Emotion Engine - Definition and Overview

The Emotion Engine is the name of the Central Processing Unit (CPU) used in Sony PlayStation 2 video game consoles. It was jointly designed by Toshiba and Sony and began mass production in 1999. According to MicroDesign Resources, it is two times faster than a 733 MHz Pentium III and 15 times faster than a 400 MHz Celeron at handling tasks like full-motion video.

Specifications

• CPU core: 128-bit RISC (MIPS IV-subset)
• Clock Frequency: 294 MHz (299 MHz in later versions)
• Gate width: 0.18 micrometres
• VDD Voltage: 1.8 V
• Power consumption: 15 watts
• Metal Layers: 4
• Total Transistors: 10.5 million
• Die Size: 240 mm²
• Package: 540 pin PBGA
• Integer Unit: 64-bit (2-way Superscalar)
• Multimedia extended instructions: 107 instructions at 128 bit width
• Integer General Purpose Register: 32 at 128 bit width
• TLB: 48 double entries
• Instruction Cache: 16 kB (2 way)
• Data Cache: 8 kB (2 way)
• Scratch pad RAM: 16 kB (Dual port)
• Main Memory: 32 MB (Direct RDRAM 2 channels at 800 MHz)
• Memory bandwidth: 3.2 GB/s
• DMA: 10 channels
• Co-processor 1: FPU (FMAC x 1, FDIV x 1)
• Co-processor 2: VU0 (FMAC x 4, FDIV x 1)
• Vector Processing Unit: VU1 (FMAC x 5, FDIV x 2)
• Floating Point Performance: 6.2 GFLOPS
• Curved Surface Generation (Bezier): 16 million polygon/s
• Image Processing Unit: MPEG2 Macroblock Layer Decoder
• Image Processing Performance: 150 million pixel/s

Geometry

• Perspective Transformation: 66 million polygon/s
• Lighting: 38 million polygon/s
• Fog: 36 million polygon/s

See also

• PlayStation 2
• Graphics processing unit
• Computer graphics
• List of computer graphics and descriptive geometry topics

External links

• Sound and Vision: A Technical Overview of the Emotion Engine (http://arstechnica.com/reviews/1q00/playstation2/ee-1.html)
• The PlayStation2 vs. the PC: a system-level comparison of two 3D platforms (http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/ps2vspc.ars/1)
• Scientific Computing on the Sony PlayStation 2 (http://arrakis.ncsa.uiuc.edu/ps2/)
• BBC article: PlayStation turns supercomputer (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2940422.stm)