What IBM CPU is Wii's Broadway a derivative of?

[OtakingGX]

I don't remember which game I had in. It may have been RE4. It was many months ago. If I remember, I'll measure it again. But it was a bit above 30W (32W maybe). My cube is a launch cube so maybe the AC adapter's efficiency is going downhill, if the 25W reading by the other fellow is to be believed.

The two other readings I have seen are 20W and 21W while playing. The power supply shouldn't lose efficiency like something mechanical would. It may just be that the first revision of the Gamecube was more power-hungry than later ones. I have a release day Cube too, but no watt meter to test the theory out.

Back on topic, Arstechnica has a nice rundown (part II) on the PowerPC family of processors. Part II begins with the PowerPC 750. My guess, at this moment, is a Gekko-ized PowerPC 750GX (sweet, they named it after me!). Reported speeds of dev kits (729 MHz) are consistent with the clock speed of the GX (733 - 1000 MHz), with the lower speed processors consuming a miniscule amount of power. The only problem with this theory, though, is that the 750GX doesn't appear to be a 90nm design, it's essentially a 750FX with 1MB L2 on 130nm.

 

[Ooh-videogames]

The two other readings I have seen are 20W and 21W while playing. The power supply shouldn't lose efficiency like something mechanical would. It may just be that the first revision of the Gamecube was more power-hungry than later ones. I have a release day Cube too, but no watt meter to test the theory out.

Back on topic, Arstechnica has a nice rundown (part II) on the PowerPC family of processors. Part II begins with the PowerPC 750. My guess, at this moment, is a Gekko-ized PowerPC 750GX (sweet, they named it after me!). Reported speeds of dev kits (729 MHz) are consistent with the clock speed of the GX (733 - 1000 MHz), with the lower speed processors consuming a miniscule amount of power. The only problem with this theory, though, is that the 750GX doesn't appear to be a 90nm design, it's essentially a 750FX with 1MB L2 on 130nm.

Thats why I believe Nintendo used those GC turbo dev kits as a means to get developer support, Iwata said Wii devkits are 100,000 yen. What is that in US currency? That should atleast put devs close to RE4 cutscenes, particularly Krauser knife fight. With a obvious texture resolution increase.

Is there a developer currently viewing the board that can tell us if they have received the latest devkits?

 

[StefanS]

Thats why I believe Nintendo used those GC turbo dev kits as a means to get developer support, Iwata said Wii devkits are 100,000 yen. What is that in US currency? T

That's about 1000 $.

 

[Ooh-videogames]

That's about 1000 $.

Actually what he said was, a little more than 200,000 yen. Still not much. Had to fact check for accuracy.

 

[Fox5]

Ah right, I've heard 39w quoted and assumed that was some kind of measurment, I didn't realise it was just the maximum output of GC's PSU. So in fact GC consumed more like 20-25w, thanks for the info.

So Wii will consume around twice the power of GC (despite using much more power efficient tech like 90nm chips and 1T-Sram-Q ect). Well that ends any talk of Wii simply being a 50% overclocked GC with more ram then..

Oh and thanks for the link hupfinsgack.

Power drain doesn't scale linearly though, it's possible if its pushing the limits of its design then power consumption could drastically shoot up.

The power supply shouldn't lose efficiency like something mechanical would. It may just be that the first revision of the Gamecube was more power-hungry than later ones. I have a release day Cube too, but no watt meter to test the theory out.

Later cubes did ship with a power supply with a slightly lower rating than later ones.

 

[Teasy]

Power drain doesn't scale linearly though, it's possible if its pushing the limits of its design then power consumption could drastically shoot up.

No of course power drain doesn't scale linearly with clock speed, but we're talking about a 50% overclock on half the process size for twice the power drain. I doubt that would even be possible, never mind what Nintendo would call a power efficient system..

 

[Fox5]

No of course power drain doesn't scale linearly with clock speed, but we're talking about a 50% overclock on half the process size for twice the power drain. I doubt that would even be possible, never mind what Nintendo would call a power efficient system..

Yeah, but Nintendo also said the system has to be cheap. Gamecube was cheap, but let's assume nintendo wants to sell the system at cost from the start instead of for a small loss, comparatively that could make for a slower system, and then add on the cost of the expensive controller. Still, it should be possible to do more than 1.5x gamecube and still come out with a main system that costs 2/3 of what the gamecube cost to build when it came out. (assuming they're not losing any money and the controller costs significantly more than the gamecube ones did)

Though if they wanted to pull another gamecube (low cost, close to the competitor's power, and all within a much smaller case), they could have done a core duo class processor combined with a custom "designed for console gpu" that could be fairly powerful while eliminating the most costly/hottest elements. Well, if they really did go for a processor that performs about Athlon XP 2500+ to 3000+ level, a physics processor, and a custom gpu, they may have accomplished close to the same thing. Sure, the memory is low, but nintendo systems have always had a surprisingly low amount of memory for what you'd expect given the rest of the hardware.

