Wii U hardware discussion and investigation *rename

[SargonHamurabi]

The rumor is strikingly generic, but it gains credibility from being in-line with the other rumors....or that just means it's piggy-backing off their believeability. I'm not taking any of these seriously until somebody guts a Wii U or when people start naming anonymous sources.

 

[Kb-Smoker]

Like I said, I fully admit that I could be wrong. What I am saying is that, if this lherre is trying to take credit for the Wii specs, then I don't trust him as a Wii U source for a single second.

And when I see a rumor claiming that a decade old 'cache locking' 'write gathering' wannabe technobabble makes the CPU seem impressive then it's like saying that the PS4 supporting 3DNow! would make it seem impressive. It makes entire rumor suspect.

What are you going on about? He is a dev, he didn't leak anything just confirm it was correct.

 

[Rangers]

The rumor is strikingly generic, but it gains credibility from being in-line with the other rumors....or that just means it's piggy-backing off their believeability. I'm not taking any of these seriously until somebody guts a Wii U or when people start naming anonymous sources.

Yep, it's the same thing as the old specs floating about for months, even less detailed!

Apparently "Arkam", another familiar name from GAF, says the "new" Vgleaks specs are from him and even the wording is his. Just he claims he did not himself give them to Vgleaks, somebody else betrayed him so to speak. Also worth noting he admits he is only an artist or something like that, not a tech guy.

For what it's worth he seems more bullish on Wii U in his newest comments. Maybe it does have a 500+ gflop GPU.

He also said something weird here

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=42009722&postcount=1400

Per nintendo's docs the GPU's API "GX2" Supports some features greater than SM 4. SM4 is just given as a point of reference. Ill post the detail later when I have the time.

 

[Rodéric]

Could be Broadway compatible (for Wii backward compatibility), or could also be a confusion around an embedded Broadway core...
Hard to tell given that the Wii was just a NGC on steroïd, and before it Nintendo never did backward compatibility.

 

[TheLump]

Yep, it's the same thing as the old specs floating about for months, even less detailed!

Apparently "Arkam", another familiar name from GAF, says the "new" Vgleaks specs are from him and even the wording is his. Just he claims he did not himself give them to Vgleaks, somebody else betrayed him so to speak. Also worth noting he admits he is only an artist or something like that, not a tech guy.

For what it's worth he seems more bullish on Wii U in his newest comments. Maybe it does have a 500+ gflop GPU.

He also said something weird here

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=42009722&postcount=1400

Thats rather intriguing. I do hope he gets round to clarifying what he means.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

So an artist wrote to someone "three enhanced Broadway cores" and that got posted verbatim on VGLeaks. I think it safe to say that's not at all specific. Would I be right in thinking POWER7 is code compatible with previous POWER and PPC code, and so Broadway code would run on it?

 

[Grall]

Nobody believed the IGN specs

Lol wut. That's a patently ridiculous claim.

Regardless of your silly dodging antics, wii specs were known at the time of its launch.

 

[TheLump]

So an artist wrote to someone "three enhanced Broadway cores" and that got posted verbatim on VGLeaks. I think it safe to say that's not at all specific. Would I be right in thinking POWER7 is code compatible with previous POWER and PPC code, and so Broadway code would run on it?

I beleive so. Theres certainly an intention from IBM to make it as easy to use previous code on Power7 without recompiling it - from what I've read.

And if not, wouldnt that not just be down to the compiler (in this cas the Green-Hills one WiiU is using)

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I beleive so. Theres certainly an intention from IBM to make it as easy to use previous code on Power7 without recompiling it - from what I've read.

If that can be confirmed, it'd explain how someone could consider it an upgraded Broadway. "It runs the same code, ergo, it's the same processor made better." An artist being shown Wii U running Wii source could easily think that, and in way wouldn't be wrong. i7 is effectively an improved 286 as man is an improved (debatable!) monkey.

 

[sebbbi]

Would I be right in thinking POWER7 is code compatible with previous POWER and PPC code, and so Broadway code would run on it?

No. According to Wikipedia both Broadway and Gekko are based on ancient PowerPC 750 core (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC_7xx, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadway_(microprocessor)). Derivations of this core were used on some old Apple Macintosh computers (years 1997-1999). It had weak FPU and no SIMD (vector instruction) support at all. Apple Macintosh G4 (1999) was the first one to use modern PowerPC cores with proper vector execution support (Altivec/VMX).

Instead of 4d vector SIMD, PowerPC 750 core derivatives (such as Gekko and Broadway) support 2d "paired single" execution for floating point values (two 32 bit floats can be packed in 64 bit float and executed at once). This feature is no longer available in new PowerPC instruction sets (Altivec/VMX is superior). I found this thread about emulating Gekko (on modern PPC/POWER derivate such as PS3): http://www.digipedia.pl/usenet/thread/11771/1362/ . "Paired singles" must be emulated, because the new PPC/POWER cores do not support them. The speed of emulation seems to be "three orders of magnitude slower" according to them. But I don't know what other features need to be emulated as well (that seems to be way too slow for just paired singles emulation).

 

[Li Mu Bai]

Its been known for some time that the Wii U GPU was DX 10.1 equivalent. Although there is some functionality within the GPU due to Nintendo's customizations that allow for DX11 type effects. (due to developer urgings iirc) Enhanced Broadway cores? Unlikely for many reasons imo. The CPU is by no means a monster processor, not as capable as the Xenon in some respects, though surpassing it in others. I stated as much months ago. I've been unable to obtain specifications however, but enhanced Broadway is far too vague. Iherre is a reliable source imo.

