Wii U hardware discussion and investigation *rename

[Entropy]

Nintendo went all in and spent years developing a very highly customised, almost unique GPU arch in order to do something that R7xx could do on its own - deliver Xbox 360 level performance.

Nope. Really not feeling it.

A lot of posters base their statements/assumptions on Nintendo/AMD/IBM simply being incompetent.

Frankly, I can't see that at all - they deliver a console that is capable accepting ports from PS360 straight out of the gate, runs at half or one third the power draw of the PS360 at the same process node, maintains backwards compatibility with their previous generation console, and is engineered to very low cost (apart from the fact that it includes the tablet).

It is pretty well done as far as I can see, even if cost control was a step (or two) too high on the list of priorities to suit me personally.

We're lacking a few definitive statements regarding the internals of the GPU that would be interesting. Available data has been wrung as far as is possible, I think, so new information has to become available, and a credible leak is really what is needed.

 

[Grall]

I think you need to read all of the Latte thread on NeoGaf before making such blanket statements. There are folks there spending hours upon hours looking into the chip and coming up with very interesting theories

Tell me again why I should spend hours (days?) reading what is most likely a monster thread full of clueless guys making unqualified guesses.

It didn't take AMD four years developing the 360 GPU, and the 360 GPU first delivered 360-level performance...SEVEN YEARS AGO. It's not as if that is some kind of awesome fantastic feat you know. Wuugpu being some kind of fabulous super-custom thingamajig - heck no. That totally doesn't make sense, and it's not at all reflected in anything seen so far.

 

[Rangers]

A lot of posters base their statements/assumptions on Nintendo/AMD/IBM simply being incompetent.

I think Nintendo clearly is...

If they had let AMD/IBM make the decisions, I trust the Wii U wouldn't be a mess

Frankly, I can't see that at all - they deliver a console that is capable accepting ports from PS360 straight out of the gate, runs at half or one third the power draw of the PS360 at the same process node, maintains backwards compatibility with their previous generation console, and is engineered to very low cost (apart from the fact that it includes the tablet).

It is pretty well done as far as I can see, even if cost control was a step (or two) too high on the list of priorities to suit me personally.

We're lacking a few definitive statements regarding the internals of the GPU that would be interesting. Available data has been wrung as far as is possible, I think, so new information has to become available, and a credible leak is really what is needed.

About the only positive is the low wattage. The GPU is ~150mm^2...that's way way too significant a die, regardless of node, to be throwing around PS360 visuals. The CPU seems a terrible weakling (likely causing tremendous port problems that will turn 3rd parties already cautious interest cold) that basically only came about to facilitate BC that as they say "5 people will use". The 32 MB EDRAM seems to be expensive overkill for 720P/current gen as well. It's the same amount as in Xbone, an actual next gen machine. The GPU tech seems to be very dated as well.

Hell if you want to another avenue, the fundamental goals dont even make sense, unless the goal was "current gen port capable" (barely I guess) only. This thing isn't remotely a "tweener" machine let alone something that will be included in next gen.

An XB1 chipset with 32 MB of EDRAM instead of ESRAM, or hell, too be honest just with the DDR3 only in a pinch (since a HD 7770=1.2TF=72 GB/s BW), would have been cheap (DDR3 based) and so much better it's not funny.

 

[Entropy]

What you are basically saying is that you don't agree with Nintendos design constraints.
But "Nintendo is not designing the console I would want them to", isn't the same as "Nintendo is incompetent".

This is the unfiltered internet, and armchair expertise is where its at. But any such armchair expert whose statements about the WiiU architecture is based on the assumption that Nintendo/IBM/AMD are incompetent system designers - well, their opinions will be valued accordingly.

 

[Rangers]

Like I said, I am sure the culprit is not AMD or IBM.

If Nintendo steps back and say "here AMD you make a console", even with constraints, they will get something good.

is wii u even markedly more powerful than the most advanced mobile chipsets than run on a couple of watts? no.

 

[Grall]

But "Nintendo is not designing the console I would want them to", isn't the same as "Nintendo is incompetent".

If nintendo's not incompetent, then who is?

Wuu is clearly weaker than either of the two current consoles (except corner cases) yet still selling for a higher price, seven years or more after they first launched. That's basically impossible, considering Moore's law. Yet nintendo somehow managed to defeat it, delivering something that is three silicon generations newer (more like four or five actually, except wuu isn't manufactured on the most recent tech) compared to current consoles yet somehow still sub-par. That's an amazingly incredible achievement.

