PS3



The Playstation 3 (Known as PS3) is the newest Media Home Console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment in the 7th generation of Home Video Game consoles. The descendant of the Playstation (Known as PS1) and the Playstation 2 (Known as PS2), the PS3 was released into the international market on November 11th, 2006 when the console hit Japanese market shelves. The system soon hit American market shelves on November 17, 2006 thus ushering a new era of gaming to to Sony fans everywhere. The PS3 boasted increased graphics of HD quality, the ability to play games online with other PS3 owners, and a library with a handful of new games.
 * A Small Overview **

With the first release of the home console into public markets. Consumers were immediately offered a home console that would meet their needs with 2 models: a 20GB Hard drive model (referred to as the Basic Package) of a 60 Hard drive model (referred to as the Premium Package). The 60 GB model boasted additional features over the 20 GB model, on top of a bigger memory storage.


 * PS3 on the market **

Of course PS3 isn't the only video game home console on the market floor. Competitor companies Microsoft and Nintendo have released their own video game home consoles the Xbox360 and Wii respectively. By comparison, PS3 has shown the weakest sales out of the trio trailing its competitors by a large margin. Listed below are the most recent sales figures of all three consoles on the market

Worldwide sales figures

1. Wii – 34.55 million, as of 30 September 2008 2. Xbox 360 – 25 million, as of 25 November 2008 3. PlayStation 3 – 21.3 million, as of 30 September 2008

The cause for this id due to Sony's marketing plans. Due to the fact that consumers feel that the PS3 has been overpriced, thus leading to the poor sales of the system, despite the system's use of high-end parts. Listed below are the Specifications and Details of the Playstation 3 pulled from About.com PlayStation 3 Specifications and Details

Product name: PLAYSTATION 3

CPU: Cell Processor


 * PowerPC-base Core @3.2GHz
 * 1 VMX vector unit per core
 * 512KB L2 cache
 * 7 x SPE @3.2GHz
 * 7 x 128b 128 SIMD GPRs
 * 7 x 256KB SRAM for SPE
 * * 1 of 8 SPEs reserved for redundancy total floating point performance: 218 GFLOPS

GPU: RSX @550MHz


 * 1.8 TFLOPS floating point performance
 * Full HD (up to 1080p) x 2 channels
 * Multi-way programmable parallel floating point shader pipelines

Sound: Dolby 5.1ch, DTS, LPCM, etc. (Cell-base processing)

Memory:


 * 256MB XDR Main RAM @3.2GHz
 * 256MB GDDR3 VRAM @700MHz

System Bandwidth:


 * Main RAM: 25.6GB/s
 * VRAM: 22.4GB/s
 * RSX: 20GB/s (write) + 15GB/s (read)
 * SB: 2.5GB/s (write) + 2.5GB/s (read)

System Floating Point Performance: 2 TFLOPS

Storage:


 * HDD
 * Detachable 2.5” HDD slot x 1

I/O:


 * USB: Front x 4, Rear x 2 (USB2.0)
 * Memory Stick: standard/Duo, PRO x 1
 * SD: standard/mini x 1
 * CompactFlash: (Type I, II) x 1

Communication: Ethernet (10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T) x3 (input x 1 + output x 2)

Wi-Fi: IEEE 802.11 b/g

Bluetooth: Bluetooth 2.0 (EDR)

Controller:


 * Bluetooth (up to 7)
 * USB2.0 (wired)
 * Wi-Fi (PSP®)
 * Network (over IP)

AV Output:


 * Screen size: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p
 * HDMI: HDMI out x 2
 * Analog: AV MULTI OUT x 1
 * Digital audio: DIGITAL OUT (OPTICAL) x 1

CD Disc media (read only):


 * PlayStation CD-ROM
 * PlayStation 2 CD-ROM
 * CD-DA (ROM), CD-R, CD-RW
 * SACD Hybrid (CD layer), SACD HD
 * DualDisc (audio side), DualDisc (DVD side)

DVD Disc media (read only):


 * PlayStation 2 DVD-ROM
 * PLAYSTATION 3 DVD-ROM
 * DVD-Video: DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW

Blu-ray Disc media (read only):


 * PLAYSTATION 3 BD-ROM
 * BD-Video: BD-ROM, BD-R, BD-RE

Regardless of the negative facts, the PS3 has generated its own solid fan base, something strong enough to keep the system on the market. With a decent library of games, and amazing technological power, the PS3 certainly defines itself as a video game home console and deserves some sort of recognition.

