Sony to use Nvidia Tegra for PSP2; explains delay

[Soleron]

jarrod said:

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GameCube could do soft/self shadowing, normal mapping, specular highlights and subsurface scattering?  News to me. ;)

Agreed. The effects are better and the chip is easier to work with. However the number of textures/polygons look to me to be Gamecube level, in that I can imagine Mario Sunshine being at the limit of what the chip could display assuming the E3 demos show off the chip well.

The GPU core in 3DS is based on DMP's PICA chip, which dates back to 2006 as the first iteration btw.  I'm not sure why you're using ATi chips to try and give a timeline versus Tegra?

The Gamecube used an ATI chip that dates in architecture from 2001. Since I'm guessing the  Pica200 chip is about GC capability, and that Tegra is about GF6 capability, I'm measuring the differential in desktop-GPU-years.

Of course both chips were designed much later than those dates, but handheld GPU capability tends to be in step with desktop GPU capability, just X years apart from needing Y number of die shrinks to get the power envelope to ~1/30 of its previous size.

Restated: they can make a chip as capable as 9 years ago now but with 1/30 of the power use.

Sony also has a higher power and cost budget to work with, unless their strategy on pricing and battery life has changed since the PSP.