So an artist wrote to someone "three enhanced Broadway cores" and that got posted verbatim on VGLeaks. I think it safe to say that's not at all specific. Would I be right in thinking POWER7 is code compatible with previous POWER and PPC code, and so Broadway code would run on it?

This is would be the most logical assumption.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

No.

"Paired singles" must be emulated, because the new PPC/POWER cores do not support them. The speed of emulation seems to be "three orders of magnitude slower" according to them. But I don't know what other features need to be emulated as well (that seems to be way too slow for just paired singles emulation).

Would the compiler produce suitable alternatives when compiling the source, as opposed to trying to run precompiled PPC750 code?

 

[Sonic]

Someone please alert me when actual system specifications and actual processors being used are revealed, not these half specs.

 

[Megadrive1988]

I have a question.

I notice in the neogaf thread about the final Wii U specs, that several people have stated that Wii's Broadway CPU has more cache than Gamecube's Gekko. Is that true?

As I understood, and I very well may be mistaken, Broadway was merely a 50% overclocked Gekko.

 

[Sonic]

I have a question.

I notice in the neogaf thread about the final Wii U specs, that several people have stated that Wii's Broadway CPU has more cache than Gamecube's Gekko. Is that true?

As I understood, and I very well may be mistaken, Broadway was merely a 50% overclocked Gekko.

It's a possibility, and any Wii dev here should be able to confirm or deny that depending on how strong Nintendo's NDA's are. But it seems that there is not extra cache on the Wii CPU and maybe they were thinking of the GPU having more cache?

 

[willardjuice]

Although there is some functionality within the GPU due to Nintendo's customizations that allow for DX11 type effects.

I'm curious, what has Nintendo customized?

 

[ERP]

So an artist wrote to someone "three enhanced Broadway cores" and that got posted verbatim on VGLeaks. I think it safe to say that's not at all specific. Would I be right in thinking POWER7 is code compatible with previous POWER and PPC code, and so Broadway code would run on it?

I'm surprised some artist even knew the word Broadway, which probably means he was reiterating what he was told or what he read.
Someone calling anything an enhanced Broadway over almost any other way of describing a PowerPC processor to my mind is not positive.

 

[XpiderMX]

I would guess that on a 3:1 clock ratio to broadway, the Espresso cores would be around 2.187GHz each which might be the maximum clock ceiling the chip is able to reach and probably consuming around 8 Watts. It is possible however that it is only 2:1 ratio at 1.458Ghz which three of these cores will perform about 10% faster than the Xenon if it ran 5 instructions per cycle. We still don't know if there is indeed one main core with more cache.

xenon 2 instructions @ 3.2Ghz x3 cores = 19200 in order instructions

Espresso 5 instructions (similar to power PC G5) @ 1.458GHz x3 cores = 21870 out of order instructions

even at 1.458Ghz the 3 Espressso cores will beat the Xenon and running at only 4 watts.

The Xenon used a lot of one core for sound and the Wii U has a DSP at 120Mhz which will also help. Isn't there also an arm co cpu? Even at this speed it will perform about 1.5x Xenon.

If however it is clocked at a 3:1 ratio on a 729Mhz bus

Espresso 5 instructions (similar to power PC G5) @ 2.187GHz x3 cores = 32805 out of order instructions

+DSP + the arm co cpu will probably perform about 2.5x the Xenon CPU

For reference three of these cores are faster then Xenon.

The GPU is what we would really like to know as well.

If the GPU has 640 alu's and is clocked at 607.5MHz then we are probably looking at over 768GFLOPS in the same vain as a HD7750 which is 819GFLOPS, but performs faster than a 4870 at 1.2TFLOPS. More realistically, the gpu can be clocked at around 486Mhz which would be around 622.1GFLOPS but still perform faster then the 1000GFLOP HD 4850 @500MHz @110w TDP. For reference, the Radeon E6760 is 576GFLOPS @35w TDP also outperforms the HD4850 which is around 5x faster than the Xenos in real world scenarios.

The WiiU also has 32MB Edram which will help with AA especially on 720p with 4xAA looking good. 1080 will also be possible but probably no AA.

The ram being 1024MB as of now alloted for games is over 2x that of the xbox 360 which also used its ram for the OS. The Wii U OS might have 512MB or more currently dedicated to it. This will mean multitasking while playing games is definitely possible.

So we are still basically unknown on some numbers so we don't know but is it possible we are looking at maybe two scenarios with the first one being likely but the second one still possible?

Espresso Tri core clocked at 1.458Ghz or 2.187Ghz (i hope it is the latter)
"Enhanced Broadway" similar to PowerPC 476FP architecture.
3MB L2 Cache
core 0: 512 KB
core 1: 2048 KB
core 2: 512 KB
OoOE
5 instructions per cycle (unknown)
45nm @ 4-8w TDP?

GPU
32MB Edram 4x AA 720p or 1080p no AA
1024 MB Video DDR3 (2GB total) or GDDR5 (1.5GB total)
486Mhz or 607.5MHz (HD4850 performance or HD4870 performance)
640 ALU
Open GL 4.3

The low end will outperform the XBOX 360 probably 2.5x and the high number will be 4.5x
if it was low end I would see $249 with no pack in game but on High End I would see $299 without including the pack in game.

2.5x minimum, 4.5x maximum.

 

[Rangers]

Here we go with the MASSIVE overrating again...

All that and Zombie U looks like a bad THQ 360 game right?

 

[ERP]

2.5x minimum, 4.5x maximum.

There is an awful lot of speculation in that quote.
To start with why pick 5 IPC?