** Applications ** **  PS3 Virtual Home media type="youtube" key="kyquAXKeEI0" height="344" width="425"  ** **Games** Blu-ray Disc Games // Approximately 400 tittles to date // A few top titles include: · Fallout 3 · Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA5) · Killzone 2 – Playstation Exclusive · Skate 2 – Playstation Exclusive · Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots – Playstation Exclusive · LittleBigPlanet – Playstation Exclusive · Resistance 2 – Playstation Exclusive · Street Fighter IV · Resident Evil 5 · Call of Duty: World at War · F.E.A.R. 2: Projects Origin · Afro Samurai – Playstation Exclusive · Guitar Hero: Metallica · Guitar Hero World Tour · Dead Space ** Playstation Network Games ** // Approximately 90 arcade tittles and 8 full games to date: // A few top Arcade titles include: · Echochrome · Flow · High Velocity Bowling · Jeopardy! · The Last Guy · Mega Man 9 · Novastrike · PixelJunk Eden · PixelJunk Monsters

**Folding@Home**

Folding@home is a distributed computing (DC) project designed to perform computationally intensive simulations of protein folding and other molecular dynamics (MD). It was launched on October 1, 2000, and is currently managed by the Pande Group, within Stanford University's chemistry department, under the supervision of Professor Vijay Pande. Folding@home is the most powerful distributed computing cluster in the world, according to Guinness, and one of the world's largest distributed computing projects. The goal of the project is "to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases."


 * The Playstation’s role in Folding@Home**

The playstation 3 has played a key role in the development of this program, using its powerful cell processor. Folding@Home has been included in the PS3 firmware within a few months of its release in the US. The playstation uses a specially designed Analysis Software to run its Active cores:

//Gro-PS3 (Does not have a known ID number, but also called SCEARD core)//
 * //PlayStation 3 variant.//
 * //No SIMD optimizations, uses SPE cores for optimization.//
 * //Available for PS3 client only.//

 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/66/Abeta-PS3.png

** Media ** The PS3 can copy and transfer media via flask drives, external HDD, Compact Disks, over your network, Compact Flask, SD cards, Memory stick pro, and duo. You are able to save just about anything you want to your PS3’s HDD. PS3 supports just about every video format that you could think of and they are constantly updating the system to support new formats. For pictures you are pretty save with JPEG and Jif. It supports both formats. The biggest problem with PS3 for Media junkies is the HDD space. For most people 60 gigs HDD is more than enough space for a gaming system. But if you want to build a big movie library and run it off your PS3 via HDMI you’re in luck. PS3 doesn’t use a specially made HDD to save their OS on. They use just a regular HDD that you could find in any computer. So if you need a bigger HDD you could purchase on and install it your safe in under ten minutes. If you’re not confident enough to go inside and put in another HDD you are still in luck. Because if you do open and break something trying to put in another HDD you would break any warranty that you have with Sony. So if you’re not good with technology your can purchase an external HDD that plugs into your USB port. The only work you will have to do is making sure your external HDD is formatted in FAT32 form. The PS3 will not read the external HDD if it is formatted in NTFS.

http://playstation.about.com/od/ps3/a/PS3SpecsDetails_3.htm http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2008/081030e.pdf#page=11 http://xbox.joystiq.com/2008/11/25/xbox-360-install-base-at-25-million-outsells-original/ http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/data/bizdataps3_sale_e.html
 * Resources **

** Related Links: ** http://www.us.playstion.com/ps3 [|http://www.ps3.for.free.com]  http://www.youtube.com/user/playstation?blend=1 http://www.gamespot.com/games.html?platform=1028&type=games http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PlayStation_3_games http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PlayStation_Network_games