 

[Teasy]

Cost and power drain are two different things though. Wanting the system to be cheap doesn't mean having to completely through power efficiency out of the window (smaller processes will already help with costs as well as power drain). Also Nintendo said recently that they expect to make losses on Wii's hardware, though not large losses (similar to GC which also only made small losses on launch).

I wish I could believe the 2500-3000+ equivalent CPU and physics processing GPU stuff but I think that has pretty much gone out of the window now. Jessica has disapeared just at the time when she claimed to have finally had the interview to send to Fearsome. Seems that she was just another attention seeker unfortunately.

 

[OtakingGX]

No of course power drain doesn't scale linearly with clock speed, but we're talking about a 50% overclock on half the process size for twice the power drain. I doubt that would even be possible, never mind what Nintendo would call a power efficient system..

Going from a 180nm process to 90nm and clocking a chip 50% higher I would expect power usage to drop. I think this is what you're getting at. I checked out 750CXe's power usage at different speeds at IBM's website. An exponential trendline fits the data nicely, and extrapolating to 729 MHz I get 8W of typical power if Gekko were overclocked 50% on the same process. Doing the same for max power and you see uber-Gekko hitting 12W of max power.

Checking the 750GX datasheet you'll find that the chip consumes a maximum of 6.33W in low power form, up to 10W in the standard power version, on a 130nm process. Typical power usage is 4.9W, which is what Gekko would use if it were clocked at 533 MHz. Shrink the 750GX to 90nm and you'll probably see even smaller power usage.

I think it's pretty safe to say that if Broadway were just a 1.5x Gekko then it would be contributing a very small fraction to the Wii's power usage. That leaves 40W for the rest of the system. Hollywood must have one monster of a TEV to use that much power.

Yeah, but Nintendo also said the system has to be cheap. Gamecube was cheap, but let's assume nintendo wants to sell the system at cost from the start instead of for a small loss, comparatively that could make for a slower system, and then add on the cost of the expensive controller. Still, it should be possible to do more than 1.5x gamecube and still come out with a main system that costs 2/3 of what the gamecube cost to build when it came out. (assuming they're not losing any money and the controller costs significantly more than the gamecube ones did)

...

Sure, the memory is low, but nintendo systems have always had a surprisingly low amount of memory for what you'd expect given the rest of the hardware.

I don't think the controllers will be all that expensive. If they cost $50 nobody will buy them. The technology inside of them isn't expensive. The 3-axis accelerometer is dirt cheap, as are speakers. They may just end up saving a bit of money by eliminating so many buttons. Once you produce so many little plastic parts somebody has to assemble them. Labor seems to be one place Nintendo will save money.

Nintendo systems don't have a low amount of memory compared to their direct competitors. SNES had 3x the memory of the Genesis (64 KB). N64 possessed 4 MB of memory, more than PSX's 3 MB. It doesn't seem like any of Nintendo's past consoles have been RAM deficient.

 

[Fox5]

I don't think the controllers will be all that expensive. If they cost $50 nobody will buy them. The technology inside of them isn't expensive. The 3-axis accelerometer is dirt cheap, as are speakers. They may just end up saving a bit of money by eliminating so many buttons. Once you produce so many little plastic parts somebody has to assemble them. Labor seems to be one place Nintendo will save money.

Nintendo systems don't have a low amount of memory compared to their direct competitors. SNES had 3x the memory of the Genesis (64 KB). N64 possessed 4 MB of memory, more than PSX's 3 MB. It doesn't seem like any of Nintendo's past consoles have been RAM deficient.

Well, xbox 360 controllers are selling for $50, and can't do half the stuff a Wii controller can. Current gamecube controllers (wired) are $20 though, so I see a $40, max, for a wii controller, and most likely cheaper if they really want to speed up adoption.

NES and SNES could easily get away with a low amount of ram, due to essentially using the cart as ram. N64 could not, and for the power the hardware had, 4MB (and even 8MB) was a bit low. Well, maybe not the ram itself, so much as the texture cache, the hardware was definetely capable of better than the 32x32 and 64x64 textures we saw.
DS seems low on ram, but it appears to get away without any major deficiencies, showing texture quality far better than the n64.
Gamecube was low on ram, with less vram than dreamcast, and less useful ram than ps2 or xbox. Wasn't more ram chosen as the number 1 thing to make gamecube better?

Ok, so maybe it's a grand total of one nintendo system that has been ram deficient (though they've always been ram deficient compared to PCs, and generally graphics and the scope of games has been worse too, but it's not like any consoles until xbox were really pulling off anything like what the pc was doing). Still, I think my point was to say that it's no big loss if the Wii ships with a grand total of < 100MB.

