Nintendo 3DS hardware thread

[Teasy]

Nikkei are doing a 3DS teardown, not much of interest so far though:

http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20110228/189942/

 

[Deleted member 13524]

The SoC seems to be under one of the card readers.

 

[link2877]

First clear shots of the CPU and FCRAM.

Cant get much from the CPU. But I'm sure someone knows that part number on the FCRAM and we can finally figure out exactly how much ram this thing has.

(dose that m84 on it maybe indicate 84MB)

 

[wsippel]

First clear shots of the CPU and FCRAM.

Cant get much from the CPU. But I'm sure someone knows that part number on the FCRAM and we can finally figure out exactly how much ram this thing has.

(dose that m84 on it maybe indicate 84MB)

"MB82" indicates mobile FCRAM (pseudo static) as far as I can tell. Other than that, the marking doesn't seem to follow the typical Fujitsu naming scheme.

 

[DeadlyNinja]

The Chinese leak already confirmed it had 96MB of RAM anyway. I think figuring out the CPU would be more interesting.

 

[MDX]

iFixit teardown - 3DS

* We found an interesting little feature of the 3DS by accident while blowing away some dust with canned air: external mics on the 3DS pick up the characteristic noise of wind blowing by the device and spin the live icons in the background of each menu as if they were in a tornado.

* Nobody is really certain what the infrared port on the 3DS will do just yet, but we're thinking it's for some 3DS to 3DS line-of-sight communication. The IR controller IC is manufactured by NXP and has the markings: S750 0803 TSD031C

* Chip winners include:
* Nintendo 1048 0H ARM CPU
* Fujitsu MB82M8080-07L
* Toshiba THGBM2G3P1FBAI8 NAND Flash
* Texas Instruments PAIC3010B 0AA37DW
* Invensense ITG-3270 MEMS Gyroscope

http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nintendo-3DS-Teardown/5029/1

 

[MDX]

Take this for what its worth:

TT Games talk Wii to 3DS port of LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean, compare power between platforms

The following information comes from Nick Ricks, Producer at TT Games...

- uses assets from the Wii version
- 3DS has roughly the same power as a Wii
- lighting is better on 3DS
- mostly the same content as Wii version
- 60 FPS in 2D and 30 FPS in 3D
- 3D is used to highlight collectables
- StreetPass mode is the only way to unlock certain characters and alternate costumes for Jack Sparrow

If Wii had a redesign into a Wii lite, would it be the same size as a DS?


http://www.siliconera.com/2011/03/02/lego-video-game-developers-build-first-wii-to-3ds-port/

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Only if they can shrink the disk drive Though looking at the pictures of the wii main board in the next gen storage thread it's already more or less the size of a DS.

 

[MDX]

Only if they can shrink the disk drive Though looking at the pictures of the wii main board in the next gen storage thread it's already more or less the size of a DS.

Thats what I was thinking.

Regarding the ARM processor.
What direction are people leaning?

We had a rumor that it was an two ARM 11's
We had a rumor that it was an ARMADA 600 series.
What could that 1044 stand for, MHz?

Considering heat & battery issues, what is the maximum Nintendo could have
pushed the ARM and Pica chip to make it potentially as powerful as the Wii.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

What could that 1044 stand for, MHz?

Highly improbable. A 1GHz CPU would be excessive for the GPU, excessive for the DS titles shown, out of keeping wtih Nintendo's design philosophy, not matching any of the rumours, and would make 3DS more powerful than Wii by quite a way I expect.

At the moment it's just a part number, and may not refer to the specs to any degree at all.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Highly improbable. A 1GHz CPU would be excessive for the GPU, excessive for the DS titles shown, out of keeping wtih Nintendo's design philosophy, not matching any of the rumours, and would make 3DS more powerful than Wii by quite a way I expect.

At the moment it's just a part number, and may not refer to the specs to any degree at all.

A 1GHz ARM11\Cortex A5 would be excessive for a 200MHz PICA200?

 

[MDX]

A 1GHz ARM11\Cortex A5 would be excessive for a 200MHz PICA200?

I wonder, which chip would handle the video recording?
CPU or GPU?