Just for starters, how they could decide to pick a roughly speaking fifteen year old CPU core to power their new console I'll never know. That's just fucked-up beyond belief.

 

[creaks]

If nintendo's not incompetent, then who is?



Wuu is clearly weaker than either of the two current consoles (except corner cases) yet still selling for a higher price, seven years or more after they first launched. That's basically impossible, considering Moore's law. Yet nintendo somehow managed to defeat it, delivering something that is three silicon generations newer (more like four or five actually, except wuu isn't manufactured on the most recent tech) compared to current consoles yet somehow still sub-par. That's an amazingly incredible achievement.



Just for starters, how they could decide to pick a roughly speaking fifteen year old CPU core to power their new console I'll never know. That's just fucked-up beyond belief.

Moores law. good point.

What would you say was the transistor count of a 156mm squared amd gpu using the general transistor density of a stock 40nm amd gpu?

 

[upnorthsox]

...."Nintendo is not designing the console I would want them to", isn't the same as "Nintendo is incompetent"........

If WiiU was a hit or even a mild success then the former may be true, but with the level of fail being displayed I don't see calling Nintendo incompetent as too harsh.

 

[Fourth Storm]

I agree that PS360 level visuals at 1/3 the power consumption is somewhat impressive, but I am also firmly in the camp that Nintendo's upper management needs a drastic shakeup in order to bring the company into the current millenium. The priority of BC was way too high on their list, and they didn't even go about it in the best way. It probably would have been smarter to add the entire Wii hardware as a SoC to be removed in a later revision and then start the new hardware from scratch. The density of the presumed 20 ALU shader blocks is also quite low. Who knows what happened there?

Their priority of low power consumption also doesn't seem to be in tune with the mainstream console audience. Finally, sticking to a DirectX10.1/R700 base was done for basically no reason other than getting as low a price as possible. All so Miyamoto could realize his dream of having a screen on the controller. Boggles my mind how they charge $150 for a Gamepad repair/replacement online.

 

[AzaK]

[

If nintendo's not incompetent, then who is?

Wuu is clearly weaker than either of the two current consoles (except corner cases) yet still selling for a higher price, seven years or more after they first launched. That's basically impossible, considering Moore's law. Yet nintendo somehow managed to defeat it, delivering something that is three silicon generations newer (more like four or five actually, except wuu isn't manufactured on the most recent tech) compared to current consoles yet somehow still sub-par. That's an amazingly incredible achievement.

Just for starters, how they could decide to pick a roughly speaking fifteen year old CPU core to power their new console I'll never know. That's just fucked-up beyond belief.

Clearly weaker; what do you mean by that? In FP performance, compute, fill rate? Normalised per clock or not? We know the FP performance will not succeed current gen on the whole given paired singles being what it has, but I think it's disingenuous to say "clearly weaker" seeing as we have seen games that look better than their current gen counter parts - even if that's just a result of more RAM allowing sharper textures. In some apparently "extremely bottlenecked" system I might add.

What you are basically saying is that you don't agree with Nintendos design constraints.
But "Nintendo is not designing the console I would want them to", isn't the same as "Nintendo is incompetent".

Precisely.

If they had let AMD/IBM make the decisions, I trust the Wii U wouldn't be a mess
About the only positive is the low wattage. The GPU is ~150mm^2...that's way way too significant a die, regardless of node, to be throwing around PS360 visuals. The CPU seems a terrible weakling (likely causing tremendous port problems that will turn 3rd parties already cautious interest cold) that basically only came about to facilitate BC that as they say "5 people will use". The 32 MB EDRAM seems to be expensive overkill for 720P/current gen as well. It's the same amount as in Xbone, an actual next gen machine. The GPU tech seems to be very dated as well.

Hell if you want to another avenue, the fundamental goals dont even make sense, unless the goal was "current gen port capable" (barely I guess) only. This thing isn't remotely a "tweener" machine let alone something that will be included in next gen.

An XB1 chipset with 32 MB of EDRAM instead of ESRAM, or hell, too be honest just with the DDR3 only in a pinch (since a HD 7770=1.2TF=72 GB/s BW), would have been cheap (DDR3 based) and so much better it's not funny.

The GPU was finalised around 2011 IIRC. Even if it's only doing 720p as you suggest, 32MB of EDRAM can only be a boon given the "low" main RAM bandwidth.

