What was the PlayStation 2's central processing unit popularly called?

The PlayStation 2’s central processing unit was popularly called the Emotion Engine.

Sony and Toshiba developed the Emotion Engine for the PlayStation 2. It was a custom 64-bit processor based on the MIPS architecture and ran at 294.912 MHz in the original Japanese and North American hardware. Its design included vector processing units intended to handle the complex calculations needed for games and 3D graphics.

The name is often confused with the PlayStation 2’s Graphics Synthesizer, which was the console’s graphics processor. The Emotion Engine handled general processing and supported the system’s distinctive animation and physics effects, while the Graphics Synthesizer rendered images.

Later PlayStation 2 revisions used variations in clock speed and hardware integration, but “Emotion Engine” remains the widely recognized name associated with the console’s main processor.