PSP Wi-Fi Impairs Processor Speed 57
GameDaily reports that the PlayStation Portable has an interesting restriction: its full processor power cannot be utilized at the same time as its WiFi functionality. Therefore, games that are played online cannot make use of the chip's 333mhz processor speed. The original finding from Beyond 3D was confirmed to GameDaily by Sony. Dave Karraker, Sr. Director, Corporate Communications: "The recent firmware upgrade (3.50) that removed the restriction on the PSP's CPU speed enables developers to utilize speeds either lower or higher than the default 222MHz, up to the full 333MHz clock speed. The article is correct that increased CPU speed cannot be used with the PSP's wireless feature." Though speculation is that this is a power-saving decision, there has been no official announcement as to the root cause.
ummm... root cause.... (Score:2, Insightful)
I would think that the root cause would be the network stack and packet processing overhead that occurs when the item is networked... but I am just thinking like an engineer here...
Re:ummm... root cause.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Perspective Please (Score:2, Insightful)
I just don't see why this is an issue (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ummm... root cause.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ummm... root cause.... (Score:4, Insightful)
If the PSP processor requires a higher voltage to run at 333MHz, then I'd say this answer is a shoe-in. Power scales linearly with frequency, so going from 222MHz to 333 is a 50% increase in power. But it scales with the square of voltage, so if a higher voltage is needed to run at the higher frequency then that could increase the power requirement of the CPU such that there is no power budget left for the wifi.
Other possibilities? I dunno... a wonky synchronizer between the wifi and cpu clock domains that makes a bad assumption about wifi chip vs cpu/bus speed? I've certainly seen that happen, but I'm really guessing as to whether it applies to the psp or not.
Re:I just don't see why this is an issue (Score:3, Insightful)
I could have agreed with you that this isn't a big PSP problem, except maybe in the sense that a developer might make a game without WiFi capability because they decide the increased CPU speed is more important. However, attempting to portray Sony as a poor, hapless, open-source-friendly victim of evil anti-Sony Internet meanies is more than a little ridiculous. For the most part, the folks at Sony earn the wrath of their detractors by making stupid, short-sighted, sometimes downright evil, corporate decisions (I'll skip the laundry list since it's quite well known 'round here).
Oh yeah, and making paragraphs is really easy in HTML. You might want to look into that...
Firmware cat-and-mouse is still on (Score:2, Insightful)