Expected PlayStation 4 Hardware

PlayStation 4 Hardware

Sony has announced that it is working on the latest version of its popular PlayStation series, PlayStation 4. Many people are speculating that PS4 will be an updated version of PS3. Even if that is the case, gamers can rest assured that Sony will spare no budget in adding new features to PS4 that take it quite a step further than PS3. Let us see what Sony is trying to do to make PS4 different from PS3.

Slim Playstation 4 Winning Concept

Starting with the motherboard, it is quite evident that the PS4 motherboard is in line with the later PS3 motherboard. There are no PS2 compatibility chips in it. The PS4 motherboard has four components – 1024MB DDR4 memory, Cell2, RSX2, and 1024MB GDDR5. The HDMI2 display is connected to 1024MB GDDR5. The communication path has been designed in such a way that 1024MB DDR4 memory will connect through Cell2 and 1024MB GDDR5 will connect through RSX2. The main system memory is 1024MB DDR4. Additional memory has been added in the form of 1024MB GDDR5.

The CPU, Cell2, consists of three 4.2GHz Power Processor Elements (PPE). The PPE has two threads and eighteen 4.2GHz Synergistic Processing Elements (SPE). The PPEs are general purpose while the SPEs will process parallel data. Apart from all this, the PPEs have L1 cache (32 KB data and 32 KB instruction) and L2 cache (512 KB), a 64 bit serial memory bus width among others.

The Graphical Processor Unit (GPU) is called RSX2. It is based on the nVidia GeForce GTX 480 graphics processor and is a hybrid modification of G500/G600. The RSX2 has 48 each of vertex, pixel and geometry shader texture units and 32 ARB texture units. It also has 48 Raster Operations Pipeline units. It has 1024MB GDDR5 graphics memory with 512 bit GDDR5 memory interface bus width.
The PS4 uses 32 MB of flash memory that is used to store firmware boot up code. The firmware data can either be downloaded from the Internet using the PS4 or by visiting http://jp.playstation.com/ps4/update/.

Playstation 4 Concepts

The PS4 HDMI2 chip has deep color and 9.1 channel advanced audio transmission.
For the hard drive, PS4 uses SATA 600 controller with a transfer speed of 6 GB/second. For their slower speeds, SATA 300 or SATA 150 are not compatible with PS4.
The holographic disc drive of PS4 supports HVD discs, each of which can store a minimum of 160 GB. The HVD discs have a drive speed of 1x, i.e. 16 MB/second.

For wireless communication, PS4 uses Wi-Fi 802.11n and Bluetooth 3.0. The Wi-Fi connects with access points and Sony PSP2 devices and the Bluetooth connects with other Bluetooth devices and Dualshock4 controllers.

The TransferJet is supported on PS4 and this can be used to transfer files from the PSP2 or other mobile devices. This is an able alternative to a memory stick.
To cool the Cell2 and RSX2 chips separately, heat pipes are not used. Heat sink from Furukawa is used for the cooling.

The PS4 has a built in universal power supply and can be plugged on to any power source.
The PS4, when it is launched, will continue to sizzle like its predecessors. A lot of new technology will definitely spice up the gaming action.