Revolution's Broadway CPU to be G3+VMX variant?

[jvd]

LP970FX is suppose to dissipate 16w @1.6Ghz. So I'd hazard a guess that 1.6Ghz 970MP could be around double of that.

But on what micron

Game informer is reporting that the rev may slip to late 2006 . Which may very well mean 65nm which could change everything

 

[PC-Engine]

Isn't the 970MP just dual core 970FXs?

 

[Shogmaster]

But on what micron

90nm IIRC.

Isn't the 970MP just dual core 970FXs?

It's got 1MB L2 cache per core. 970FX only has 512KB L2.

 

[Magnum PI]

yeah but honestly nintendo can't be competitive with that

competitiveness doesn't only relate to performance.

if nintendo can release a system that is comparable to the two others on 480p and is priced lower, then it will be competitive at least outside of the hdtv owners market.

 

[Urian]

I must repeat one of my arguments.

PowerPC 970FX. 58 milion transistors. 10GFLOPS. 33.5 milions used for logic (not cache).

PowerPC 750VX 1.5Ghz. 10.5 milion transistor (is the IBM equivalent of the PowerPC 7410) without the L2 Cache. 9 GFLOPS.

Now take the Gekko (the original G3 is 6.35 milion transistors) and you will see that the logical part without L2 Cache is 9 milion transistors, if we add the VMX unit the thing must go to the 13 milion transistors and the number of FLOPS will go from the 9 GFLOPS to the 12GFLOPS, a 20% more floating point power than the solution of using a PowerPC 970FX and with the advantage of using less transistors.

The other part is the 1T-SRAM in the L2 Cache, normally the L2 cache is 6T-SRAM and this has an huge impact on the heat consumption of the processor, if we reduce the number of transistors needed for making a work we will have a more "fresh" CPU or we can going to high clock speeds.

My main idea dual Gekko+VMX with multithreading support, and a Dual Gekko+VMX+MT has in theory less transistors than a PowerPC 970FX in the logical part, after it you use 1T-SRAM and you obtain my theory of the Revolution CPU.

 

[PC-Engine]

How about a quad core Gekko+VMX@2GHz? That would only be around 60 million transistors.

 

[Urian]

How about a quad core Gekko+VMX@2GHz? That would only be around 60 million transistors.

Is a another good possibility. It said Dual core+multithreading and it uses less transistors than the quad core solution but at the same time the quad config is more effective.

Oh, and we are forgetting the GPU. How about an overclocked M28+1T-SRAM fabbed at 90nm?

 

[BOOMEXPLODE]

You guys forget that Sony and MS are losing money on their videogame business. Nintendo is making money. As a company Nintendo is not looking weak, videogames are a volatile business but they still consistantly have good earnings.

Nintendo only looks weak to the "hardcore" gamers on forums like these. This amounts to about 1% of gamers. Nintendo can afford to lose that 1% of the market if they secure the other 99%.

It's been proven again and again: having the best hardware != success.

 

[chachi]

How about a quad core Gekko+VMX@2GHz? That would only be around 60 million transistors.

The G3 variants don't have the cache coherency protocols necessary for efficient SMP operation, unless IBM added them and I don't see why they would. They also top out at 200 MHz FSB last I looked.

I stand by my claim that the 970MP is too big, hot and expensive for most embedded use (so is Cell and the XCPU but they're custom parts designed for a specific application). I'd be surprised if anyone bothered, it's a weird claim for IBM to make. The 970 (and the Power4 from which it came) were designed to excel at DP FP math, that's not an embedded (or console) part. Maybe it's just that *they* don't have any plans to use it in their own systems. The 970 was always kind of a red-headed stepchild at IBM, they probably never would have bothered if it hadn't been for Apple starting to sell clusters.

Using 1T-SRAM for cache to save transistor count is an interesting idea but something tells me if it was that easy then it'd already be in use in chips where the return on investment is much higher.

 

[Li Mu Bai]

Let me get this straight urian, in terms of floating point performance you expect the Revolution's CPU to be on the scale of 10x weaker than the X360?

 

[London Geezer]

Let me get this straight urian, in terms of floating point performance you expect the Revolution's CPU to be on the scale of 10x weaker than the X360?

