I just checked the power7 ISA is not the same as the 470 line of CPU, 2.06 for the former 2.05 for the latter. But for marketing people it might well be the same
Wii U hardware discussion and investigation *rename
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east of eastside
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I've maintained that Wii U will have a $250 MSRP. Having a tricore enhanced Broadway CPU sounds like a solution towards making that price point possible.
EA's exclusion of advanced physics and AI from Madden 13 Wii U is indicating a weak CPU.
EA's exclusion of advanced physics and AI from Madden 13 Wii U is indicating a weak CPU.
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Turn that $250 figure into $200 INCLUDING the tablet and we can talk. If Nintendo is unable to make a profit at $200 for the machine then they suck at designing a system for profitability while still gimping the thing for the future.
east of eastside
Newcomer
I would not discount a $199 launch price if that is your suggestion. My thinking, though, is that $250 will be initial price for launch and holiday (it will benefit from holidays discounts anyways) and then a few months later when the install base is languishing well under a million they can go for the $199 price drop. It's just harder to drop from $199 any time soon if they launch at that.
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
Iwata said that the wiiu would be nintendo's most expensive console so it's not going to be less than 250.
east of eastside
Newcomer
Nintendo's target audience is at $250 or lower. Any price higher and the thing sits on shelves for months with the media and investors tearing Nintendo apart declaring it dead. Look at what happened with 3DS... price point was wrong and Nintendo went into the mode of selling it at a loss. Wii U's bill of materials was estimated at $180 before it was known it was using a recycled CPU core. $250 MSRP at launch with some pack-in digital demo's is doable. Besides it will have to contend with possible PS3/360 holiday price drops and the eventual new model PS3.
If it's true, of course we'll all be picking one up, but are you guys smoking crack? The PS3/360 are still $250-$300 depending on what SKU you get. With Wii U you get a controller with a screen, NFC, and a shittonne of other features, a more powerful machine overall (GPGPU etc etc), and Nintendo's desire to make profit from day one. I just cannot for the life of me see this thing going anywhere near $250. $300 minimum or $350 with some packins.
People said similar things about Red Steel when the Wii launched, it didn't eventuate.
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
Blame 3rd party devs for that. They kept claiming 'mature' games wouldn't sell on wii which obviously wasnt true because those few half decent mature games that did come out sold pretty decent (I believe even RE4, which was like the 4th or 5th time that game came out, sold over a million).
But what constitutes 'same architecture'? If it's the same API and runs the same Power 7 code but with half the maths units, half the hardware threads, and 1 MB L3 instead of 4 MBs, does that count? The end result would be a tiny fraction of what Power 7 is achieving in its stellar performance, meaning the resultant processor wouldn't be 'Power 7' as people talk about it being a powerful CPU.
I don't know what the definition of CPU architecture is, but I'm pretty sure if one exists, no-one uses it specifically in PR talk.
DaSorcerer
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If true, seems devs are getting a better handle of the system, sooner or later it may start to differentiate itself.
Whuh! That's not "known" at all. The only solid word we have is it's power7 family, and "all-new", according to an IBM representative. That does not mesh with your claim of "recycled".
Anyway, no claim of recycling meshes with reality; a shrunken triple-core broadway - which is a 1990s design, IE ancient - with eDRAM cache would be smaller than the current broadway - which is TINY already. That's just too stupid to actually take for truth.
east of eastside
Newcomer
The addressable market for Nintendo at $300 is too small and at $350 it is non-existent. Don't forget this is an 8GB of flash machine with a recycled CPU, smaller psu and overall package.. the 6 inch low resolution resistive touchscreen can be bought in bulk for a few dollars. Take a look at rehashed junk like NSMB U and low tech junk like Nintendo Land and P-100, Nintendo is going very low investment in both hardware and software.
Nintendo doesn't have the business model to support costly core gaming and it didn't build the hardware, as a consequence, to accommodate it. Stupid is entertaining any notion that any variation of a 200 watt 250 GFLOP server chip went into a child's toy to play Mario games with simple physics and AI.
