PSP Architecture: Architecture of Consoles: A Practical Analysis, #18

1 About this edition

This edition originates from the article initially published on my personal website, it’s been re-styled to take advantage of the capabilities of PDF/eBook documents.

While identical content-wise, interactive widgets have been simplified to work with a static environment - in other words, anything that physical pages allow us, though these will offer a link to the original article in case the reader wants to try the ‘full version’. Please keep this in mind when you see references to interactivity throughout the writings.

As always, the original manuscript of the articles is available on Github to enable readers to report mistakes or propose changes. There’s also a supporting reading list available to help understand the series. The author also accepts donations to help improve the quality of current articles and upcoming ones.

1.1 Open to feedback

Last but not least, for any comments and/or issues regarding this edition of the article, please get in touch using the links provided on the About page.

2 A quick introduction

Released just one month after the Nintendo DS, Sony’s PSP proved that ‘horizontal innovation’ is not the only way to succeed in the portable console market.

This article is dedicated to anyone who wants to understand, straight to the point, how the PSP operates. It’s not a short write-up, but I hope that at the end of the article, you will be able to grasp the building blocks of this console (its design rationale, choice of CPUs, GPU pipeline, security system and so forth).

3 Supporting Imagery

The original PSP (model 1000, a.k.a. ‘Fat’). Released on 12/12/2004 in Japan, 24/03/2005 in America and 01/09/2005 in Europe [1]

The updated PSP (model 2000, a.k.a. ‘Slim’). Released on 05/09/2007 in Europe, 06/09/2007 in America and 20/09/2007 in Japan [1]

The even-more-updated PSP (model 3000, a.k.a. ‘Brite’), silver edition. Released on 14/10/2008 in America, 16/10/2008 in Japan and 17/10/2008 in Europe [1]

The redesigned PSP (model ‘N1000’, a.k.a ‘Go’). Released on 01/10/2009 in America and Europe, and on 01/11/2009 in Japan [1]

Motherboard [1]. Such a tiny board… but you can do so much with it. Those zigzags you see between the CPU and memory attempt to correct the length of each bus so all of the signals arrive at the same time. This tells you how fast technology has become! After the ‘Slim’ model, Tachyon and ‘NAND + SDRAM’ became one.

Motherboard with important parts labelled.

Main architecture diagram. After the ‘Slim’ model, NAND and SDRAM size were doubled (to 64 MB each)

4 Main CPU

Similarly to Nintendo, Sony built an extremely packed System-on-Chip (SoC) that houses most of the components we are going to discuss throughout this article. This includes the main CPU in charge of executing games and other programs (unlike the other CPUs, which we’ll talk about in due time). The SoC is called Tachyon, a name chosen by Sony themselves (after watching some Star Trek?).

Figure 4.1: The Tachyon chip on the original PSP model.

The main CPU is also an in-house design by Sony that keeps up with the tradition of using MIPS technology. Be as it may, it’s been four years since the