Wii U hardware discussion and investigation *rename

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A year ago I thought this was a likely candidate for Wii. If you look at the IBM white paper for it:

https://www-01.ibm.com/chips/techlib/techlib.nsf/techdocs/D393643EC6B662E78525763200547AED/$file/476fp_wp_04_07_2011.pdf

They also give a DMIPS benchmark. For a three core system you'd be in the ballpark of 12,000. Xenon has a supposed DMIPS score of 19,200 and the Cell PPU 10,240 (Wikipedia). So I think it would be fairly comparable to those in terms of non-compute code, but it seems to lack a vector unit for compute performance.

Although I imagine that Nintendo would only use those cores as the starting point and build on it with additional blocks.
 
McHuj said:
A year ago I thought this was a likely candidate for Wii. If you look at the IBM white paper for it:

https://www-01.ibm.com/chips/techlib/techlib.nsf/techdocs/D393643EC6B662E78525763200547AED/$file/476fp_wp_04_07_2011.pdf

They also give a DMIPS benchmark. For a three core system you'd be in the ballpark of 12,000. Xenon has a supposed DMIPS score of 19,200 and the Cell PPU 10,240 (Wikipedia). So I think it would be fairly comparable to those in terms of non-compute code, but it seems to lack a vector unit for compute performance.

Although I imagine that Nintendo would only use those cores as the starting point and build on it with additional blocks.
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Haven't we been hearing 6 cores since the 476FP doesn't support SMT? That would put the CPU in the range of a 24,000 DMIPS score, before customizations.
 
Am I missing some thing here? If whatnyou say were the case...and we had 6 real cores...then how could that possibly be less powerfull than cell/xenon??...seems to me that is much much better is it not? How would devs have trouble with that setup?
 
True, but we also had it confirmed that the cores are multi threaded, which no longer looks to be the case. Someone theorized (it may have been wsippel, but don't quote me on that) that they may have created a 6 core CPU logically divided into three virtual cores to simulate dual threaded cores. What purpose that would serve other than making it appear closer to a 360, I do not know.
 
liolio said:
Who confirmed that SMT is in the picture? Nobody that proved reliable if I haven't miss something.
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Earendil said:
lherre on GAF, iirc.
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I couldnt find his direct quote but.....

And I'll believe that it's an upclocked Broadway when I see it. All those attributes could also be said of the 476fp. lherre has proven reliable about the asymmetrical cache, and he claimed 2-way SMT. Perhaps the master core is and the other two are not and there was some confusion along the way.
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http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=39228728&postcount=4063

Now they are some post saying it not there anymore. same poster BTW

I suppose it depends on how extensive the documentation Nintendo provided was. If it's as vague as that "spec sheet," then, no, you can't blame those devs for just porting over what they have and seeing what happens. And who knows what changes have been made along the way. Lherre said a while back that there was 2-way SMT and now we're hearing that that may not be the case.
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http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=39365013&postcount=4973
 
Howdy. New around here so be gentle :p Very informative thread here, so thanks for all the insightful info y'all!

To jump straight into the 2-way SMT debate.... i noticed Lherre at the time mentioned how, unless Nintendo wanted to rework the WiiU's architecture to accomodate an extra core, then its definitely going to be 3-core: Would that pply to SMT aswell?

Like if they had 2-way SMT back then (when lherre confirmed it), would removing it not require a lot of re-working of the architecture? Not to mention be a major headache to devs who were already far into development using what Nintendo had given them last year? I'm not really too hot on this subject, but is Multi-threading something you can just remove without fundamentally altering the system?
 
Earendil said:
Li Mu Bai mentioned it here in this thread as well:

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1637040&postcount=969
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There's nothing authoritative in that post and in general it's pretty ridiculous.

Just from having looked into a number of non-wiiu related rumors about things I have actual knowledge, they almost always start with a random guy making something up and then a bunch of people repeating it as if it were fact. Both truth and falsehood are going to look like that to everyone but developers until the thing comes out and even a little while after that.

At this point you're best off regarding everything as speculation. Unless you just don't care about being wrong, which is fine. GAF doesn't.
 
forumaccount said:
There's nothing authoritative in that post and in general it's pretty ridiculous.

Just from having looked into a number of non-wiiu related rumors about things I have actual knowledge, they almost always start with a random guy making something up and then a bunch of people repeating it as if it were fact. Both truth and falsehood are going to look like that to everyone but developers until the thing comes out and even a little while after that.

At this point you're best off regarding everything as speculation. Unless you just don't care about being wrong, which is fine. GAF doesn't.
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I AM regarding everything as speculation. Unless I see actual specs released, I take everything with a grain of salt.
 
forumaccount said:
Just from having looked into a number of non-wiiu related rumors about things I have actual knowledge, they almost always start with a random guy making something up and then a bunch of people repeating it as if it were fact.
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There's also selection bias. Fans of a particular company will tend to promote (and start) the rumors that make their console more powerful.

That was a good way to weed through the GAF Wii U mess. it was pretty obvious much of it fell in the category of wishful thinking. Hell I'm still skeptical of the 2GB of RAM rumor, believing it may be 1.5GB or even less.
 
Rangers said:
There's also selection bias. Fans of a particular company will tend to promote (and start) the rumors that make their console more powerful.

That was a good way to weed through the GAF Wii U mess. it was pretty obvious much of it fell in the category of wishful thinking. Hell I'm still skeptical of the 2GB of RAM rumor, believing it may be 1.5GB or even less.
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2GB comes from the people on gaf that dont understand tech. If you look at the sdk leak, you have 1.5 GB of ram plus 512MB of flash for the OS, they added this to the ram.

And yes there is a ton of wishful thinking on GAF.
 
Kb-Smoker said:
2GB comes from the people on gaf that dont understand tech. If you look at the sdk leak, you have 1.5 GB of ram plus 512MB of flash for the OS, they added this to the ram.

And yes there is a ton of wishful thinking on GAF.
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The 2GB rumor came from me after asking a couple of people. It wasn't based on wishful thinking.
 
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