WiiGeePeeYou (Hollywood) what IS it ?

[fearsomepirate]

Out of curiosity, why is flash memory only writeable a finite number of times? What about it causes it to break down? Since this is a totally OT question, could someone PM me?

 

[AlNom]

I was taught Flash was RAM i.e. non-volatile. EE 351:Logic circuits and blah blah.

 

[pc999]

EDIT: usually a modern EEPROM can make some 100,000 write cycles. They could as well use (very fast and very expensive) FRAM in place, which can do one billion write cycles, but I think that would cost way too much.

That isnt to litlle if you will have gaming dato on it (like they said at E3) ?

 

[darkblu]

16MB of on package ram would be overkill for 480p. i'm doubtfull nintendo would ever put that much memory on the GPU, unless recent rumors of physics accelleration are true, and they are doing physics on the GPU.

actually, what is known by now, both from the recent mosys/nec press releases and older credible info leaks is that:
first, it will be latest gen 1T-SRAM all over the place (both videomem and core), and
second, there will be a significant increase in the core pool (over the GC), but we hardly know anything about the video pool. 16MB is not exactly out of the question (given it's of the 1T-SRAM variety), but may not be a paticularly likely scenario either.

 

[_xxx_]

Perhaps they're different to what Comp Sci students like me read? I'd like to see their definitions and how they correlate to the Acronyms. What is Flash if not RAM? Flash ROM? How is ti read only...?

Look at the link in my post above, they explain it very well. And since it's electronics people designing that stuff in the first place, I claim their definititon is right

Magnetic core memory. Random access, read-write, and keeps it's contents without power, no?

Gosh, that was in the 60's! I thought we were talking about something that can be viably used in a modern gaming machine And even that would be much too expensive for Wii.

 

[see colon]

actually, what is known by now, both from the recent mosys/nec press releases and older credible info leaks is that:
first, it will be latest gen 1T-SRAM all over the place (both videomem and core), and
second, there will be a significant increase in the core pool (over the GC), but we hardly know anything about the video pool. 16MB is not exactly out of the question (given it's of the 1T-SRAM variety), but may not be a paticularly likely scenario either.

all i'm saying is that 16MB is excessive given the 480p render target. i mean, that's more than enough memory for 640*480@32bit+6xMSAA. the only way i could see them including 16MB would be if it's being used for something else (IE physics) or they are rendering to multiple displays.

 

[_xxx_]

ait will be latest gen 1T-SRAM all over the place (both videomem and core

That would be very nice, hope it's true.

 

[darkblu]

That would be very nice, hope it's true.

well, given the circumstances i think it's a safe bet.

 

[c_k_i_t]

Nothing new, but here is a better quality video of Pokemon Wii:
http://www.filb.de/?option=news&aktion=komm&ID=397

This game has some, nice looking self- shadowing on the pokemon trainers and pokemons and some physics [scene with the boxes] and the lighting doesn't look bad either...

 

[fearsomepirate]

I sure as heck Nintendo hope isn't faking us out with pre-rendered footage designed to look like gameplay. Not that they usually do.

 

[Megadrive1988]

Nothing new, but here is a better quality video of Pokemon Wii:
http://www.filb.de/?option=news&aktion=komm&ID=397

This game has some, nice looking self- shadowing on the pokemon trainers and pokemons and some physics [scene with the boxes] and the lighting doesn't look bad either...

thanks c_k_i_t - that's the first decent / good quality video of Pokiman Wii that I've seen. makes a difference.

I too hope Nintendo hasn't designed prerendered footage to look like gameplay. because that's really nice looking.

 

[Megadrive1988]

all i'm saying is that 16MB is excessive given the 480p render target. i mean, that's more than enough memory for 640*480@32bit+6xMSAA. the only way i could see them including 16MB would be if it's being used for something else (IE physics) or they are rendering to multiple displays.

16 MB of emedded 1T-SRAM *would* be awesome.

the PS2's GS and GCN's Flipper could've both used that much embedded memory, even at 480i


the GS I-32 used in workstations (GSCubes) have 32 MB embedded DRAM. that's over 200 million transistors just in
memory. so over 100 million transistors for 16 MB (even with 1T-SRAM)



I just don't see it happening though.
IGN fooled us once, in 1999. but reality, as of August 2000, turned out to be 3.12 MB. IGN won't fool me again. even 8 MB might be out of range for Nintendo's cost-targets. heck we might not even see any increase in amount of embedded memory at all, just the same amount 3.12, although a next-gen version of 1T-SRAM will make it faster.

but I'm balancing that with my own prediction of roughly double the amount Flipper had, to ~6 MB embedded next-gen 1T-SRAM on Hollywood.

 

[pc999]

the PS2's GS and GCN's Flipper could've both used that much embedded memory, even at 480i

Use in what? Not in buffer.

Anyway it is possible from a economical POV up to 12Mgs easly and still reduce costs (1/2) from the HW that already is sold at 99$.

 

[Megadrive1988]

Use in what? Not in buffer.

Anyway it is possible from a economical POV up to 12Mgs easly and still reduce costs (1/2) from the HW that already is sold at 99$.

12 MB would be very nice indeed. more memory than the entire N64 + RAM Expansion.

 

[Ooh-videogames]

Looks Nintendo has refiled their Recircular Shader patent, file date say's Oct 4, 2005.

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph...s1=Nintendo.AS.&OS=AN/Nintendo&RS=AN/Nintendo

So its obvious the TEV is back, but I'm thinking there's two.

 

[pc999]

I saw that but I also heard that it is just a update to the flipper.

Anyway there is nothing here that tell us about two TEV units, also from the videos (eg Pokemon) this "The texture-environment subsystem combines per-vertex lighting" dont look that is correct too, not sure if this is really about hollywood/wii.

 

[Megadrive1988]

lets suppose Hollywood has two TEV units in it:

each TEV could serve 2 pixel pipelines, thus doubling the textures per pipeline, thus a "4:2"

or two TEVs could be serving 8 pixel pipelines, thus an "8:1"


but I doubt very much that two TEV units will be present in Hollywood.

 

[Megadrive1988]

realtime screens of Elebits - these contrast *dramatically* with the prerendered scenes from the trailer.

 

[Megadrive1988]

 

[StefanS]

Loads of jaggies, and rather GCNish gfx.