Sony Playstation 2

Computer stuff -> Sony Playstation 2

Introduction

On this one I simply must quote wikipedia:

The PS2 is the best-selling console of all time, having reached over 150 million units sold as of January 31, 2011. This milestone was reached 10 years and 11 months after the system was released in Japan on March 4, 2000. Further, Sony said it had 10,828 titles available for the system and that 1.52 billion PS2 titles had been sold since launch. In late 2009, with developers creating new games and the console still selling steadily a decade after its original release, Sony stated that the life cycle of the PlayStation 2 will continue until demand ceases. The console was succeeded by the PlayStation 3 in 2006.

I think that states pretty much why the Playstation 2 is so great.

It’s not just the hardware that makes the console, it’s also the software. Of course not all Playstation 2  games are good, but there is no other console in the world that has a library as huge as the Playstation 2 has. The Playstation 2 is technically inferior to Microsoft’s XBox, but that doesn’t mean the visual quality of the games is inferior. Developers had some issues with putting the Playstation through it’s paces in the first few generations of games, but later on the games grew better and better up to a level that really showed what the Playstation 2 could do. Just look at Shadow of the Colossus and God of War and it’s sequel God of War 2. Many other consoles never got games that truly showed the potential of the console. The Playstation 2 is just one of the lucky few. It’s just a shame that these games came 5 years after it’s original release. If there were games like that a few years earlier, then it might have pushed Microsoft to really push the XBox to it’s limits, which, unfortunately, never happened.

Specifications

CPU

  • 64-bit “Emotion Engine” clocked at 294.912 MHz (299 MHz on newer versions), 10.5 million transistors
  • System memory: 32 MB Direct Rambus or RDRAM
  • Memory bus Bandwidth: 3.2 gigabytes per second
  • Main processor: MIPS R5900 CPU core, 64-bit, little endian (mipsel).
  • Coprocessor: FPU (Floating Point Multiply Accumulator × 1, Floating Point Divider × 1)
  • Vector Units: VU0 and VU1 (Floating Point Multiply Accumulator × 9, Floating Point Divider × 1), 32-bit, at 147.456 MHz.
    • VU0 typically used for polygon transformations optionally (under parallel or serial connection), physics and other gameplay based things.
    • VU1 typically used for polygon transformations, lighting and other visual based calculations (Texture matrix able for 2 coordinates (UV/ST))
      • Parallel: Results of VU0/FPU sent as another display list via MFIFO (E.G. complex characters/vehicles/etc.)
      • Serial: Results of VU0/FPU sent to VU1 (via 3 methods) and can act as an optional geometry pre-processor that does all base work to update the scene every frame (E.G. camera, perspective, boning and laws of movement such as animations or physics)
  • Floating Point Performance: 6.2 gigaFLOPS (single precision 32-bit floating point)
    • FPU 0.64 gigaFLOPS
    • VU0 2.44 gigaFLOPS
    • VU1 3.08 gigaFLOPS (with Internal 0.64 gigaFLOPS EFU)
  • Tri-Strip Geometric transformation (VU0+VU1): 150 million polygons per second
    • 3D CG Geometric transformation with raw 3D perspective operations (VU0+VU1): 66-80+ million polygons per second
    • 3D CG Geometric transformations at peak bones/movements/effects (textures)/lights (VU0+VU1, parallel or series): 15–20 million polygons per second
    • Actual real-world polygons (per frame):500-650k at 30fps, 250-325k at 60fps
  • Compressed Image Decoder: MPEG-2
  • I/O Processor interconnection: Remote Procedure Call over a serial link, DMA controller for bulk transfer
  • Cache memory: Instruction: 16 KB, Data: 8 KB + 16 KB (ScrP)

