As we move ever closer to the launch of Sony's next console, the Playstation 4, the Japanese giants have today decided to show off a completely different side of their upcoming system. The inside. Whilst the design was met with a mixed reception upon its reveal (with not enough pretty colours for our Dep Ed, at least ), today Sony have lifted the lid - literally - one what's inside their box of fun. In a video exclusive for Wired, Yasuhrio Ootori, Sony's engineering director, disassembles the upcoming console and shows the world just what makes the machine tick.
A large power supply unit, built into the PlayStation 4 for the convenience of the customers (rather then relying on an external power brick like the Xbox 360), takes up the back of the system, whilst the front is occupied by the all important fan, which carries heat away from the processor via the heat sink, and of course the optical disc drive which still plays DVDs and Blu-Rays. A Bluetooth antenna is also hidden alongside the disc drive, which lets the console talk to your controllers.
Flipping over the console and popping off another cover reveals the hard disk drive. The PlayStation 4 comes with a 500 GB hard drive already installed, but Sony have confirmed that this can be removed and replaced by any commercially available hard drive with a larger (or smaller if you'd prefer) amount of storage. Remove the cover and unscrew one screw and you'll have access to the hard disk drive, so it at least looks pretty easy to do.
Ootori moves on and takes off the top outer cover, which reveals the mainframe. Unscrewing several more screws allows him to remove the shield plate and reveal to us the motherboard, which he explains uses the same CPU core as a standard PC, which combines with Sony's exclusively designed motherboard to achieve what he calls the "CPU-GPU one-chip integration processor." Which sounds like magic to us.
The motherboard's a bit of a weird shape, as you can see here.
Located across from the processor are 16 chips of RAM which total an impressive 8 GB of memory with a maximum bandwidth of 176 GB/s, which, in terms we can all understand, basically means it's incredibly fast. A special secondary processor also helps the PlayStation 4 to go into a low power standby mode, whilst still being able to connect to the internet and download trailers, demos, and patches automatically. The Wi-Fi antenna is also found within the motherboard, which lets the Playstation 4 connect to your home Wi-Fi network out of the box. Finally, on the back of the motherboard are several ports. Two USB 3.0 connectors, an auxiliary connector for the PlayStation Camera (sold separately), an Ethernet port for network devices, the HDMI port, and an optical audio output, to let you plug the console into your 5.1, or 7.1 sound system are all located on the back of the motherboard and the console.
And last but not least, Ootori removes the second shield plate, to introduce us to perhaps the most important part of the Playstation 4 - the heat sink. With two heat pipes coming out to it, and a custom designed, 85-mm diameter fan to help carry the heat away from the system, the cooling system forms the backbone of the new console, and Sony will no doubt have put it through a lot of testing to ensure this is up to scratch. With the Xbox 360 becoming somewhat known for overheating and the "Red Ring of Death", and even Sony's Playstation 3 having a few issues of its own (although on a markedly less dramatic scale), the heat sink and fan have a tough job to do - with a lot of technology crammed under the hood, there's a lot to keep cool if the console wants to keep running.
With some undoubtedly impressive hardware hiding underneath Sony's latest little black box, developers have more power at their fingertips than ever before - and a console that's arguably a lot easier to work with than the Playstation 3. While the initial line-up of games has been left somewhat wanting with the delay of social racer Driveclub, the cute platformer Knack could still prove a hit with families, while Killzone: Shadow Fall will keep the shooter crowd busy. With a reasonable price of £349, and a vast range of titles on the horizon, the PS4 should be off to a great start - and now, you know how it all works. Sadly, without pixies.
