Yes, the third-generation PlayStation console will indeed be called the PlayStation 3, Sony admitted last night when it unwrapped its answer to Microsoft"s Xbox 360 and Nintendo"s Revolution. That the PS3 would use a PowerPC-based Cell processor was already well known, but Sony yesterday revealed the chip would be clocked at 3.2GHz - matching Xbox 360"s PowerPC-based three-core chip - enough to yield 2.18 teraflops, the company claimed - twice what Xbox 360 will be able to pump out, apparently. There"s 512KB of on-die L2 cache, and seven AltiVec vector processing units.
IBM can now rightfully claim PowerPC technology is powering every single next-generation console, and it will be interesting to see what, if any, differences exist between the CPUs in the PS3, Xbox 360 and Nintendo Revolution. It"ll also be interesting to see how Apple leverages that fact to promote its own PowerPC-based Macs.