It's 64-bits. Do the math! So let's do some math. How many bits are these consoles?

[DeadlyNinja]

I was watching the newest AVGN video today and he was talking about the Jaguar and how people fuss about how many bits is the system. As I recall, the Jaguar is actually a 16-bit system, but with 4 processor adding it up to 64. In reality, the system is still 16-bit, and bits aren't calculated by adding up different processors.

The bit wars were fun, and I'm actually kinda sad we don't have those today. After the N64/PSX, we no longer have any bits. If we go by the bit wars, how many bits were the consoles from Dreamcast and on? Actually, I think even during the early days, the DC and PS2 were billed as 128-bits, but nobody ever talks about it anymore.

Anyone want to list the bits just for fun?

 

[TheWretched]

Processors

* "Tom" Chip, 26.59 MHz
o Graphics processing unit (GPU) – 32-bit RISC architecture, 4 KB internal cache, provides wide array of graphic effects
o Object Processor – 64-bit RISC architecture; programmable; can behave as a variety of graphic architectures
o Blitter – 64-bit RISC architecture; high speed logic operations, z-buffering and Gouraud shading, with 64-bit internal registers.
o DRAM controller, 32-bit memory management
* "Jerry" Chip, 26.59 MHz
o Digital Signal Processor – 32-bit RISC architecture, 8 KB internal cache
+ Same RISC core as the GPU, but not limited to graphic production
o CD-quality sound (16-bit stereo)
+ Number of sound channels limited by software
+ Two DACs (stereo) convert digital data to analog sound signals
+ Full stereo capabilities
o Wavetable synthesis, FM synthesis, FM Sample synthesis, and AM synthesis
o A clock control block, incorporating timers, and a UART
o Joystick control
* Motorola 68000 "used as a manager."[13]
o General purpose 16/32-bit control processor, 13.295 MHz

[edit] Other Jaguar features

* RAM: 2 MB on a 64-bit bus using 4 16-bit fast page mode DRAMS
* Storage: Cartridge – up to 6 MB
* Support for ComLynx I/O

That's what Wiki says about the hardware itself.

It DID have 64bit processors, but the main ones, or rather the main parts in Tom and Jerry were 32bits.

 

[TapamN]

The Jaguar dev manuals are freely available, so it's not too hard to get them if you look. I've looked through them at one point, and, IIRC, the main CPU has a 24 bit address space, a 64 bit data bus, and a 32 bit ALU. It has 32 general user registers which are 32 bits long, and another bank of 32 registers for interrupts.

So the Jaguar would generally be considered a 32 bit system.

 

[DeadlyNinja]

I'm not a developer nor do I have the skills to interpret dev manuals. I just go by what I read, but naturally, I don't believe everything I read.

 

[swaaye]

If I recall correctly, lots of the games for Jag were using the 68000 as the CPU. Which is the same 16-bit processor as Genesis has. So you could say some of the games were 16-bit. Most of the games were so ugly that I wouldn't argue all that much with such a statement.

The bittedness argument in the console world is really rather annoying though. Jag's hardware was a mess and it showed in games, regardless of how many bits it could push through at once or the precision it could calculate.

 

[DeadlyNinja]

Ok, but what about today's consoles? We lost the bits around DC/PS2 launch. How would all those consoles be classified if we still had to bit wars.

 

[swaaye]

Cuz it's too confusing and rather moot anyway.

The modern consoles all have 64-bit CPU. GPUs are tricky to quantify. Do you want to talk internal data bus widths, SIMD rates, RAM data bus widths or shader precision?

An interesting thing about N64 is that apparently even though it has a 64-bit CPU it ran mostly 32-bit code. It's like on PC: you don't need 64-bit precision most of the time. 64-bit data is actually going to be slower because it will occupy more RAM, more cache, more bandwidth than 32-bit data. And N64 certainly had enough problems with bandwidth and RAM storage (and entirely lacked L2 cache.) On the other hand, the RCP had a 128-bit connection between the RDP and RSP, I believe. So maybe it was a 128-bit system!

 

[I.S.T.]

If I recall correctly, lots of the games for Jag were using the 68000 as the CPU. Which is the same 16-bit processor as Genesis has. So you could say some of the games were 16-bit. Most of the games were so ugly that I wouldn't argue all that much with such a statement.

The bittedness argument in the console world is really rather annoying though. Jag's hardware was a mess and it showed in games, regardless of how many bits it could push through at once or the precision it could calculate.

