Graphics Synthesizer

Overview

The first revision released, CXD2934GB, is known to have been manufactured using a 180 nm process and to consume 19 W of power (calculated from the official information that the initially released Emotion Engine consumed 18 W of power and that EE and GS together initially consumed 37 W of power).

There have been die-shrinks and optimizations over the years.

Revisions

• 0.8: CXD2934GB
  • 180 nm process, 188 mm² die size
  • metal IHS
  • Copyright date: 1999
  • Used on motherboards: GH-001, GH-003, GH-005, GH-007, GH-012, GH-014, GH-016
• 1.5: CXD2944GB
  • 108 mm² die size
  • plastic case
  • Copyright date: 2000
  • Used on motherboards: GH-004, GH-006, GH-008, GH-010, GH-013
• 1.9: CXD2949GB / (reported as CXD2949BGB in PS2ident)
  • 96 mm² die size
  • Copyright date: 2001
  • Used on motherboards: GH-015 - GH-023
• 1.11: CXD2949CGB
  • 83 mm² die size
  • Copyright date: 2002
  • Used on motherboards: GH-023 - ?
• 1.11: CXD2949DGB
  • 73 mm² die size
  • Copyright date: 2003
  • Used on motherboards: ? - GH-032-54 - ?
• CXD2972GB
  • 49 mm² die size
  • likely 90 nm process
  • Copyright date: 2006
  • Used on motherboards: PlayStation 3 COK-002/COK-002W (Models CECHC and CECHE)
    

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• 1.15: CXD2980GB
  • GS was made dedicated again after combining EE with RDRAM, IOP and other components instead, has no cooling at all besides airflow
  • Used on motherboards: GH-061-12 - GH-072-42, thus used in every 79XXX and 90XXX slim PS2
• CXD2980BGB
  • Copyright date: 2007
  • Used on motherboards:
• 1.14: CXD2980CGB
  • Used on motherboards:

Specifications

• Parallel rendering processor with embedded DRAM "Graphics Synthesizer" (GS) clocked at 147.456 MHz
• 279 mm² die (combined EE+GS in SCPH-7500x: 86 mm², 53.5 million transistors)
• Programmable CRT controller (PCRTC) for output
• Pixel pipelines: 16 without any texture mapping units (TMU), however half of pixel pipelines can perform texturing, so fillrate is either 16 pixels per clock with untextured 2400 Mpixels; or 8 pixels per clock with 1200 megapixels with bilinear texturing, and 1200 megatexels (bilinear).
• Video output resolution: Variable from 256×224 to 1920×1080
• 4 MB of embedded DRAM as video memory (an additional 32 MB of main memory can be used as video memory); 48 gigabytes per second peak bandwidth
  • Texture buffer bandwidth: 9.6 GB/s
  • Frame buffer bandwidth: 38.4 GB/s
• eDRAM bus width: 2560-bit (composed of three independent buses: 1024-bit write, 1024-bit read, 512-bit read/write)
• Pixel configuration: RGB:alpha, 24:8, 15:1; 16-, 24-, or 32-bit Z-buffer
• Display color depth: 32-bit (RGBA: 8 bits each)
• Dedicated connection to main CPU and VU1
• Overall pixel fillrate: 16 × 147 Mpix/s = 2.352 gigapixel/s
  • 1.2 gigapixel/s (with Z-buffer, alpha, and texture)
  • With no texture, flat shaded: 2.4 Gpix/s (75,000,000 32-pixel raster triangles)
  • With 1 full texture (diffuse map), Gouraud shaded: 1.2 Gpix/s (37,750,000 32-bit pixel raster triangles)
  • With 2 full textures (diffuse map and specular, alpha, or other), Gouraud shaded: 0.6 Gpix/s (18,750,000 32-bit pixel raster triangles)
  • Texture fillrate: 1.2 Gtexel/s
  • Sprite drawing rate: 18.75 million/s (8×8 pixels)
  • Particle drawing rate: 150 million/s
• Polygon drawing rate: 75 million/s (small polygon)
  • 50 million/s (48-pixel quad with Z and A)
  • 30 million/s (50-pixel triangle with Z and A)
  • 25 million/s (48-pixel quad with Z, A and T)
  • 16 million/s (75-pixel triangle with Z, A, T and fog)
• VESA (maximum 1280×1024 pixels)
• 3 rendering paths (path 1, 2 and 3) GS effects include: Dot3 bump mapping (normal mapping), mipmapping, spherical harmonic lighting, alpha blending, alpha test, destination alpha test, depth test, scissor test, transparency effects, framebuffer effects, post-processing effects, perspective-correct texture mapping, edge-AAx2 (poly sorting required), bilinear, trilinear texture filtering, multi-pass, palletizing (6:1 ratio 4-bit; 3:1 ratio 8-bit), offscreen drawing, framebuffer mask, flat shading, Gouraud shading, cel shading, dithering, texture swizzling.
• Multi-pass rendering ability
  • Four passes: 300 Mpixel/s (300 Mpixels/s divided by 32 pixels = 9,375,000 triangles/s lost every four passes)