For example

The ARMADA 610 features Marvell’s award-winning Qdeo™ technology with an integrated video accelerator that can
seamlessly encode and decode 1080p video at 30fps. In addition, the ARMADA 610 incorporates a complete Image
Signal Processor which can capture high resolution color pictures up to 16MP as well as stream 1080p video at 30fps.

Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America’s President and COO, mentioned that Nintendo is currently looking at a way for the 3DS to take 3D videos in the near future. This feature was hinted at in a recent Iwata Asks article. Further details about the planed update and/or software to allow these capabilities have yet to be discusses. 3DS fans should just stayed tuned for the time being!

Could the ARM 11 do that?

 

[MDX]

Highly improbable. A 1GHz CPU would be excessive for the GPU, excessive for the DS titles shown, out of keeping wtih Nintendo's design philosophy, not matching any of the rumours, and would make 3DS more powerful than Wii by quite a way I expect.

At the moment it's just a part number, and may not refer to the specs to any degree at all.

You are right, just noticed different numbers from the different examples

1037 - 21
1048 - OH

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Definitely not an Armada 610, as that SoC has a GPU that's already quite a bit more powerfull than PICA200 (Vivante GC1000).

It would definitely be a great move for Nintendo to go with that SoC (same "order of magnitude" of performance as NGP), but they just didn't.

The CPU is either ARM11 or Cortex A5, at most.

 

[MDX]

Definitely not an Armada 610, as that SoC has a GPU that's already quite a bit more powerfull than PICA200 (Vivante GC1000).

It would definitely be a great move for Nintendo to go with that SoC (same "order of magnitude" of performance as NGP), but they just didn't.

The CPU is either ARM11 or Cortex A5, at most.

The chip has mask work protection mark Ⓜ (M enclosed in a circle.)
Which is

a mask work is a two or three-dimensional layout or topography of an integrated circuit (IC or "chip"), i.e. the arrangement on a chip of semiconductor devices such as transistors and passive electronic components such as resistors and interconnections. By extension, it also refers to the copyright-like intellectual property right conferring time-limited exclusivity to reproduction of a particular layout. The layout is called a mask work because, in photolithographic processes, the multiple etched layers within actual ICs are each created using a mask, called the photomask, to permit or block the light at specific locations, sometimes for hundreds of chips on a wafer simultaneously.

Would that mean its pretty much a custom made chip where one cannot simply call it an ARM11, ARMADA, or A5, etc?

Ono: The first time I had any kind of contact with the 3DS was shortly before E3 of last year. A couple of weeks before the show I got a call from [Capcom producer] Takeuchi-san, and he said he had something he wanted me to see. So I traveled to Osaka, and he whipped out a 3DS, and it was running a version of Resident Evil 5! And yes I was surprised we could get this kind of power in the palm of your hand, and 3D to boot.

CAPCOM claimed they couldnt get RE5 running on the Wii

 

[Lazy8s]

No IP company designed a custom ARM ISA-compatible core for Nintendo, so it's definitely based on an existing ARM core though the chip itself is certainly custom (not an Armada or OMAP SoC, for example).

And neither the CPU nor GPU would handle the video encoding. That'd be done by a dedicated video encoder or at least a general video/imaging co-processor.

 

[Hardknock]

Ok from my understanding PICA200 is OpenGL 1.1 compliant with only fixed shaders. Is that something that's hard-coded in the chip or could Nintendo release a firmware to update the chip to 2.0?

 

[Xenus]

It's hardcoded. The PICA200 from my knowledge trades programmablity for speed.

 

[Hardknock]

Thanks. It seems a bit counterintuitive doesn't it? I know they needed the speed for the 3D function but what about games that are created in strictly 2D with no 3D mode? These games are being unnecessarily handicapped. It would have been preferable if the developers could choose fixed shaders or custom shaders no?

The new UE3 for instance requires OpenGL 2.0 and even though it can run on the iPhone 3GS it won't be compatible with 3DS due to fixed shaders and OpenGL compliance.

 

[Arwin]

An important other reason is that Epic mentioned there is no regular or dev 3DS with enough memory to run UE3, not just the game engine but the tools and other infrastructure components.