Wii U hardware discussion and investigation *rename

I'm curious about this. Why wouldn't it be a good fit? The numerous optimisations needed to get decent performance from the PS360 CPUs naturally benefit any CPU, or certainly don't make them worse, and it's the same ISA, no (not that anyone using a compiled language will even care)? I'd have thought as long as the vector units were comparable, code could be ported and run decently on Espresso, with only things requiring high linear clockspeed (math crunching) being an issue.

 

Well the WiiU doesn't have any vector units as such. It has paired singles for 32-bit float, while the 360 has 128-bit SIMD for both int and float. I've read developers here talking about arranging their integer workloads so they can squeeze extra performance out of int SIMD, so that might be one type of arrangement that doesn't naturally suit the Wii U?

I guess cache optimisations could be another area? A 1 MB shared L2 might benefit from setting all three cores / six threads on a shared dataset, but with the WiiU's wonky 1 x 2MB plus 2 x 512 MB might dick around with both cache optimised datasets and snooping eachother's L2 (which probably quite slow).

... or ... something?

 

I mean, I just thought they'd looked but seem things differently (wrongly). But they hadn't even looked!?!?

It is hard to look at Nintendo's tech in isolation from Nintendo's overbearing management decisions, as when you look at the die shots you see ... Nintendo. A disciplined mind would find this easier, but my mind is not disciplined.

 

that coudl make a significant difference, and the wording of the article/secret developer is just odd in saying PPC is itself an issue. Or does 'PPC' include the SIMD units by default and lack of them in Espresso means Espresso isn't properly PPC?

 

Newer PPC cores feature SIMD, but remember, wuu's CPU is from fking late 1990s, where such newfangled tech was still very new. Intel CPUs didn't get float SIMD until pentium 3 IIRC. In car terms, wuuCPU is a 1960s era car engine, and not a US large-bore V8, but an euro 4-banger.

 

Bad example given the utter incompetence of american engine builders.

In 1956 Ferrari had a 4 cylinder engine outputting 280hp. The 1964 - 66 Mustang, the example of american muscle, a decade later, had a big, heavy v8 outputting a whopping... 271hp in it top model.

So I guess there must be some truth in rumors about the Wuu's untapped power after all

 

The big, heavy V8s of the era did have monster torque, that I doubt the ferrari engine came anywhere close to. In any case, bad car analogies or not, the wuu CPU is not a ferrari engine of ANY time era...

EDIT:
That linked article by the way - damn. That it would be bad I just knew, but THAT bad... It's like nintendo totally sat on its hands with both thumbs up its butt during all the good wii years, and then only towards the end start to realize that damn, they needed a new console, FAST! And jeez, it would have to have online support, crap! We don't have any of that!

*sigh*

 

Your example is also flawed..hp per liter isn't everything...there are other factors like torque, fuel consumption, complexity, reliability etc.

GM/Chevy LSV8 series is one of the most powerful and reliable engines in the world and it's hand built, small and compact and lightweight and fairly fuel efficient as well. Many racing/tuning shops choose these engines to put into small sportscars because it's such a compact engine yet outputs loads of power/torque. They also don't cost tens of thousands of dollars like a Ferrari engine...lol. Ferrari engines are VERY high maintenance.

 

Translate "Code optimised for the PowerPC processors found in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3" as "SIMD" and it should be more clear.

Odd question... VMX is probably an optional part of the spec. Even the PS3 and Xbox 360 had slightly different vector units and no one claimed one or the other was any more or less PPC.

This is pedantic but the int support was removed from Xbox 360: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltiVec#VMX128

 

Not at all. I'm trying two correlate two disparate pieces of information. Xenon, Cell PPE, and Espresso are all PPC, yet we're told Espresso has trouble running the PPC code form PS360.

That was my first suggestion, pointing the confusion to a developer choice of words. But there's no harm in asking for validation.

 

What you say about most racers is why i cant stand them... And also why I love excite truck, which was anything but.

The damage system for excite truck was AMAZING for wii. Had to be using tesselation with procedurally generated maps for vertex generation and displacement. Each crash was something to be relished as each impact made its unique mark, according to the size, speed and direction of the impacting object. Was very dissapointed this was removed from the sequel.

Used the technology again in sports resort sword slicing and skyward sword slicing/sand displacement.

That would have to be broadways work i'd think. Wonder how nintendo will use it for espresso... Or would they rather use their gpu geometry shaders...

 

That only says that some integer operations were removed. The original source (which you can find an archived copy of here http://archive.is/meNT) didn't even say that.

This isn't a complete or necessarily totally correct list but still a strong support for the presence of integer instructions: http://biallas.net/doc/vmx128/vmx128.txt

 

Its 55nm confirmed now?

 

Only in an anecdotal sense of the word, which, quite frankly, is worthless.

 

Years ago (at least 16), I simply used an array to store the road segments. Testing if you're inside a segment isn't hard ofcourse, dot3 is your friend. So yes, not complicated at all=)

Yet, the game skips PS360?

 

Even if it was confirmed to be on a circa 2012 55nm engineering process, even if it wasn't TSMC or the other major foundries there should be an easy to make 47XX or 48XX based or related GPGPU there...its all up to devs to make customized games.

 

55nm is an iffy proposition, primarily because of the EDRAM density which is quite respectable even for the 28/32nm node. Nothing on 55nm is even close to that density. Another data point that has appeared since I made my last trawl through the net for density numbers is that Intel on their Iris Pro squeezes 128MB of EDRAM onto 70-80mm2 of 22nm die, which is in line with the data from TSMC/NEC-Renesas/IBM on higher nodes.

Also, the same article is quite clear in that the GPU is stronger than those of the HD-twins. Not only did it allow for effects to be added, but it also had some cycles left after that allowing the programmers the opportunity to consider moving calculations from the CPU to the GPU (which in the end they didn't). So, even in a straight port scenario, this particular testimony claims greater GPU performance, which implies an SPU density more in line with 40nm than 55nm.

Of course, process maturity and low clock targets may have allowed really good density results on 55nm, but personally I find it hard to credit given the extremes called for, Far easier to assume 40nm. (Not that it makes one whit of difference just how they get the density they do.)

Interesting to read that memory bandwidth needs were handled nicely by the EDRAM, even for a port. (At least for this particular game.) And again a confirmation that the CPU chokes on code "optimised for the PS360 CPUs" which in this context pretty much means cache resident SIMD code. The implication being that no SIMD units were added to the cores,

Overall, the article confirms all but extreme speculations. The only outlier being that 55nm quote, but that was also indicated to be "someone elses" opinion.

 

And Nintendo is already working on the next-gen Wii U ? Is this a desperate move or a part of a well planned execution ?

http://www.nintendonews.com/2014/01/nintendo-fusion-could-be-nintendos-next-gen-hardware-name/

Fusion DS sounds a bit confusing to me. The mobile GPU division of AMD was sold to Qualcomm... maybe it's just a Qualcomm mobile SoC ?

 

Never underestimate the internet's ability in an information vacuum to plain make shit up...

I'd be highly surprised if a single word of that text is true, beyond that nintendo's undoubtedly looking at creating some form of new hardware.