PSP Background

March 22nd, 2008 by Mitch

The PlayStation Portable is a handheld game console released and manufactured by Sony Computer Entertainment. Its development was first announced during E3 2003, and it was officially unveiled on May 11, 2004 at a Sony press conference before E3 2004. The system was released in Japan on December 12, 2004, the United States and Canada on March 24, 2005 and in Europe and Australia on September 1, 2005.

PlayStation Portable's audio player supports a number of audio codecs, including AAC, MP3, and WMA, and has the option to be played with or without a set of five visualizations. The image viewer will display several common image formats including JPEG and PNG. However, image viewing is limited by the file size and resolution of the image and any image exceeding a file size or resolution cannot be displayed. (This is usually the case with attempting to show DSLR images on a PlayStation Portable.)

MPEG-4 and AVC video formats are also compatible with PlayStation Portable. With reasonable video and audio bit-rate settings (a resolution of 320x240, a video bit rate of 500 Kb per second, and an audio sampling rate of 22050 Hz) a 22 minute video file is roughly 55 MB, enough to fit on a Memory Stick Duo as small as a 64 MB. At the same rate, a hundred-minute feature film can fit on a 256 MB Memory Stick. Many movie files, both free-to-distribute and copyrighted, have been encoded for the PlayStation Portable and are available on the Internet. Game and movie trailers are increasingly available, even from the studio's official site.

There are numerous software applications and hardware devices specifically designed for PlayStation Portable's various media-centric applications.

The PlayStation Portable can connect to a wireless network through Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11b. This allows two (or more) players with PlayStation portables to create a local, ad-hoc network for multiplayer gameplay, and also allows the a PSP user to connect to the internet via an internet-connected Wi-Fi router. By connecting to the internet, players can compete against other players also connected to the internet, or browse the web and download files to the Memory Stick via the built-in Access Co. NetFront browser. Use of wireless network features unfortunately increases the power consumption and results in a lower battery life.

The PlayStation Portable features a standard IrDA port located on the top left of the device. To date, the only games or applications to leverage this feature have been homebrew. This can be used to control many TVs as well as other iR devices.

The PlayStation Portable was designed by Shin'ichi Ogasawara for the Sony Computer Entertainment subsidiary of Sony Corporation. Early models were made in Japan but in order to cut costs, Sony has farmed out PlayStation Portable production to non Japanese manufacturers, mainly in China.

The unit measures 170 mm (6.7 inches) in length, 74 mm (2.9 inches) in width, and 23 mm (0.9 inches) in depth, and has a mass of 280 grams (a weight of 0.62 lb) including the battery. The Samsung (previously Sharp) branded TFT LCD screen measures 110 mm (4.3 in) diagonal with a 16:9 ratio and a 480x272 pixel resolution capable of 16.77 million colors. It has four possible brightness settings, the brightest of which is disabled unless on A/C power in normal Sony firmware.

The PlayStation Portable's main microprocessor is a multifunction device that includes a MIPS R4000-based CPU, hardware for multimedia decoding (such as H.264), as well as a vector unit dubbed "Virtual Mobile Engine". The MIPS CPU core is globally clocked between 1 and 333 MHz. During the 2005 GDC, Sony revealed that it had capped the PlayStation Portable's CPU clock speed at 222 MHz for licensed software. Its reasons for doing so are unknown, but are the subject of some speculation. However, recently released games such as Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters use a 266 MHz clock speed. Various homebrew tools enable users to operate at 333 MHz, generally leading to a higher frame rate at the expense of battery life.

The system has 32 MiB main RAM and 4 MiB embedded DRAM. There is no memory management unit for the CPU. No evidence of a TLB has been found. The co processor that normally manages the TLB-based MMU seems to be a custom effort by Sony and has no integrated memory.

The 166 MHz graphics chip has 2 MiB embedded memory and through its 512 bit interface provides hardware polygon and NURBS rendering, hardware directional lighting, clipping, environment projection and texture mapping, texture compression and tessellation, fogging, alpha blending, depth and stencil tests, vertex blending for morphing effects, and dithering, all in 16 or 24 bit color. The graphics chip also handles image output. Specifications state that the PlayStation Portable is capable of rendering 33 million flat-shaded polygons per second, with a 664 million pixel per second fill rate.