Wow! Renesas Announces "Dreamcast On A Chip"

[SegaR&D]

GameGear 2 just around the corner then!

Wooooooohoooooooo!!!

 

[Nick Spolec]

......Don't get my hopes up.

If this turns out to be some kind of stupid robot dog, I will probably turn to murdering people.

P.S. Please God... Please...

 

[Jabjabs]

What would happen is that games would be downloaded onto the systems large hard drive, while cutting out all the middlemen they'd only be priced at around 19.99 or 14.99.

The entire DC back catalogue plus new software(shenmue3?) could be available. Sega actually developed a few chapters of shenmue3 on dc as you can find numereous pics of chapter 5 "Luoyang" online.

When the DC was first canned there was a british home entertainment company who was going to do this, except the machine was also a hard drive TV recorder. I've forgotten their name and I never heard of them again, so I don't think it went al that well.

 

[Lazy8s]

Pace

 

[Teasy]

I think Pace were going to use PowerVRDC chips in Digital Satellite and Cable boxes, but it never happened. Pace still make Digi boxes though AFAIK so they haven't disapeared completely.

 

[moichi]

It seems spec of this chip is half-clocked SH-7770(400MHz).
SH-7770(MBX) already available in Japan since April.
Some major car navigation products(GPS) use SH-7770.
(pioneer, mitsubishi and sony)

 

[Simon F]

It seems spec of this chip is half-clocked SH-7770(400MHz).
(pioneer, mitsubishi and sony)

What do you mean by "half-clocked"?

 

[one]

It seems spec of this chip is half-clocked SH-7770(400MHz).
SH-7770(MBX) already available in Japan since April.
Some major car navigation products(GPS) use SH-7770.
(pioneer, mitsubishi and sony)

While the original SH4 in Dreamcast is set at 200-MHz / 360 MIPS, SH3707 can do 540 MIPS but its clockspeed in unknown.

Speaking of car-navi, Toshiba will release a chip for 3-D car navigation system based on Playstation2 EE+GS SoC technology...

 

[Lazy8s]

Can't imagine anyone not already invested in PS2 technology picking up EE&GS for the more battery sensitive, embedded markets like car navigation systems when MBX is out and even PSP could make a more optimal choice. According to the mention above, even Sony products seem to have chosen MBX-based solutions for that market.

 

[hey69]

maybe EE&GS chip is dirt cheap for toshiba?
and i ddont think car navigation needs extra lowpower

 

[one]

Can't imagine anyone not already invested in PS2 technology picking up EE&GS for the more battery sensitive, embedded markets like car navigation systems when MBX is out and even PSP could make a more optimal choice.

Well, it's not like Toshiba adopted EE+GS or PSP core for car-navi, but rather Toshiba developed another one-chip solution that utilizes 90nm SoC technology first tested in EE+GS, and some of 3-D processing design in EE+GS.

On the same 90nm LSI package as EE+GS, it has a MIPS64 TX99 core @ 600Mhz, a 3-D graphics processor that shares certain technology with EE+GS, 32Mbit eDRAM, and other interfaces. But surely it consumes relatively high 4W, and will be tuned to run with less power. So it's EE+GS's nephew or something like that

 

[Legion]

AtomisWave 2?

Was it purely for reasons of expense that Sammy uses the Atomiswave? By all accounts it seems to be nothing more than a DC modified to play cartridges.

 

[rake]

It seems spec of this chip is half-clocked SH-7770(400MHz).
SH-7770(MBX) already available in Japan since April.
Some major car navigation products(GPS) use SH-7770.
(pioneer, mitsubishi and sony)

Pioneer and Misubishi were both name checked by Img Tech in their results as OEM users of SH7770, but not Sony. Can you say which Sony system uses it? Thanks.

 

[hey69]

AtomisWave 2?

Was it purely for reasons of expense that Sammy uses the Atomiswave? By all accounts it seems to be nothing more than a DC modified to play cartridges.

most probably YES

it is just a dreamcst

 

[Lazy8s]

I had thought Renesas was more than just a standard licensee of that PowerVR technology and could perhaps have adjustments made to MBX for conditions which would allow for this higher polygon rate set-up.

I guess high-end chips could be scaled to work for car information systems since the market is not nearly as power sensitive as the mobile space. PowerVR provides a well suited solution, though, with low costs from its small size and lower requirements on memory bandwidth.

Teasy:

I think Pace were going to use PowerVRDC chips

The actual Dreamcast SoC (Dreamcast compatible, not MBX-based) was planned for that time back in 2001. Pace boxes could've used it (or shipped with any DC technology as it wouldn't really make a big difference for an STB), but did any PC cards ever ship with the DC-on-a-chip as planned in Japan?

Pace still make Digi boxes though AFAIK so they haven't disapeared completely.

Yeah, Pace is actually a decent-sized provider in the UK and operates internationally too.

 

[SegaR&D]

Mainmemory/vram/soundmem

Naomi - 32/16/8

DC - 16/8/2

AtomisWave - 16/16/8

 

[Peppermonkey]

Bigass portable???

1024x768 would be one bigass portable...

Actually, I'd say it would be an extremely sharp picture for a portable.

I thought the PSP was supposed to be 720p (that's what I heard anyway). That's 1280x720!!!

Basically, I'm saying that the system doesn't have to be big to utilize that resolution, it just has to have an extremely good (sharp) screen.

 

[SegaR&D]

Yes that is true

 

[Farid]

Re: Bigass portable???

Actually, I'd say it would be an extremely sharp picture for a portable.

I thought the PSP was supposed to be 720p (that's what I heard anyway). That's 1280x720!!!

Basically, I'm saying that the system doesn't have to be big to utilize that resolution, it just has to have an extremely good (sharp) screen.

We passed 50 years with 20' to 30' TVs screens that could only push ~640x480, nevertheless, today we want 4' screens to be capable of HDTV resolutions.

[Pearl Jam]Because, it's the evolution, baby![/Pearl Jam]

 

[PC-Engine]

Re: Bigass portable???

1024x768 would be one bigass portable...

Actually, I'd say it would be an extremely sharp picture for a portable.

I thought the PSP was supposed to be 720p (that's what I heard anyway). That's 1280x720!!!

Basically, I'm saying that the system doesn't have to be big to utilize that resolution, it just has to have an extremely good (sharp) screen.

Nah a high resolution screen like that would be too expensive which would defeat the whole purpose of a mobile graphics portable. BTW the PSP's screen isn't 1280x720, it's 480 x 272.