By Brad Shoemaker

　　Gaming has grown beyond the mere pizza parlor pastime it once was. These days, video games are a serious hobby for millions and a revenue source that rivals the movie and music industries. The technical designs of each new system, therefore, have become increasingly ambitious. Game console hardware is evolving at an exponential rate, from the primitive home systems of the late 1970s to the number-crunching behemoths of today. Call it superficial, but any game player will admit that the most exciting part of checking out a new system for the first time is getting to see how its graphics have improved on those of the previous hardware generation.

　　Sega's Dreamcast is the first of the new supersystems to reach store shelves; in fact, it went on sale more than a year before the PlayStation 2. The Dreamcast is an impressive system, but it uses stock off-the-shelf components, such as a Hitachi processor and a 3D accelerator, made by VideoLogic, that is also available for personal computers. Nintendo collaborated in much the same way with SGI on the Nintendo 64's hardware, licensing out development of key components to third parties rather than conducting it internally. What sets the PlayStation 2 apart from this design model is Sony's commitment to creating the PlayStation hardware itself. Rather than simply handing another company the task of to creating a new CPU, the company partnered with Toshiba to design the PS2's main processor itself. A similar ideology has driven the development of the rest of the PS2's internals, and this has resulted in an impressive, innovative design that will probably remain viable for as many years as the original PlayStation has.

　　

Technical Specifications

　　Though the PS2's specs will appear arcane to all but the technically inclined, let's run through them briefly:

　　

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CPU: 128-bit Emotion Engine

　　System Clock Frequency: 300MHz

　　Cache Memory Instruction: 16KB - Data: 8KB + 16KB (ScrP)

　　Co-processor: FPU (Floating Point Unit): Floating Point Multiply, Accumulator x 1, and Floating Point Divider x 1

　　Two Vector Units: VU0 and VU, Floating Point Multiply, Accumulator x 9, and Floating Point Divider x 3

　　Floating Point Performance: 6.2 GFLOPS

　　Memory: Direct Rambus DRAM (RDRAM)

　　Memory Size: 32MB

　　Memory Bus Bandwidth: 3.2GB per second

　　Graphics Processor: Graphics Synthesizer

　　Clock Frequency: 150MHz

　　Embedded VRAM: 4MB

　　Sound: SPU2

　　Number of Voices: 48 channels

　　Sampling Frequency: 44.1 or 48KHz

　　Memory: 2MB

　　I/O: PlayStation CPU (33.8 or 37.5MHz clock frequency, selectable)

　　External ports: Two memory card, two controller, two USB, one FireWire, one hard drive

　　Storage: DVD/CD-ROM

　　

Explanations

　　

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Now that the raw numbers have been laid out, let's examine them. As the prior list shows, the heart of the PlayStation 2 is its main CPU, the Emotion Engine. Sony named the chip in such a way to indicate its potential for processing not only graphics but also physics and artificial intelligence (AI). The Emotion Engine is indeed a powerful chip - custom-designed by Sony and Toshiba for the PlayStation 2, it contains a host of mathematical processing facilities that have been implemented for the sole purpose of powering the PS2's games. The vector and floating-point units in particular are used in processing 3D graphics, and Sony focused extra attention on their development and implementation.

　　In the past, a game system's CPU took care of all the graphical number crunching by itself, but recent systems have used a modular design in which much of the graphics work is delegated to a separate processor. The PlayStation 2's Graphics Synthesizer fits squarely into that role, taking computational data from the Emotion Engine and translating it into what we see on the screen.

　　The PS2's memory architecture is a departure from the norm of video game consoles. Most systems must communicate data between their component parts (such as processors and memory) through a data bus that limits the overall speed of computation. However, the 32 megabytes of Rambus DRAM in the PS2 can be addressed directly by the system's main CPU. This design will allow for greater flexibility when programming games for the PS2.