GPU

  • “Graphics Synthesizer” clocked at 147.456 MHz
  • Pixel pipelines: 16
  • Video output resolution: variable from 256×224 to 1280×1024 pixels
  • 4 MB Embedded DRAM video memory bandwidth at 48 gigabytes per second (main system 32 MB can be dedicated into VRAM for off-screen materials)
    • Texture buffer bandwidth: 9.6 GB/s
    • Frame buffer bandwidth: 38.4 GB/s
  • DRAM Bus width: 2560-bit (composed of three independent buses: 1024-bit write, 1024-bit read, 512-bit read/write)
  • Pixel configuration: RGB: Alpha:Z Buffer (24:8, 15:1 for RGB, 16, 24, or 32-bit Z buffer)
  • Dedicated connection to: Main CPU and VU1
  • Overall pixel fillrate: 16×147 = 2.352 Gpixel/s (rounded to 2.4 Gpixel/s)
    • Pixel fillrate: with no texture, flat shaded 2.4 (75,000,000 32pixel raster triangles)
    • Pixel fillrate: with 1 full texture (Diffuse Map), Gouraud shaded 1.2 (37,750,000 32-bit pixel raster triangles)
    • Pixel fillrate: with 2 full textures (Diffuse map + specular or alpha or other), Gouraud shaded 0.6 (18,750,000 32-bit pixel raster triangles)
  • GS effects: AAx2 (poly sorting required),[47] Bilinear, Trilinear, Multi-pass, Palletizing (4-bit = 6:1 ratio, 8-bit = 3:1)
  • Multi-pass rendering ability
    • Four passes = 300 Mpixel/s (300 Mpixels/s divided by 32 pixels = 9,375,000 triangles/s lost every four passes)[50]

Audio

  • “SPU1+SPU2″ (SPU1 is actually the CPU clocked at 8 MHz)
  • Sound Memory: 2 MB
  • Number of voices: 48 hardware channels of ADPCM on SPU2 plus software-mixed channels
  • Sampling Frequency: 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz (selectable)
  • Output: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround sound, DTS (Full motion video only), later games achieved analog 5.1 surround during gameplay through Dolby Pro Logic II

I/O Processor

  • I/O Memory: 2 MB
  • CPU Core: Original PlayStation CPU (MIPS R3000A clocked at 33.8688 MHz or 37.5 MHz)
  • Automatically underclocked to 33.8688 MHz to achieve hardware backwards compatibility with original PlayStation format games.
  • Sub Bus: 32-bit
  • Connection to: SPU and CD/DVD controller.

Connectivity

  • 2 proprietary PlayStation controller ports (250 kHz clock for PS1 and 500 kHz for PS2 controllers)
  • 2 proprietary Memory Card slots using MagicGate encryption (250 kHz for PS1 cards, up to 2 MHz for PS2 cards)
  • 2 USB 1.1 ports with an OHCI-compatible controller
  • AV Multi Out (Composite video, S-Video, RGsB (SCART and VGA connector†), YPBPR(component))
  • S/PDIF Digital Out
  • Expansion Bay for 3.5″ HDD (Network Adaptor required, SCPH-10xxx to 5xxxx only)
  • Ethernet port (Slim only)
  • PCMCIA for PCMCIA Network Adaptor and External Hard Disk Drive (early models only)
  • FireWire (SCPH-10xxx to 3xxxx only)
  • Infrared remote control port (SCPH-5000x and newer)^† VGA connector is only available for progressive-scan supporting games and Linux for PlayStation 2 and requires a monitor that supports RGsB, or “sync on green”, signals.
  • Disc Drive type: proprietary interface through a custom micro-controller + DSP chip. 24x speed CD-ROM, 4x speed DVD-ROM — Region-locked with anti-copy protection. Can’t read Gold Discs.
  • Supported Disc Media: PlayStation 2 format CD-ROM, PlayStation format CD-ROM, CD-DA, PlayStation 2 format DVD-ROM, DVD Video. DVD5 (Single-layer, 4.7 GB) and DVD9 (Dual-layer, 8.5 GB) supported. Later models starting with SCPH-50000 are DVD+RW and DVD-RW compatible.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playstation_2#Technical_specifications

Pictures

Under construction

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