Well, isn't floating point only like 20% of a game's code, shouldn't matter right?



/RUNS VERY FAST.

 

[PC-Engine]

How about a dual core 750GX+Vector Processing Array block similar to a PPU block?

Edit: I meant to say GX instead of FX.

 

[Li Mu Bai]

How about a dual core 750FX+Vector Processing Array block similar to a PPU block?

Okay, that's more reasonable. I'm foreseeing serious cross-platform development problems if this were indeed the case.

 

[Daniel_Blare]

Let me get this straight urian, in terms of floating point performance you expect the Revolution's CPU to be on the scale of 10x weaker than the X360?

we'll this board is pretty biased agianst Nintendo so...

4 core Gekko+VMX@3GHz with 1T-SRAM and PPU
or...

65nm Duel PowerPC 970MP with 1T-SRAM @3GHz with PPU

and don't pull that cop-out "its too expensive" when microsoft made Xbox360 in 2 years (as oppose to Nintendo's 5 years) and making basically a tri-core PowerPC @ 3.2GHz per core.Shouldn't Xbox360 cost $350?

 

[Shogmaster]

we'll this board is pretty biased agianst Nintendo so...

It's not a bias against Nintendo per say, but bias against that tiny casing for the Rev.....

I would whole-heartedly part take in all the pie in the sky Rev spec speculations if the casing was about the same as X360 or PS3......

 

[Daniel_Blare]

well

So really compared to 360 and PS3 do you think it can compete with those kind of specs?

Nintendo has stated that they will have competitive specs.Slightly more powerful than a console made 5 years ago IS NOT COMPETIVE.

Why would they spend (when it comes out n 2006) 6 years at over a billion dollars to make a console weaker than Xbox360 which was made in 2 years?

How will they port titles over?

Doesn't that contradict what nintendo said about making the console easier to develope for?

 

[PC-Engine]

It's not a bias against Nintendo per say, but bias against that tiny casing for the Rev.....

I would whole-heartedly part take in all the pie in the sky Rev spec speculations if the casing was about the same as X360 or PS3......

You seem hung up on the casing for some strange reason even after all the threads show that the casing has little relevance as to what kind of processing can be put inside of it. If Nintendo ends up with a significantly weaker CPU, it's not because of the case, it's because of cost.

I think the constant parroting of Xbox 360 being big = more powerful needs to die a quick death...

 

[Daniel_Blare]

You seem hung up on the casing for some strange reason even after all the threads show that the casing has little relevance as to what kind of processing can be put inside of it. If Nintendo ends up with a significantly weaker CPU, it's not because of the case, it's because of cost.

I think the constant parroting of Xbox 360 being big = more powerful needs to die a quick death...

pc let me ask you something. If nintendo is focused on PS3 and not Xbox360. Why would they bring out a significantly weaker console next to PS3 knowing that would hinder 3rd party support? And because it will make it harder to port games over.How can they spend over billion dollars in R&D and 6 years developement(when it comes out) but they come out with a console that is weaker than current gen PCs?

 

[Urian]

The key of all this is the philosophy of Nintendo.

They never created expansive hardware, only functional hardware and if they had a competitive GCN is because they launched it 18 months later than the PS2.

Now they are going to launch their next generation hardware at the same time of PS3, this is why I believe in a design based on a cheap console but fully functional (marking an huge difference with GCN) but with less power than 360 and PS3.

And for the conversion I am not worried, the key for the conversions is the PC in most cases, not the other consoles.

 

[Teasy]

They never created expansive hardware, only functional hardware and if they had a competitive GCN is because they launched it 18 months later than the PS2.

Now they are going to launch their next generation hardware at the same time of PS3, this is why I believe in a design based on a cheap console but fully functional (marking an huge difference with GCN) but with less power than 360 and PS3.

That doesn't make sense.

This gen:

PS2 ---1.5 years later--- GC/XBox

Next gen:

360 ---1 year later --- Rev/PS3

If we use the current generations release times as a direct guideline then that would suggest Rev will be less powerful then PS3 yes. But it does not suggest that it will be less powerful then 360.