Specifications
CD, DVD, BLU-RAY & PlayStation 3 Secrets
(C) www.cardan.nl pag: 23
Rambus
XDR
64MB
400MHz
Samsung
K4Y50164UE-
JCB3
256MB to
tal (4 chips) for PS3 System Memory
(CECHK and later)
GDDR3 64MB
700MHz
Samsung
K4J52324QC-
SC14
256MB total (4 chips) for PS3 Graphics Memory
RDRAM 16MB
800MHz
54-pin Samsung K4R271669F
32MB total (2 chips) for Hardware PS2 Compatibility
System Memory
Cell Broadband Engine
The Cell CPU has one 3.2Ghz PPE (Power Processor Element) with two threads and eight 3.2Ghz SPE (Synergistic Processing
Elements). The chip serial number is CXD2989. The PPE is a general purpose CPU, while the eight SPE are geared towards
processing data in parallel.
One SPE is disabled to increase yield, so the PS3 can have at most 9 threads runnings at the same time (2 from PPE and 7 from
SPE). Note that one SPE is reserved for the hypervisor, so PS3 programs can take advantage of 8 threads.
Both the PPE and SPE of the Cell are 64 bit, and manipulate data in Big Endian. The Cell was introduced at 90nm and later PS3
model numbers starting with CECHG uses the 65nm version.
1 PPE (Power Processor Element)
• 3.2Ghz
• 64 bit, Big Endian
• 2 threads (can run at same time)
• L1 cache: 32kB data + 32kB instruction
• L2 cache: 512kB
• Memory bus width: 64bit (serial)
• VMX (Altivec) instruction set support
• Full IEEE-754 compliant
8 SPE (Synergistic Processing Element)
• 3.2Ghz
• 64 bit, Big Endian
• 1 SPE disabled to improve chip yield
• 1 SPE dedicated for hypervisor security
• 256kB local store per SPE
• 128 registers per SPE
• Dual Issue (Each SPE can execute 2 instructions per clock)
• IEEE-754 compliant in double precision (single precision round-towards-zero instead of round-towards-even)
90nm (235.48mm
2
die size) technology (CECHF models and lower)
65nm (174.61mm
2
die size) technology (CECHG models and higher)
RSX - Reality Synthesizer
The RSX is a graphical processor unit (GPU) based off of the nVidia 7800GTX graphics processor, and is a G70/G71 hybrid with
some modifications. The RSX has separate vertex and pixel shader pipelines. The chip model number is CXD2982GB. The
following are relevant facts about the RSX...
• Little Endian
• 8 vertex shaders at 500Mhz
• 28 pixel shaders (4 redundant, 24 active) at 550Mhz
• 28 texture units (4 redundant, 24 active)
• 8 Raster Operations Pipeline units (ROPs)
• Includes 256MB GDDR3 650Mhz clocked graphics memory
• Earlier PS3 Models: Samsung K4J52324QC-SC14 rated at 700Mhz
• Later PS3 Models: Qimonda HYB18H512322AF-14
• GDDR3 Memory interface bus width: 128bit
• Rambus XDR Memory interface bus width: 56bit out of 64bit (serial)
• 258mm
2
die size
• 90nm (earlier models) and 65nm (later models) technology
More features are revealed in the following chart delineating the differences between the RSX and the nVidia 7800 GTX.
Difference RSX nVidia 7800GTX
GDDR3 Memory bus width 128bit 256bit
ROPs 8 16