PSP Specced

The devil is in the detail

Sony have let slip a few details on the official specifications that their forthcoming hand-held platform the PSP will boast. The unit will be powered by (brace yourselves) a 90nm processor built from MIPS 32-bit R4000 cores. Whatever that means. This processor will apparently include a vector processing unit, which when combined with the chip's floating point units, can top 2.6Gflops, say the manufacturers.

8mb of memory, zipping along at 333mhz is also included, and a second MIPS R4000 unit will power media capabilities along with a further 2mb DRAM.

If all this were not sufficient, the PSP also holds two dedicated graphics processors that look incredibly powerful for a hand-held device, pushing a reported 33 million polygons per second with effects. The games to make the most of this ample hardware will be delivered on Universal Media Discs, which can hold 1.8gb of data.

7.1 Dolby 3D sound will be included (crikey!), and the PSP will support MP3, MPEG4, as well as various other audio and video formats. All this will be displayed on a widescreen 480 x 272-pixel LCD screen. Finally, this fab sounding device is capped-off by a number of connectors including a USB slot, a memory stick slot and some other stuff that I've never heard of.

Wireless internet connectivity is also said to be part of the package, for multiplayer gaming and the like. Thanks to The Register for some of these details.

By Luke Guttridge