Playstation 3 OS details emerge

Nothing all that new from what was revealed about the OS at GDC, just more specifics in regards to the underlying Playstaion 3 operating system. Apparently, the PS3 will have one of the seven SPEs readily available for the PS3's operating system which will be accessible at any time during gameplay. Similar to how the Xbox 360's blade interface works. I guess Sony liked how the Xbox 360's blade interface because the PS3 OS interface is being desccribed as blade-like. That's all well and good since the blade interface works pretty good for the Xbo 360. What's cool to note though is that it seems you'll be able to voice or video chat at the drop of a hat, at any time during gameplay. It'll be interesting to see how seamless this would be. Here's the alledged specs:

- Multi-User Voice Chat across all games, even outside of the games own UI
- Multi-User Video Chat across all games, even outside of the games own UI
- Notifications and messaging to be sent between users regardless of the games they are playing

Like the Xbox 360, these come at a cost and our sources have told us that these features use approximately:
- 64mb of the 256mb of available XDR memory off the Cell CPU
- 32mb of the 256mb of available GDDR3 memory off the RSX chip
- 1 SPE of 7 constantly reserved
- 1 SPE of 7 able to be "taken" by the OS at a moments notice (games have to give it up if requested)

I doubt that taking away these resources from the games themselves will have any kind of serious adverse affect but I know jack-all about game development. Anyone working on this want to anonymously spill some beans on how developemnt is going?