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/26904.wss
Oh, look Wii is based on the "Power Architecture" rather than just stating it is based on an archaic Power Mac G3 PPC core. It must be part of the "Power 6 family"
Yes, but did you note that they didn't say "Power Architecture" this time? They said specificly Power7.
You can't state that "Nintendo doesn't have the business model to support costly core gaming" simply because Wii wasn't "top-of-the-line" hardware, but old and weak - GameCube for example wasn't anything like Wii in regarding to competition, nor were the earlier consoles.
Also funny you should mention "Mario games with simple physics and AI" when the one of the biggest poster childs for Wii U looks to be Zombie U, far from any casual "Mario game" and in many ways even more "hardcore" than most if any XB360/PS3 game (if not for else, but for the simple fact that if you die, you do die, you don't load your game, you start from the beginning).
In addition to that, Batman, Metro, Assassin's Creed and so on are all coming to Wii U, quite far from "Mario games with simple AI and physics", don't you think?
Nintendo games may have been more towards the "younger and/or casual crowd" in the past, but it doesn't seem to be the case with Wii U.
Hardware wise, the original Wii was exception to the rule, don't draw any conclusions from it.
You can't state that "Nintendo doesn't have the business model to support costly core gaming" simply because Wii wasn't "top-of-the-line" hardware, but old and weak - GameCube for example wasn't anything like Wii in regarding to competition, nor were the earlier consoles.
Also funny you should mention "Mario games with simple physics and AI" when the one of the biggest poster childs for Wii U looks to be Zombie U, far from any casual "Mario game" and in many ways even more "hardcore" than most if any XB360/PS3 game (if not for else, but for the simple fact that if you die, you do die, you don't load your game, you start from the beginning).
In addition to that, Batman, Metro, Assassin's Creed and so on are all coming to Wii U, quite far from "Mario games with simple AI and physics", don't you think?
Nintendo games may have been more towards the "younger and/or casual crowd" in the past, but it doesn't seem to be the case with Wii U.
Hardware wise, the original Wii was exception to the rule, don't draw any conclusions from it.
Your strong critical words don't really add to sensible debate on the hardware.
Variation could mean anything. Take a POWER7. Halve the maths units, reduce the cache, clock it much lower...it's no longer a 200 watt 250 GFLOP server chip, but it's still the same architecture. With no idea what the nature of the custom part is, we cannot exclude the possibility of it bearing considerable similarity with a POWER7. It won't actually be a POWER7 as features in IBM's servers, but youe belief it's some recycled tech is equally misplaced given the information we have available.
They've flat out said power 7 six ways to Sunday.
I think a lot of the discussion here would benefit greatly from READING ibm's power 7 documentation.
The processor core themselves aren't what makes power 7, power 7. Its not some super powerful, super hot, super power sucking, super high clocked, super transistor dense processor.
Yeah, they are high performance cores, but people don't seem to realize they draw a fraction of the power and generate a fraction of the heat of p6 cores (1/4), and it only has half the transistors as intels comparative i7.
IBM drastically redesigned the architecture around advancements in their edram technology. They actually DROPPED clock speed by an entire GHz.
Ibm changed their entire focus from a power/speed focus to performance/effeciency focus. They are taking the ever impending physical limits of dennard scaling very seriously... as they should, as it cost them the power mac contract.
Power 7 was designed for scalability. Its a great server processor, but it wasn't DESIGNED to be relegated to servers and super computers it was designed to go places. Yeah, it can be put into a 32node flop monster, but that's not all it is, it has a 4core model too. Its an extremely flexible general purpose processor. You want powerful concurrency performance? its got you covered. Amdahl kicking your butt? Its got you covered there too.
Reading power7 documentation will clear up EVERYTHING I've read in this thread.
for example:
Its going to be VERY unliky to reduce power 7's l1&2 caches as they are literally a fraction of the size of the caches found in p6. (32kb l1 vs 64kb l1 and 256kb l2 vs 2MB l2) They gain performance not by increased capacity, but by being bussed 6 ways and having extremely low latency (0.5ns for l1). The bandwidth explodes through the roof. P7 LITERALLY gets half its power increase right here. (each edram cell functions as 6tsram). This thing can feed and feed and feed and feed.
