Rumors indicate that Sony is still working on a new PSP model even with the release of the PSPGo only months away. Eurogamer.es is claiming to have insider sources who say that the PSP2 will have a quad-core graphics chip. This is reportedly a quad-core version of the low-power SGX543MP chip, codenamed “Hydra”. Of course, this cannot be confirmed as Sony hasn’t even announced a new model yet.
Eurogamer’s translation of the original Spanish report notes that the single core version of the chip has been demonstrated at CES running Quake 3 Arena at 30FPS. Quote from Eurogamer:
The obvious difference of course is that the SGX543MP is a multicore processor, available with anything up to 16 cores on tap. According to the original report, PSP2 opts for a quad configuration offering notional specs of 133 million polygons per second, and 4Gpixels/sec fillrate, assuming that Hydra operates at the chip’s low-end of 200MHz (higher speed variants are also available, presumably for desktop use). While specs like this are always subject to interpretation, these figures are a ballpark match for the original Xbox. However, PowerVR’s tech includes tile-based deferred rendering, which should provide a nice performance boost.
The chip is also described as being able to operate as both graphics processor and CPU, so the PSP2 could conceivably use a single chip for everything, which can save power as well as being more efficient from a programming perspective.