The XB1 would have run hotter and have to have been bigger. Remember that Nintendo, for right or wrong (I think wrong) wanted a cool running machine.

If WiiU was a hit or even a mild success then the former may be true, but with the level of fail being displayed I don't see calling Nintendo incompetent as too harsh.

Well we're talking hardware design here, not management. I think the management of the Wii U is a joke and a complete failure but I'm not so quick to say their engineers are incompetent, given the (stupid IMO) requirements Nintendo had.

I agree that PS360 level visuals at 1/3 the power consumption is somewhat impressive, but I am also firmly in the camp that Nintendo's upper management needs a drastic shakeup in order to bring the company into the current millenium. The priority of BC was way too high on their list, and they didn't even go about it in the best way. It probably would have been smarter to add the entire Wii hardware as a SoC to be removed in a later revision and then start the new hardware from scratch. The density of the presumed 20 ALU shader blocks is also quite low. Who knows what happened there?

Their priority of low power consumption also doesn't seem to be in tune with the mainstream console audience. Finally, sticking to a DirectX10.1/R700 base was done for basically no reason other than getting as low a price as possible. All so Miyamoto could realize his dream of having a screen on the controller. Boggles my mind how they charge $150 for a Gamepad repair/replacement online.

I don't disagree here FS. They chose to focus on low power, BC and an expensive controller. The controller I love, but I would have happily forgone low power and BC and had that money put into "better tech".

 

[Rangers]

I'm thinking more about the mobile chipset thing since I mentioned it...

Why was this a non starter?

Cost? I'm not sure, sure smartphones feature gaudy prices, but those seem highly divorced from reality. The proof is 299 Nexus 4 and the fact an ipod is the same as an iPhone basically and teardowns put the BOM as like 100-200 I think. So the chipset itself cannot be crazy expensive (though, a smartphone has less "other stuff" than a console, also memory bandwidth?)

Power? I'm not up to the second, but mobile chipset have been encroaching on PS360 for a while, and I would assume that the very latest and greatest is actually there? (though to be fair, Wii U is 6 months old)

Of course you would give up BC.

 

[Cyan]

I think Nintendo clearly is...

If they had let AMD/IBM make the decisions, I trust the Wii U wouldn't be a mess



About the only positive is the low wattage. The GPU is ~150mm^2...that's way way too significant a die, regardless of node, to be throwing around PS360 visuals. The CPU seems a terrible weakling (likely causing tremendous port problems that will turn 3rd parties already cautious interest cold) that basically only came about to facilitate BC that as they say "5 people will use". The 32 MB EDRAM seems to be expensive overkill for 720P/current gen as well. It's the same amount as in Xbone, an actual next gen machine. The GPU tech seems to be very dated as well.

Hell if you want to another avenue, the fundamental goals dont even make sense, unless the goal was "current gen port capable" (barely I guess) only. This thing isn't remotely a "tweener" machine let alone something that will be included in next gen.

An XB1 chipset with 32 MB of EDRAM instead of ESRAM, or hell, too be honest just with the DDR3 only in a pinch (since a HD 7770=1.2TF=72 GB/s BW), would have been cheap (DDR3 based) and so much better it's not funny.

I didn't know it was confirmed that the WiiU feature 32MB of EDRAM. That's a lot of RAM if you ask me for a system which is allegedly weaker than next gen consoles, and especially not much more powerful than the PS3 and X360.

As Entropy said, the console is okay taking into account the power consumption. Design wise -power aside- the only drawback are the crappy cheap innards workings.

I've seen a guy disassembling the WiiU in a video and the tear down showed how simple the internal components and design are.

 

[AzaK]

I didn't know it was confirmed that the WiiU feature 32MB of EDRAM. That's a lot of RAM if you ask me for a system which is allegedly weaker than next gen consoles, and especially not much more powerful than the PS3 and X360.

As Entropy said, the console is okay taking into account the power consumption. Design wise -power aside- the only drawback are the crappy cheap innards workings.

I've seen a guy disassembling the WiiU in a video and the tear down showed how simple the internal components and design are.

Yes it has 32MB eDRAM (In fact, it looks like it has about 35MB of fast on chip RAM when you take the other two banks (1MB and 2MB into account)

You realise the bulk of the system is on an MCM right and looks like a single "chip", with the RAM around it?

 

[TheLump]

If nintendo's not incompetent, then who is?

