developed by Sony, IBM and Toshiba) which is, in fact, a PowerPC core running at 3.2 GHz dispatching tasks to 7 (yes, seven!) vector units each with its own 128 registers and its own memory… The Cell has been announced to perform at 218 GFLOPS compared to my latest AMD Athlon64 3000+ running at 4 GFLOPS. Of course, the question is whether application developers will be able to leverage this power but things depend a lot on the quality of the optimising compilers I suppose as no one now writes directly in Assembly code (especially for RISC architectures)
It also has a GPU from NVidia called the RSX which runs at a maximum of 1.8 TFLOPS (I am feeling dizzy…) and supports 2 channels of high-definition (HD) video. Judging by some screenshots released by Sony, I can tell you that games will be photorealistic.
The Playstation 3 uses Blu-Ray Disc which can hold up to 25 Gb of data compared to the 4.7 Gb found on a single-layer DVD.
Finally, it also can handle up to 7 Bluetooth wireless appliances like a keyboard, a mouse, joypads and what not. It is also fully USB, Wi-fi and Ethernet capable.
The Playstation 3 has only 512 Mb of RAM though. And it does not have a hard-disc which is pretty disapointing.
It has the potential to become the PC killer. For that, it must get additional RAM, a hard-disc and, most important, a real operating system.
Why not Linux ?
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May 18th, 2005 at 09:36
From various sources on the net, and from eurogamer I think, they say the hdd will be optional (Detachable 2.5″ HDD slot x 1). Have a look here.
May 22nd, 2005 at 08:00
I heard that it’ll be PSP compatible and that the PSP can be used as a controller… I hope much more details will be given in E3
November 5th, 2005 at 22:37
PC Killer? Cell is vastly overhyped just like the EE was and RSX is slower than the upcoming 7800GTX 512MB being released around half a year before it. Perhaps if the PS3 could go back in time 2 years it would be a PC killer.
November 5th, 2005 at 23:32
It’s true that the PS3 is taking a long time to appear…
Now that PCs are moving towards dual-core processors and 3D cards from NVidia and ATI are becoming more and more powerful, do we really need the 218 GFLOPS of the PS3?
Only time will tell
November 12th, 2006 at 01:37
[...] Following my post from last year, I am happy to announce that the Sony PlayStation 3 has been released in Japan today. [...]