 

[pc999]

I don't think the controllers will be all that expensive. If they cost $50 nobody will buy them. The technology inside of them isn't expensive. The 3-axis accelerometer is dirt cheap, as are speakers. They may just end up saving a bit of money by eliminating so many buttons. Once you produce so many little plastic parts somebody has to assemble them. Labor seems to be one place Nintendo will save money.

Nintendo systems don't have a low amount of memory compared to their direct competitors. SNES had 3x the memory of the Genesis (64 KB). N64 possessed 4 MB of memory, more than PSX's 3 MB. It doesn't seem like any of Nintendo's past consoles have been RAM deficient.

Controler must be cheap as they considereded (or still we dont know) put two per console?

I do think that even if is only a bit more powerfull than XB it would deserve 128Mgs of memory as the XB could really benefict of more memory/BW.

 

[darkblu]

I think it's pretty safe to say that if Broadway were just a 1.5x Gekko then it would be contributing a very small fraction to the Wii's power usage. That leaves 40W for the rest of the system. Hollywood must have one monster of a TEV to use that much power.

don't forget the disk drive (now a full-fledged 120mm one) and all other various subssytems, several of which are networking-related.
and btw, it's quite natural to expect hollywood to be a much greater power consumer than broadway - in most performance-oriented systems the gpu is usually a much more power-hungry unit. practically everywhere except in the extreme-power-sensitive applications like PDAs & cells where the dominant cosumer is usually the display matrix : )

ps: oh, and last but not least a non-negligible consumer could be the heat dissipation subsystem, depending on how exotic ninty decided to go with their stylish design.

 

[OtakingGX]

don't forget the disk drive (now a full-fledged 120mm one) and all other various subssytems, several of which are networking-related.
and btw, it's quite natural to expect hollywood to be a much greater power consumer than broadway - in most performance-oriented systems the gpu is usually a much more power-hungry unit. practically everywhere except in the extreme-power-sensitive applications like PDAs & cells where the dominant cosumer is usually the display matrix : )

ps: oh, and last but not least a non-negligible consumer could be the heat dissipation subsystem, depending on how exotic ninty decided to go with their stylish design.

I'm not sure how a 120mm DVD drive will consume more power over Gamecube's. The two power users in the drive; the laser and the motor, are probably the same pieces you'd find in a full sized DVD drive already. I'll admit that the Wireless networking will add to the power budget, but at most about 3 or 4 watts. That's still a large power envelope Hollywood to fill.

And I doubt there's a compressor inside Wii to accomodate any sort of phase change cooling. And even if there were, it would still need a large radiator to reject all that heat. It's probably just a fan, maybe a bit larger than that in the Gamecube.

 

[darkblu]

I'm not sure how a 120mm DVD drive will consume more power over Gamecube's. The two power users in the drive; the laser and the motor, are probably the same pieces you'd find in a full sized DVD drive already.

due to difference in the masses of the disks and the requirement that both the original small-format and the regular 120mm should have same/similar seek times (for the same positions on the tracks, i.e.). unless, of course, ninty decide that the full-sized disks can have arbitrarily slower access characteristics than the small ones, which seems unlikely.

I'll admit that the Wireless networking will add to the power budget, but at most about 3 or 4 watts. That's still a large power envelope Hollywood to fill.

there's also the core mem pool - we need to see how nec's new lithography process offsets the power draw in the context of the rumoured increase in core mem capacity (sorry, too occupied to do the actual calc myself).

And I doubt there's a compressor inside Wii to accomodate any sort of phase change cooling. And even if there were, it would still need a large radiator to reject all that heat. It's probably just a fan, maybe a bit larger than that in the Gamecube.

ok, even if that turns out to be the case wii's cooling system will likely end up with higher power consumption than GC's.

 

[Fox5]

due to difference in the masses of the disks and the requirement that both the original small-format and the regular 120mm should have same/similar seek times (for the same positions on the tracks, i.e.). unless, of course, ninty decide that the full-sized disks can have arbitrarily slower access characteristics than the small ones, which seems unlikely.



there's also the core mem pool - we need to see how nec's new lithography process offsets the power draw in the context of the rumoured increase in core mem capacity (sorry, too occupied to do the actual calc myself).



ok, even if that turns out to be the case wii's cooling system will likely end up with higher power consumption than GC's.

Wii is using a slot loading dvd drive though, which I believe tend to have lower power consumption. It's not like it's impossible to achieve a faster drive and lower power consumption, there are 7200RPM laptop harddrives that draw the exact same power as 5400RPM laptop harddrives.

