Here's a summary of their timeline below:
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
March, PSX2 released
Rollout of Tool in 2k or 2k2 & offers 10X the performance of PlayStation
with faster clock, chips, etc.
100 times Tool performance using Emotion Engine & Graphics Synthesizers
3rd Generation Tool, 1000x performance
PlayStation 3 released
This, of course, begs the question, what can a thousand-times Playstation2 deliver?
o 66 Trillion calculations per second
o On a 6400x4800 high def screen, that's more than enough to update pixel-sized
triangles 120 times per second
That's both better than movie resolution and a refresh rate faster than any human eye
can detect which can be done by a mere 3.6 Trillion polys per second and
'reality' is supposedly only 800,000,000 polys per second. Somewhere in the
next 2 years, reality is going to be renderable on a computer in real-time, if only
the display technology keeps up.
The article ends on this: "Don't expect the traditional PC and workstation market (and
the companies that supply the OSs for them like Microsoft and Sun) to roll over
and hand the keys to the future to Sony, but lcearly, Kutaragi is very, very confident
in the abilities of the chip his team has designed to lay down such a gauntlet."
Jack Lyon of C!Net says: "This could be a wake-up call to the rest of the industry, the way
Sputnik was to the aerospace industry in the 1950's."
Buy graphics stock is all I can say.
Greg
(The particular article isn't online, but a related article yields
some insight into their strategy).
http://www.dailyradar.com/features/game_feature_page_21_5.html
Will we see PlayStation2 hardware anywhere else?
According to the morning edition of the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, SCE proposes to adapt
its existing technology to break into the alternative business computer market. The
developments that the company has made in creating its next-generation console are to
be directly ported into new machines aimed at the imaging business sector.
PlayStation2 uses microprocessors developed by Sony in conjunction with Toshiba. The
microprocessors are widely believed to be among the highest performers in the world,
particularly in imaging. Sony now plans to utilize these components in high-specification
workstations. The workstations will be of particular interest to broadcasting companies,
film producers, and software developers, due to the image-processing features they will
offer.
SCE has further plans to develop even higher specification microprocessors in 2002 and
2005. The company will also explore the digital-broadcasting equipment business. The
Nihon Keizai Shimbun reports that SCE sees these fields as being potential major
concerns behind its game system operation, and a possible source of significant income.
Competitors in this field include companies like IBM and Silicon Graphics, the latter
company having had the field almost entirely to itself in the last few years. A powerful,
low-cost competitor would be very unwelcome news.