At a press conference held in Los Angeles, California, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) revealed the outline of its PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3) computer entertainment system, incorporating the world's most advanced Cell processor with super computer like power.  Prototypes of PS3 will also be showcased at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the world's largest interactive entertainment exhibition held in Los Angeles , from May 18th to 20th.

• Technology: PS3 combines state-of-the-art technologies featuring Cell, a processor jointly developed by IBM, Sony Group and Toshiba Corporation, graphics processor (RSX) co-developed by NVIDIA Corporation and SCEI, and XDR memory developed by Rambus Inc.  It also adopts BD-ROM (Blu-ray Disc ROM) with maximum storage capacity of 54 GB (dual layer) , enabling delivery of entertainment content in full high-definition (HD) quality,  under a secure environment made possible through the most advanced copyright protection technology.  To match the accelerating convergence of digital consumer electronics and computer technology, PS3 supports high quality display in resolution of 1080p(*) as standard,  which is far superior to 720p/1080i.
• Backwards compatible: PS3 offers backward compatibility enabling gamers to enjoy the enormous assets from PS and PS2 platforms.
• CPU Cell Processor: Power PC-base Core @ 3.2GHz, 1VMX vector unit per core, 512KB L2 cache, 7xSPE @3.2GHz, 7x128b 128 SIMD GPRs, 7x256KB SRAM for SPE, *1 of 8 SPEs reserved for redundancy total floating point performance: 218 GLFOPS
• GPU: RSX @ 550MHz 1.8 TFLOPS floating point performance, Full HD (up to 1080p) x 2 channels, Multi-way programmable parallel floating point shader pipelines
• Sound: Dolby 5.1ch, DTS, LPCM, etc. (Cell-base processing)
• Memory: 256MB XDR Main Ram @3.2GHz, 256MB GDDR3 VRAM @700MHz
• System Bandwith: Main RAM 25.6GB/s, VRAM 22.4GB/s, RSX 20GB/s (write) + 15GB/s (read), SB 2.5GB/s (write) + 2.5GB/s (read)
• Disc Media: CD: Playstation, Playstation 2, CD-DA, SACD and Dual Disc. DVD: Playstation 2, Playstation 3 and DVD video. Blue Ray Disc: Playstation 3 and BD-Video.

"SCEI has continuously brought innovation to the world of computer entertainment, such as real-time 3D computer graphics on PlayStation and the world's first 128 bit processor Emotion Engine (EE) for PlayStation 2.  Empowered by the Cell processor with super computer like performance, a new age of PLAYSTATION 3 is about to begin.  Together with content creators from all over the world, SCEI will accelerate the arrival of a new era in computer entertainment." -- Ken Kutaragi, President and CEO, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.

Source: Sony