 

[fearsomepirate]

but it's not like any consoles until xbox were really pulling off anything like what the pc was doing

You mean, "It's not like any consoles until xbox were successfully marketed to PC gamers as offering a similar experience." After all, I don't remember Commander Keen 2 exactly blowing away Super Mario Bros 3 or Sonic the Hedgehog with its amazing graphics and smooth scrolling. And you're probably the the first person I've heard who complained about consoles not having good "scope of games." I thought PSx, PS2, SNES, and NES each had hundreds upon hundreds of available games encompassing a vast wealth of genres and were the platforms on which a number of popular genres were born. I guess I was wrong. Unless by "scope of games," you mean "version of Doom."

Quite to the contrary, Wii is one of the few home consoles in history that will simply not be capable of providing games with a graphical experience comparable to what the average PC gamer will see when playing a typical PC release.

 

[OtakingGX]

Quite to the contrary, Wii is tone of the few home consoles in history that will simply not be capable of providing games with a graphical experience comparable to what the average PC gamer will see when playing a typical PC release.

I bolded average because I think that Wii will be capable of graphics on par with what the average PC gamer will be playing. The average PC gamer doesn't buy a $500 video card. In fact, I'd go so far to say that the average PC gamer probably doesn't even spend $200 on a video card.

I was in Circuit City the other day (where the average PC gamer may go) and I was looking at their selection of video cards and asking myself "Where are all the X1900 XT's and Geforce 7900 GT's?" There were lots of Radeon 9550s and X1300s and the occasional 7600GT. I don't think Wii will look too terrible compared to what most people have in their PCs.

 

[darkblu]

Wii is using a slot loading dvd drive though, which I believe tend to have lower power consumption.

we're talking of the power to spin the medium/move the head here, and i don't think the loading mechanism has much to do with that, if anything.

It's not like it's impossible to achieve a faster drive and lower power consumption, there are 7200RPM laptop harddrives that draw the exact same power as 5400RPM laptop harddrives.

advancement in electiomotors are hardly as rapid as advancements in IC lithography, don't try to apply Moore's law here.

re your example with laptop HDDs - we know nothing about the mass characteristics of those - how many plates, what material? whereas comparing an 80mm dvd to a 120mm dvd drive with similar seek times you can bet the 120mm one will have higher power consumption unless some notable advancement in the field took place inbetween (new dvd subsrates, advanced el.motors, substantial reduction of head's weight). bottomline being, i dont believe dvd mechanics have advanced so much for the past few years that you could simply neglect the medium's sheer mass factor.

 

[OtakingGX]

re your example with laptop HDDs - we know nothing about the mass characteristics of those - how many plates, what material? whereas comparing an 80mm dvd to a 120mm dvd drive with similar seek times you can bet the 120mm one will have higher power consumption unless some notable advancement in the field took place inbetween (new dvd subsrates, advanced el.motors, substantial reduction of head's weight). bottomline being, i dont believe dvd mechanics have advanced so much for the past few years that you could simply neglect the medium's sheer mass factor.

Were it not for friction, once you got up to speed, it wouldn't take any power to keep the DVD spinning. The motor to spin the DVD though probably consumes less than a tenth of a watt at constant speed, with spikes in power consumption as it speeds up and slows down. A full-sized DVD would require about five times the power of a miniature one to spin. I got that from T = I * a, and P = T * w. I is the moment of inertia. Since the equations are linear, you can just look at the I of each: 5 kg-mm^2 for an 8 cm disc, 36 kg-mm^2 for the larger 12 cm disc.

The major power user would be the laser. It'll draw far more power than the motor does, even if the motor is using five times the power to turn a full sized DVD.

 

[darkblu]

Were it not for friction, once you got up to speed, it wouldn't take any power to keep the DVD spinning. The motor to spin the DVD though probably consumes less than a tenth of a watt at constant speed, with spikes in power consumption as it speeds up and slows down. A full-sized DVD would require about five times the power of a miniature one to spin. I got that from T = I * a, and P = T * w. I is the moment of inertia. Since the equations are linear, you can just look at the I of each: 5 kg-mm^2 for an 8 cm disc, 36 kg-mm^2 for the larger 12 cm disc.

if we assume equal masses for the disk the sheer difference in radii would account for 2.25 power factoring for the full sized-dvd at full spin. factor in the difference in masses (easily more than 3 times) and you end up with > 6 times more power just to spin the medium at a 'cruise' speed. add to the fact that ninty will hardly allow drastucally longer times for spinning up of a game disk, and you may easily end up with 10+ times the power just for the spinning (nominal or extrema - the psu must accomodate for all cases regardless). and don't forget the longer reading-head journies either (greater momentum, etc). so as a totally gross off-the-top-of-my-hat generalization, we may be looking at anything inbetween 10 to 15 times power factoring for the mechanics alone.

The major power user would be the laser. It'll draw far more power than the motor does, even if the motor is using five times the power to turn a full sized DVD.

i have no clue what the laser's consumption might be, so i'll leave it at your judgement, but you're seriously underestimating the mechanical power increase dut to the bigger medium, IMO.