Before you read the post below, do yourself a favour and read this first so you’re completely caught up on where everyone thinks Sony are going with the next PSP.
All done? Great! Welcome to another PSP2 rumour. This one comes courtesy of Bright Side of News, who also brought us the nVidia DSi rumour last week. BSN believe Sony began working on PSP2 in 2008 and have contracted Imagine Technologies to to implement their PowerVR SGX543 chip in a new PSP revision scheduled for release in 2010. After a few paragraphs of technical mumbo-jumbo, they speculate on the nature of the device:
After analyzing the performance at hand, it is no wonder that Sony chose to go with PowerVR for the next-generation PlayStation Portable. While the exact details of the SoC are still in question, our take is that Sony could go with quad-core setup at 400MHz [8GPixel/s], paired with a dual-core CPU based on ARM Cortex architecture. This would put Sony direct in line against Tegra-powered Nintendo DS2, PowerVR-based Apple’s iPhone 4G and Palm Pre2.
They conclude by saying they are confident the new PSP will launch within the next 12 months, although they can’t say when in order to protect their source. Then they provide a handy list that shows all the companies using ARM processors for their portable hardware in 2010:
Apple iPhone 3G s / 4G = ARM Cortex + PowerVR SGX HTC = ARM Cortex + PowerVR Microsoft Zune HD = ARM11 + GeForce 6 Nintendo DS2 = ARM Cortex + GeForce 9 Nokia platform = ARM11 only Palm Pre 2 = ARM Cortex + PowerVR SGX RIM BlackBerry = ARM9 only Samsung = ARM Cortex + PowerVR SGX Sony PSP2 = ARM ? + PowerVR SGX
Food for thought:
1. Is PSP2 the same as PSP-4000? I honestly can’t tell anymore. Rumour has it, though, that PSP-4000 will feature the triumphant (?) return of UMDs. So many rumours!
2. Is PSP-4000 the same as PSP Phone? Why in God’s name would a phone feature a UMD drive? Perhaps they are two different SKUs?
