Design possibilities for the next GBA

[Fox5]

Well, it's not like there haven't already been gba games that could use it. Several GBA games use FMV(or are ports of games that used to have FMV) and they could have used it, and advance wars 2's graphics are compressed(very washed out compared to the first game) and they use semi hi quality background images when beating a mission that probably take up a lot of space, some voice samples, and they took out the custom unit positions for each co in predeployed maps(I miss that.....), so that game probably could have used more space. And anyhow, what is the matrix 256 MB rom the same cost as? 8 MB cart? 16 MB cart? 64 MB? And how about getting a smaller matrix rom, like 32 MB? Cheaper than current gba carts and holds more.

 

[Teasy]

MfA

I severely doubt it.

What part of that do you doubt?

Fox5

Changing suppliers for carts for a few games may not be worth it. Nintendo may still have a contract for the other carts or something. On what the 256MB cart price compare to, Tag knows a lot more then me about this so hopefully she will answer this.

 

[MfA]

I doubt that the prototype run on an old process done by Matrix Semiconductor managed to produce PROMs at an eight of the price of contemporary OTP PROMs.

 

[jvd]

Getting all those cores to run at diffrent speeds

Normally, in gaming situation, when full power is needed all the chips are basically running at multiply of the "base clock" ( 166 MHz ), but I do realize that all the main chips have variable clock-rate ( power saving feature ) and I do not think that they all need to still be in the same relationship as the specs specify for maximum performance operation...

Unless they want to deal with asynnchronous communication between cores in the die, they can yes vary the clock-speed, but doing in such a way that 166 MHz is divisible by the clock-speed of the core that gets "clocked-down" ( that is the result of the division is an integer number... for lowered dow clock speeds that were still higer than 166 MHz then we would worry about the clock speed divided by 166 MHz ).

The busses are all clocked at 166 MHz, main PSP bus, VRAM bus... so it would not be too difficult to throttle down opportunely.

Multiple clocks on the same chip has been done before...

Was talking about yield. It be very hard to get all those cores running at certian speeds. That can't be easy . Its hard enough to get one core running at a certian speed.

 

[Grall]

JVD;
It's all ONE chip dude. Besides, it's not as if 333MHz is going to be anything remarkable to accomplish on a .09u process. Geez dude, try and keep things in perspective here! We have GPUs doing 400+ on .15u TODAY (and Intel P4 did 2GHz on .18u), PSP is scheduled for next year...!


*G*

 

[Tagrineth]

Res Evil 2 N64 is on the same 64MB ROM that Conker's BFD and Pokémon Stadium 2 are on.

Matrix ROM isn't ready for mass-production today, but if it WAS, the 256MB variant would be nearly the same price as current 16MB mask ROM (don't know if that means higher or lower). IIRC nothing smaller than 256MB was ever planned for the tech... and today, 16MB is the largest mask ROM size ever used for GBA. 32MB is probably available, but it's either prohibitively expensive or simply not needed.

Re: Advance Wars 2... the graphics do look "washed out", but only on the Game Boy Player. Comparing AW and AW2 on real GBA's side by side, I honestly can't see any difference in the overall quality.

 

[MfA]

I doubt price per bit goes down linearly, for 8 times price reduction they would need >>8 layers.

 

[Tagrineth]

I doubt price per bit goes down linearly, for 8 times price reduction they would need >>8 layers.

That's one of the things that makes matrix ROM work 8)

 

[MfA]

Alledgedly.

 

[Vince]

Intel P4 did 2GHz on .18u

The 170M transistor Power4 did >1.5Ghz internally at IBM on their 8S2 (0.18um SOI) process. This is a walk-in-the park.

 

[jvd]

JVD;
It's all ONE chip dude. Besides, it's not as if 333MHz is going to be anything remarkable to accomplish on a .09u process. Geez dude, try and keep things in perspective here! We have GPUs doing 400+ on .15u TODAY (and Intel P4 did 2GHz on .18u), PSP is scheduled for next year...!


*G*

Its alot diffrent when you have the desktop cooling area to keep the chip cool and a huge power supply to power it. In a handheld you have barely any space for cooling. YOu have limited power . So yes i think its diffircult to do. Just like 400mhz gpus are still difficult and very expensive to make . Just look at the clock speeds of the moble chips in the pc sector compared to the high end. Huge diffrence .

 

[Paul]

333mhz on .9 is nothing when we have 2Ghz chips on .18.

Sure you have limited power, but look at how much power the CPU draws.

Not a whole lot, not to mention on .9 you don't generate a ton of heat, and all the cores are on one chip.

 

[Josiah]

I think it's obvious this thing is going to use more power than GBA. But unlike GBA, it won't run off of AA batteries. I'm betting the Lithium-Ion battery will be more comparable to the battery that's in a notebook.

 

[archie4oz]

Unless they change their mind, they're already stated in the presentation slides that it's going to use Li-Ion... That's why I stated before speculation on battery life and powerconsumption is a bit pointless at this time since the specifcations of the powersource hasn't been unveiled (and may likely change several times in the upcoming months).

 

[PC-Engine]

Its alot diffrent when you have the desktop cooling area to keep the chip cool and a huge power supply to power it. In a handheld you have barely any space for cooling. YOu have limited power . So yes i think its diffircult to do. Just like 400mhz gpus are still difficult and very expensive to make . Just look at the clock speeds of the moble chips in the pc sector compared to the high end. Huge diffrence .

I don't think 333MHz on 0.09u is going to be a problem with heat/power consumption since Pocket PCs are running at 400MHz right now using 0.13u however PPC don't have optical drives either so...

Archie is right though, since we don't know the mAh of the battery pack, it's kinda pointless to debate about battery life.

 

[Tagrineth]

Sure you have limited power, but look at how much power the CPU draws.

The entire GBA draws 0.6 Watts.

The only way PSP will have good batter life on that Li-Ion is if it's HEAVY.

 

[Paul]

The only way PSP will have good batter life on that Li-Ion is if it's HEAVY.

Prove it, you don't know what Sony is planning. Take a look at that new Clie engine with insane battery life.

 

[Evil_Cloud]

The only way PSP will have good batter life on that Li-Ion is if it's HEAVY.

Prove it, you don't know what Sony is planning. Take a look at that new Clie engine with insane battery life.

How long?

30 hours?

 

[archie4oz]

The entire GBA draws 0.6 Watts.

Draws more than that... The SP is even higher... The standard SP pack is 600mAh, and the new higher capacity pack is 1000mAh (supposedly designed to deliver 17+ hours).

The only way PSP will have good batter life on that Li-Ion is if it's HEAVY.

Don't you mean bulky? Li-Ion and Li-Po are by nature much lighter than your standard Alkaline, Ni-Cad, Ni-MH technologies.

 

[megadrive0088]

the PSP will have roughly half the raw processing power of the PS2
(geometry and fillrate) about a third the memory, but also features
that even the PS2 does not have since PSP is newer. the lower
resolution of PSP (lower than PS2) will offset, somwhat, its lesser
performance and memory.

what will Nintendo need, in GBA2, to rival/surpass the PSP?

A chipset with somewhat less power than Gamecube, or one with the same power as Gamecube, or one with more power than Gamecube?

then, what about chipset features? more features than Gekko & Flipper
just as PSP has more features than EE & GS?


sorry if this issue as already been discussed here, I have not read the entire thread.