Wuu is clearly weaker than either of the two current consoles (except corner cases) yet still selling for a higher price, seven years or more after they first launched. That's basically impossible, considering Moore's law. Yet nintendo somehow managed to defeat it, delivering something that is three silicon generations newer (more like four or five actually, except wuu isn't manufactured on the most recent tech) compared to current consoles yet somehow still sub-par. That's an amazingly incredible achievement.

Just for starters, how they could decide to pick a roughly speaking fifteen year old CPU core to power their new console I'll never know. That's just fucked-up beyond belief.

The main problem with your ascertion that they are incompetent in their hardware design is that you are assuming they were trying to design somthing else. Theres nothing that indicates that they were trying to design anything other than what they ended up with: An energy efficient box which could produce visuals on par or above current gen, whilst supporting a second screen and providing full (hardware) backwards compatibility with Wii games.

If you would rather they designed somthing else, then thats fine. But the fact that you wanted or expected somthing else doesn't make their hardware design "incompetent". It would be incompetent if they were aiming for PS4/Xbone parity and missed by this much, or even if they were aiming for somthing in the middle and missed by this much. But I dont see any evidence that they were. The only thing that ever gave the impression that they were aiming for high-end competing hardware was fanboy dreaming/wishing and people hyping up and exaggerating tidbits of information (power 7 anyone?).

Now, maybe their marketing department or strategists are incompetent, as whatever they were trying to acheive hasn't hit the mark yet. But thats just it; regardless of WiiU's lack of appeal or success to date - this is the box Nintendo intended to design. That doesn't make their hardware designers/technicians incompetent.


As an example: When 3DS launched and it failed to sell well or capture the publics imagination in its first year, was that because they were incompetent in designing the hardware? If so then its performance and it's success since then is certainly confusing...because the hardware hasn't changed. It was the incompetency of their marketing department, financial analysts & strategists which lead to them failing to sell the product to consumers.

 

[Grall]

The main problem with your ascertion that they are incompetent in their hardware design is that you are assuming they were trying to design somthing else. Theres nothing that indicates that they were trying to design anything other than what they ended up with: An energy efficient box which could produce visuals on par or above current gen, whilst supporting a second screen and providing full (hardware) backwards compatibility with Wii games.

Yes, I'm sure that's what THEY wanted, but that's not what everybody ELSE wants, considering wuu's atrocious sales figures so far, which is what makes them incompetent.

Designing a weak, underpowered console to compete with an outgoing generation is just a terrible idea, and hinging it all on 100% wii compatabilty really takes the cake; for how long exactly do they expect people to see wii compatability as something advantageous, another seven-eight friggin' years, what?

But the fact that you wanted or expected somthing else doesn't make their hardware design "incompetent".

It's incompetent not because it's not what I would want it to be, but because it's no damn good. Wuu isn't even particularly power efficient (it has basically same idle power draw as it has when going full tilt), it's not particularly low power; modern hardware is as fast or faster as wuu while drawing even less. ...And finally, wuu definitely isn't quiet; the cooling fan is clearly audible because it's gotta cool off 40W and yet it's so damn small, and with a disc in the drive it makes a genuine racket. It's just a bad design from start to finish, so what the hell were they thinking really?

Incompetency isn't just a matter of wether you managed to build what you wanted to build or not, it's wether you manage to build what you NEED to build. Wuu's an over-priced, terrible piece of hardware packaged with a wonky tablet made with poor, cheap components. On top of it all, bad marketing causes people to not even know this thing exists. I can't see a single mitigating circumstance here. "Oh but they WANTED to build something bad!" is not a valid excuse.

 

[liolio]

Exophase alluded to it a while ago but Nintendo seems to be quite biased when it comes to selecting its hardware partners...

 

[TheLump]

Yes, I'm sure that's what THEY wanted, but that's not what everybody ELSE wants, considering wuu's atrocious sales figures so far, which is what makes them incompetent.

Designing a weak, underpowered console to compete with an outgoing generation is just a terrible idea, and hinging it all on 100% wii compatabilty really takes the cake; for how long exactly do they expect people to see wii compatability as something advantageous, another seven-eight friggin' years, what?


It's incompetent not because it's not what I would want it to be, but because it's no damn good. Wuu isn't even particularly power efficient (it has basically same idle power draw as it has when going full tilt), it's not particularly low power; modern hardware is as fast or faster as wuu while drawing even less. ...And finally, wuu definitely isn't quiet; the cooling fan is clearly audible because it's gotta cool off 40W and yet it's so damn small, and with a disc in the drive it makes a genuine racket. It's just a bad design from start to finish, so what the hell were they thinking really?

