PlayStation 2 - Technical Specifications

Technical Specifications

The specifications of the PlayStation 2 console are as follows, with hardware revisions:

• CPU: 64-bit "Emotion Engine" clocked at 294.912 MHz (299 MHz on newer versions), 10.5 million transistors
  • System memory: 32 MB Direct Rambus or RDRAM
  • Memory bus Bandwidth: 3.2 gigabytes per second
  • Main processor: MIPS R5900 CPU core, 64-bit, little endian (mipsel).
  • Coprocessor: FPU (Floating Point Multiply Accumulator × 1, Floating Point Divider × 1)
  • Vector Units: VU0 and VU1 (Floating Point Multiply Accumulator × 9, Floating Point Divider × 1), 32-bit, at 147.456 MHz.
    • VU0 typically used for polygon transformations optionally (under parallel or serial connection), physics and other gameplay based things
    • VU1 typically used for polygon transformations, lighting and other visual based calculations (Texture matrix able for 2 coordinates (UV/ST))
      • Parallel: Results of VU0/FPU sent as another display list via MFIFO (E.G. complex characters/vehicles/etc.)
      • Serial: Results of VU0/FPU sent to VU1 (via 3 methods) and can act as an optional geometry pre-processor that does all base work to update the scene every frame (E.G. camera, perspective, boning and laws of movement such as animations or physics)
  • Floating Point Performance: 6.2 GFLOPS (single precision 32-bit floating point)
    • FPU 0.64 GFLOPS
    • VU0 2.44 GFLOPS
    • VU1 3.08 GFLOPS (with Internal 0.64 GFLOPS EFU)
  • Tri-Strip Geometric transformation (VU0+VU1): 150 million polygons per second
    • 3D CG Geometric transformation with raw 3D perspective operations (VU0+VU1): 66-80+ million polygons per second
    • 3D CG Geometric transformations at peak bones/movements/effects (textures)/lights (VU0+VU1, parallel or series): 15–20 million polygons per second
    • Actual real-world polygons (per frame):500-650k at 30fps, 250-325k at 60fps
  • Compressed Image Decoder: MPEG-2
  • I/O Processor interconnection: Remote Procedure Call over a serial link, DMA controller for bulk transfer
  • Cache memory: Instruction: 16 KB, Data: 8 KB + 16 KB (ScrP)

• Graphics processing unit: "Graphics Synthesizer" clocked at 147.456 MHz
  • Pixel pipelines: 16
  • Video output resolution: variable from 256×224 to 1920×1080 pixels
  • 4 MB Embedded DRAM video memory bandwidth at 48 gigabytes per second (main system 32 MB can be dedicated into VRAM for off-screen materials)
    • Texture buffer bandwidth: 9.6 GB/s
    • Frame buffer bandwidth: 38.4 GB/s
  • DRAM Bus width: 2560-bit (composed of three independent buses: 1024-bit write, 1024-bit read, 512-bit read/write)
  • Pixel configuration: RGB: Alpha:Z Buffer (24:8, 15:1 for RGB, 16, 24, or 32-bit Z buffer)
  • Dedicated connection to: Main CPU and VU1
  • Overall pixel fillrate: 16×147 = 2.352 Gpixel/s (rounded to 2.4 Gpixel/s)
    • Pixel fillrate: with no texture, flat shaded 2.4 (75,000,000 32pixel raster triangles)
    • Pixel fillrate: with 1 full texture (Diffuse Map), Gouraud shaded 1.2 (37,750,000 32-bit pixel raster triangles)
    • Pixel fillrate: with 2 full textures (Diffuse map + specular or alpha or other), Gouraud shaded 0.6 (18,750,000 32-bit pixel raster triangles)
  • GS effects: AAx2 (poly sorting required), Bilinear, Trilinear, Multi-pass, Palletizing (4-bit = 6:1 ratio, 8-bit = 3:1)
  • Multi-pass rendering ability
    • Four passes = 300 Mpixel/s (300 Mpixels/s divided by 32 pixels = 9,375,000 triangles/s lost every four passes)
• Audio: "SPU1+SPU2" (SPU1 is actually the CPU clocked at 8 MHz)
  • Sound Memory: 2 MB
  • Number of voices: 48 hardware channels of ADPCM on SPU2 plus software-mixed channels
  • Sampling Frequency: 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz (selectable)
  • Output: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround sound, DTS (Full motion video only), later games achieved analog 5.1 surround during gameplay through Dolby Pro Logic II
• I/O Processor
  • I/O Memory: 2 MB
  • CPU Core: Original PlayStation CPU (MIPS R3000A clocked at 33.8688 MHz or 37.5 MHz)
  • Automatically underclocked to 33.8688 MHz to achieve hardware backwards compatibility with original PlayStation format games.
  • Sub Bus: 32-bit
  • Connection to: SPU and CD/DVD controller.

• Connectivity:
  • 2 proprietary PlayStation controller ports (250 kHz clock for PS1 and 500 kHz for PS2 controllers)
  • 2 proprietary Memory Card slots using MagicGate encryption (250 kHz for PS1 cards, up to 2 MHz for PS2 cards)
  • 2 USB 1.1 ports with an OHCI-compatible controller
  • AV Multi Out (Composite video, S-Video, RGsB (SCART and VGA connector†), YP_BP_R(component))
  • RFU DC Out
  • S/PDIF Digital Out
  • Expansion Bay for 3.5" HDD (Network Adaptor required, SCPH-10xxx to 5xxxx only)
  • Ethernet port (Slim only)
  • PCMCIA for PCMCIA Network Adaptor and External Hard Disk Drive (early models only)
  • FireWire (SCPH-10xxx to 3xxxx only)
  • Infrared remote control port (SCPH-5000x and newer)

• Disc Drive type: proprietary interface through a custom micro-controller + DSP chip. 24x speed CD-ROM, 4x speed DVD-ROM — Region-locked with anti-copy protection. Can't read Gold Discs.

• Supported Disc Media: PlayStation 2 format CD-ROM, PlayStation format CD-ROM, CD-DA, PlayStation 2 format DVD-ROM, DVD Video. DVD5 (Single-layer, 4.7 GB) and DVD9 (Dual-layer, 8.5 GB) supported. Later models starting with SCPH-50000 are DVD+RW and DVD-RW compatible.