Something that has been brought up over and over again, in that press release, is 'a lot of edram'. Obviously, that's not l1 or l2.
Its the l3, previously ibm used a seperate external chip for 32MB l3 cache.
It cost more in parts, it cost more in juice, it cost more in heat, it cost more in bandwidth....
With p7, and p7 alone, that l3 has been moved on die, 4MB per core, placed adjacent to the core, used locally by the core AND as a collective pool by all cores, for the 8 core configuration, that's 32MB on die edram. (its latency is 22ns.)
You can't have that without having power 7. Its the only one of its kind right now. That's not just something that can merely be nondescriptly written off as 'using power 7 technology' that IS the key power 7 technology.
Folks, read the power 7 documentation. Seriously.
I think a lot of the discussion here would benefit greatly from READING ibm's power 7 documentation.
The processor core themselves aren't what makes power 7, power 7. Its not some super powerful, super hot, super power sucking, super high clocked, super transistor dense processor.
Yeah, they are high performance cores, but people don't seem to realize they draw a fraction of the power and generate a fraction of the heat of p6 cores (1/4), and it only has half the transistors as intels comparative i7.
IBM drastically redesigned the architecture around advancements in their edram technology. They actually DROPPED clock speed by an entire GHz.
Ibm changed their entire focus from a power/speed focus to performance/effeciency focus. They are taking the ever impending physical limits of dennard scaling very seriously... as they should, as it cost them the power mac contract.
Power 7 was designed for scalability. Its a great server processor, but it wasn't DESIGNED to be relegated to servers and super computers it was designed to go places. Yeah, it can be put into a 32node flop monster, but that's not all it is, it has a 4core model too. Its an extremely flexible general purpose processor. You want powerful concurrency performance? its got you covered. Amdahl kicking your butt? Its got you covered there too.
Reading power7 documentation will clear up EVERYTHING I've read in this thread.
for example:
Its going to be VERY unliky to reduce power 7's l1&2 caches as they are literally a fraction of the size of the caches found in p6. (32kb l1 vs 64kb l1 and 256kb l2 vs 2MB l2) They gain performance not by increased capacity, but by being bussed 6 ways and having extremely low latency (0.5ns for l1). The bandwidth explodes through the roof. P7 LITERALLY gets half its power increase right here. (each edram cell functions as 6tsram). This thing can feed and feed and feed and feed.
Something that has been brought up over and over again, in that press release, is 'a lot of edram'. Obviously, that's not l1 or l2.
Its the l3, previously ibm used a seperate external chip for 32MB l3 cache.
It cost more in parts, it cost more in juice, it cost more in heat, it cost more in bandwidth....
With p7, and p7 alone, that l3 has been moved on die, 4MB per core, placed adjacent to the core, used locally by the core AND as a collective pool by all cores, for the 8 core configuration, that's 32MB on die edram. (its latency is 22ns.)
You can't have that without having power 7. Its the only one of its kind right now. That's not just something that can merely be nondescriptly written off as 'using power 7 technology' that IS the key power 7 technology.
Folks, read the power 7 documentation. Seriously.
They've said the same CPU as in Watson, which it clearly isn't. And as IBM haven't shown any small-scale, low power POWER7 CPU yet AFAIK, it wouldn't be wrong for people to understand talk of a POWER7 CPU being in WiiU as being a monster server CPU.No.
You can't expect 100+ participants to read every technical documentation in the world relating to a subject. Where someone's understanding is limited, someone more knowledgeable can point to the right information and quote+link. This way we share specialist knowledge from 100+ individuals instead of needing everyone to go learn everything personally.With that out the way, reference to key components of the POWER7 architecture and their usefulness in a low power console would be very beneficial. I went looking for power consumption and thermals and couldn't find anything other than "twice as much performance per watt as POWER6". Any info showing POWER7 can be operated with 3 or 4 cores at...I dunno, ~50 watts, would be an important bit of info in favour of a POWER7 processor fitting Wii U.
Right, which is one of the key concerns about P7's relevance in a console. That L3 is for working with large datasets. What use is 16+ GBs of eDRAM L3 in a game console? Maybe it is an ideal solution, but it needs someone to make a case for it.
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