Incompetency isn't just a matter of wether you managed to build what you wanted to build or not, it's wether you manage to build what you NEED to build. Wuu's an over-priced, terrible piece of hardware packaged with a wonky tablet made with poor, cheap components. On top of it all, bad marketing causes people to not even know this thing exists. I can't see a single mitigating circumstance here. "Oh but they WANTED to build something bad!" is not a valid excuse.

If you're calling their hardware engineers incompetent, then yes it is. Its exactly that.

If you tell a designer to design something and they design exactly what you said - then they are doing their job competently. Competencey implies you are able to do what you are required to do.

Do you honestly think they were trying to design somthing else and inadvertently ended up with WiiU? If so, wheres the evidence for that?

For better or worse, this is the product they were aiming for. If its not a popular product and its a failure then thats on whoever's idea the WiiU was, not whoever turned that idea into a physical product. Nintendo's top brass, marketing department, strategists, market analysts etc are to blame for the WiiU's poor sales. Maybe their philosophy is completely wrong, but if so then that isn't the fault of the people who took the design breif and brought it to fruition.

I'm not trying to defend Nintendo in this, I'm trying to point out that a product being ill-conceived and a product being badly designed are two completely different things.

I'm not sure why so many people seem to think Nintendo's engineers are living in some parallel universe where they don't have access to all the information the rest of us do. They design hardware perfectly well (exceptionally well in some cases) and in this case in conjunction with AMD and IBM - but that doesn't mean what Nintendo has asked them to create is a good concept.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

If you're calling their hardware engineers incompetent, then yes it is. Its exactly that.

People aren't making the distinction between Nintendo and Nintendo's Engineers in this discussion. Calling Nintendo incompetent for their lousy system is not the same as saying the engineers are incompetent, unless of course it was the engineer's making those decisions.

Although in a technical discussion about the hardware I'm not sure it's worth chasing such an explanation. The hardware can be compared to alternatives and seen to be somewhat lacking in terms of what game performance could be accomplished with a similar spec in terms of hardware silicon and power draw.

 

[TheLump]

People aren't making the distinction between Nintendo and Nintendo's Engineers in this discussion. Calling Nintendo incompetent for their lousy system is not the same as saying the engineers are incompetent, unless of course it was the engineer's making those decisions .

I got the impression from this post:

If nintendo's not incompetent, then who is?

Wuu is clearly weaker than either of the two current consoles (except corner cases) yet still selling for a higher price, seven years or more after they first launched. That's basically impossible, considering Moore's law. Yet nintendo somehow managed to defeat it, delivering something that is three silicon generations newer (more like four or five actually, except wuu isn't manufactured on the most recent tech) compared to current consoles yet somehow still sub-par. That's an amazingly incredible achievement.

Just for starters, how they could decide to pick a roughly speaking fifteen year old CPU core to power their new console I'll never know. That's just fucked-up beyond belief.

Sounded like he was assuming they were trying to design somthing better and failed(especially the part about Moore's law). Maybe I mistook it. If so, apologies Grall. I think I've been reading too much on 'other forums' and was maybe tarring you with the wrong brush...

Although in a technical discussion about the hardware I'm not sure it's worth chasing such an explanation. The hardware can be compared to alternatives and seen to be somewhat lacking in terms of what game performance could be accomplished with a similar spec in terms of hardware silicon and power draw.

Would it have had the 'all important' BC though?

 

[Grall]

Lump, I'm not sure what your point in this hair-splitting exercise is, but wuu being a poor piece of kit most probably results from bad decisions made by management. It's probably Iwata and his gang that decided to recycle that ancient gamecube CPU yet another time (with a bit more cache tacked on for show this round), but it could also have been on the advice of senior hardware engineering people. Who can say for sure! We would have needed to be a fly on the wall at the time to get the true answer to this.

Wuu is incredibly well built - like every nintendo gadget I've ever held I think (ok, not the N64 analog stick - it was fragile and not a great design), but the architecture is just terrible. Half a decade ago, it'd been serviceable, but half the main RAM bandwidth of competing consoles, terribly aged CPU cores that lack modern SIMD extensions, half RAM held back in reserve (with absolutely no benefit to show for it - slow menu loadtimes are infamous on wuu even after the current update) - it all makes wuu a real blunder of a games console.