　　A system's I/O (input/output) processor is normally a mundane run-of-the-mill piece of hardware, but we've included a mention about the PS2's I/O chip for a good reason: It's the same chip that acted as the PlayStation's main CPU. The inclusion of this chip makes the PS2's backward-compatibility feature possible. The I/O processor on the PS 2 simply takes over and the system runs the original PlayStation game as an ordinary PlayStation would. Having this particular chip perform such a dual function was clever on Sony's part.

　　The PlayStation 2 has a number of other unique hardware features. It's the first game system to use the DVD format, and DVD discs can hold many times the amount of data that a CD can while taking up the same physical space. The PS2 can also play standard DVD movies, and since the console also functions as an advanced game system, owning a PS2 will be akin to getting a free DVD player. The included USB and FireWire ports, commonly found on PC and Macintosh computers respectively, give the PS2 great potential for connectivity; the two interfaces together can be used for digital cameras, keyboards and mice, or a host of other devices. Finally, Sony has removed the PC card slot, present in the Japanese PS2, for the American release. In its stead will be an internal hard drive bay on the rear of the system. Sony plans to release this hard drive in conjunction with its plans for broadband (or high speed) Internet access.

　　

Real-World Applications

　　

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We can throw tech specs back and forth all day, but what do these numbers really mean? Comparing the PlayStation 2 to the current generation, which includes the PlayStation, the Nintendo 64, and the defunct Saturn, is pointless, because the new system is utterly beyond those systems' capabilities. The PS2's only direct competition at the moment is Sega's Dreamcast, which is already more than a year out of the gate. Theoretically, the PS2 should have no problem producing games with graphics far superior to those of which the Dreamcast is capable; in practice, though, this hasn't been entirely the case. Consider Tecmo's Dead or Alive 2, which is available for both systems. Although the PS2 version contains a few extra gimmicks, such as enhanced cutscenes, the two games are nearly identical. Tecmo is working on a new version of Dead or Alive 2 for the PS2 that will take advantage of the system's superior hardware, but for now, the similarities are hard to ignore.

　　

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　　Despite the Dead or Alive matter, the PlayStation 2 boasts games that would be difficult, if not impossible, to reproduce on the Dreamcast. Namco's Tekken Tag Tournament is perhaps the best example of the PS2's power. The company wowed Dreamcast players with its other big fighter, Soul Calibur, a year ago, and though that game still looks excellent, Tekken Tag Tournament features more carefully sculpted combatants and greater detail in its backgrounds. Given Tekken's wide fan base and the incredible graphics of the PS2 version, Tag Tournament may be the game to get on the PS2 launch day.

　　

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As mentioned before, the PlayStation 2 can also play the games of its predecessor. In fact, it can do more than just play them; it can enhance them in a couple of ways. First, CD loading times can be reduced by the PS2's speedier drive mechanism. More importantly, though, the 3D graphics of many PlayStation games can be slightly improved by the PS2's hardware. Specifically, the PS2 can filter (or soften) the textures in most PlayStation games to reduce the jagged look that unfiltered textures take on when seen up close. Neither of these enhancements is guaranteed to work with every old PlayStation game, though, so you will also be able to run each game in a compatibility mode, which accurately reproduces the original PlayStation graphics and loading times. See below for a shot of Metal Gear Solid running on the PlayStation and the PlayStation 2, and note the differences between surfaces in the two (especially on the crates).

　　So the PlayStation 2 can best the Dreamcast at any challenge, and it can play old PlayStation games, too. Is it really the ultimate system? Very recently, Nintendo and Microsoft announced the specs for their new systems, the GameCube and the Xbox, respectively. Both systems are technically superior to the PlayStation 2. But though they'll probably have better graphics, they're also both a year away from launching, while the PS2's launch is almost upon us. By the time the GameCube and the Xbox see the light of day, PS2 developers will have gotten the hang of the system, and they'll be cranking out even more-impressive games than what we've seen so far. With the PlayStation, Sony proved that it could create hardware with real staying power, and we expect no less from the PlayStation 2.