I found this on B3D on the PS3 GPU,this could be a Sony tech megaton if true:
"The following information was passed onto me and represents a bombshell about to be dropped on the X-Box 360 @ E3.
The NVidia GPU in the PS3 contains two radically new components never before included in a GPU. The triangle setup unit of the new GPU contains whats called a Micropolygon Processing Unit, whose job it is to dice up a triangle primitive into micropolygons to help accelerate the REYES algorithm. The MPU allows micropolygons to be vertex shaded in a way that permits Early-Z rejection.
Secondly, the GPU supports some kind of new texture format for storing 3D scene geometry efficiently in a uniform grid and a new texture operation to support fast ray-intersection tests to speed up raytracing.
Nvidia and Sony are betting, that the combination of these two features, and CELL will permit an unprecedented improvement in renderer implementations, from RenderMan-like renderers, to full raytracers. My source says there is a poster of a screenshot with one of the test images that looks like something out of Lord of the Rings movie in terms of quality."