Keep in mind that the 68000 is not really a 16 bit CPU: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68000#Architecture

I have to say, it's one of the more fascinating CPU architectures given how unusual it was for it's time frame.

 

[Squeak]

Keep in mind that the 68000 is not really a 16 bit CPU: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68000#Architecture

I have to say, it's one of the more fascinating CPU architectures given how unusual it was for it's time frame.

The Jag was a very good architecture they just forgot to include hardwired texturemapping and transformation.

 

[I.S.T.]

I meant CPU architecture, not the whole system's architecture. >.>

 

[swaaye]

There are some interesting comments about Jaguar devel from Carmack regarding his port of Doom for it. He seems to think the hardware was a bit of a mess.

Check out what I found with a Google search for "Jaguar Carmack Cache"
http://www.scribd.com/doc/470798/John-Carmack-Archive-slashdot-posts

 

[Arwin]

Keep in mind that the 68000 is not really a 16 bit CPU: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68000#Architecture

I have to say, it's one of the more fascinating CPU architectures given how unusual it was for it's time frame.

Not to mention that, if I remember correctly, the 68000 was really, really good too. Was it about around the 68040 that it started falling behind the x86 offerings, or was it sooner? I can't remember ...

 

[jonabbey]

Not to mention that, if I remember correctly, the 68000 was really, really good too. Was it about around the 68040 that it started falling behind the x86 offerings, or was it sooner? I can't remember ...

It was around then, yeah. The 68000 series never went super-scalar like x86 did with the Pentium Pro.

I'd be interested to know what made the 68000 unusual for a processor of that time. I did 68000 assembly programming on the Amiga, and it seemed very straightforward to me coming from having done Z-80 coding on the TRS-80.

Now, the x86, that seemed scary. ;-)

 

[Crossbar]

I'd be interested to know what made the 68000 unusual for a processor of that time. I did 68000 assembly programming on the Amiga, and it seemed very straightforward to me coming from having done Z-80 coding on the TRS-80.

The 68000 was a generation ahead of the x86 architecture from the software perspective. Large consistent register set, pretty high level instruction set. Perhaps it was some of the high level instructions that stopped it from scaling as well as the x86 did. I don´t know why it died so fast, it was pretty popular among engineers, used in the Sun workstations besides the Macs, Amigas and many more.

Motorola made a successor architecture called 88000 that died pretty fast as well, then they joined up with Apple and IBM and layed the foundation for the PowerPC architecture.

 

[jonabbey]

The 68000 was a generation ahead of the x86 architecture from the software perspective. Large consistent register set, pretty high level instruction set. Perhaps it was some of the high level instructions that stopped it from scaling as well as the x86 did. I don´t know why it died so fast, it was pretty popular among engineers, used in the Sun workstations besides the Macs, Amigas and many more.

Motorola made a successor architecture called 88000 that died pretty fast as well, then they joined up with Apple and IBM and layed the foundation for the PowerPC architecture.

I suspect some of that was just due to the economics of being in a minor market position next to x86. Apple went with a small market share, high margin strategy, and that hurt Motorola. Whatever the issues with the 68000 design, PowerPC was certainly not inferior to x86, but even in conjunction with IBM, without the scale of the x86 market, there just wasn't enough money put into it to keep it competitive.

 

[Arwin]

Yeah, I also reckon it was the relative failure of platforms Atari, Amiga and Apple that hurt the Motorola processor series more than anything else.

 

[DeadlyNinja]

Is it true that the 3DO is actually more powerful than the Jaguar?

 

[swaaye]

Is it true that the 3DO is actually more powerful than the Jaguar?

I think they are rather similar really. The 3DO's CDROM drive gave it the same kind of advantage that PS1 had over N64 though. 3DO could do HQ music and it could do video so it could seem like it was better. But if you look at the actual gameplay they both dish out, they are quite similar IMO.

 

[Simon F]

Keep in mind that the 68000 is not really a 16 bit CPU: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68000#Architecture

I have to say, it's one of the more fascinating CPU architectures given how unusual it was for it's time frame.

Wasn't the saying at the time something like "The 68000 is a 32-bit processor masquerading as a 16-bit processor while the 2(?)86 is an 8-bit pretending to be 16-bit"?

 

[DeadlyNinja]

I think they are rather similar really. The 3DO's CDROM drive gave it the same kind of advantage that PS1 had over N64 though. 3DO could do HQ music and it could do video so it could seem like it was better. But if you look at the actual gameplay they both dish out, they are quite similar IMO.

The Jaguar did get Jaguar CD later.