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MDX · Nov 22, 2011

disap.ed said:
eDRAM on Power7 is for L3 cache only AFAIK, L2 is only 256kb/core. L1 and L2 are SRAM.

I expect 6 or 12MB unified eDRAM if it will be a 3 core (2 or 4MB/core) and I think even 6MB would be sufficient by far (these +6MB would make much more sense on the GPU side IMHO)

But the thing is, with Power7 you can still have 32MB with 4 cores!

edit to add:
I dont even know if its possible...
but I think what Nintendo wants to do is replace a CPU core with a GPU core.
I think thats where they are going. And this is how the 32MB could be shared.

lherre · Nov 22, 2011

disap.ed said:
I think he meant that there isn't one pool of L2 cache that can be used from each core (as it's done with L3 caches)

Nop, core 0 has one size, and 1 and 2 have another totally different.

Think that one of the cores is the "master" for the other 2 so its necessities are different.

disap.ed · Nov 22, 2011

MDX said:
But the thing is, with Power7 you can still have 32MB with 4 cores!

edit to add:
I dont even know if its possible...
but I think what Nintendo wants to do is replace a CPU core with a GPU core.
I think thats where they are going. And this is how the 32MB could be shared.

I know what you mean and I think this is something that we will be looking forward also in the PC space, but I think it is too early for this. Even if there are a CPU and a GPU on one die like on Intel i family and AMD's Fusion APUs they are still more or less seperate parts (I think they share only the memory controller).

disap.ed · Nov 22, 2011

lherre said:
Nop, core 0 has one size, and 1 and 2 have another totally different.

Think that one of the cores is the "master" for the other 2 so its necessities are different.

WTF? Cell reanimated?

lherre · Nov 22, 2011

One question ... why do you still believe that Wii U will have 4 cores and nintendo only send 3 core systems? I mean, is absurd ...

Nuclear Muffin · Nov 22, 2011

lherre said:
One question ... why do you still believe that Wii U will have 4 cores and nintendo only send 3 core systems? I mean, is absurd ...

But there is no 3 core variant of the Power 7... (and the dev kit wouldn't need that 4th core if it were being preserved for the OS...)

Sadist · Nov 22, 2011

But isn't the Power 7 chip that Nintendo uses custom built for Wii U?

disap.ed · Nov 22, 2011

lherre said:
One question ... why do you still believe that Wii U will have 4 cores and nintendo only send 3 core systems? I mean, is absurd ...

Not more absurd than different cache sizes on the cores.

I mean even Gekko/Broadway have the same L1/L2 sizes like Power7, why would they change this?

Black-Wind · Nov 22, 2011

StreetsAhead said:
Looking at the Beyond Good & Evil 2 thread makes me hope, wish, and pray it comes out for Wii U. Please?

Haven't been keeping up with BG&E news but ... what's so great about it that they have to hold off on making it till next gen? What are they trying to do with it?

blu · Nov 22, 2011

disap.ed said:
WTF? Cell reanimated?

Unlikely. Also, Cell's SPUs have no cache - their local scratchpad mem has no cache behaviour.

cache: local mem, with coherency protocols and no direct addressing (search associativity instead).
scratchpad: local, perhaps tightly-coupled mem. fullstop.

Some caches allow use as scratchpad (power7 does that with its L3, AFAIK, and Gekko and Xenon for sure (latter in L2, former in L1, IIRC) [ed: scratch that, both Gekko's and Xenon's caches allow just partitioning, not direct addressing]), but you cannot turn an ordinary scratchpad memory into cache.

disap.ed · Nov 22, 2011

ElTopo said:
Ancel said it would come out on next-gen consoles and said Wii U is not a next-gen console, but rather "next-gen in terms of interface". Given how he apparently "needs" the full power of next-gen consoles, it wouldn't surprise me if they dug out the good old "not enough power" excuse.

Loop/Ten/Nexbox won't be more than 2x as powerful as WiiU, whereas WiiU will be 70x as powerful as the Wii (Wii: 15 GFLOPS, WiiU: >= 1TFLOPS acc. to rumors). So I don't know why WiiU wouldn't be considered NextGen.

Plinko · Nov 22, 2011

disap.ed said:
Loop/Ten/Nexbox won't be more than 2x as powerful as WiiU, whereas WiiU will be 100x as powerful as the Wii (Wii: 10 GFLOPS, WiiU: >= 1TFLOPS acc. to rumors). So I don't know why WiiU wouldn't be considered NextGen.

Where are you grtting this info? I haven't seen anything remotely close to this from the sources on the board.

disap.ed · Nov 22, 2011

Plinko said:
Where are you grtting this info? I haven't seen anything remotely close to this from the sources on the board.

EDIT: Found it, bgassassin posted it on Beyond3D

http://translate.google.com/transla...s.co.jp/docs/series/3dcg/20110611_452478.html

By the way, say system RADEON HD4000, but does not have to RADEON HD4890 high-end RADEON HD4350 low-end AMD and it is beyond the 1TFLOPS performance arithmetic I had information from another system, in the specifications middle RADEON HD4000 series instead of the range class may be close to high-end systems based perhaps RADEON HD4800.

Anyway, the 10 GFLOPS are Gamecube related acc. to Wikipedia so it should be around 15GFLOPS for Wii. Still nearly 70x as much as Wii.

I expect the Nextbox to be around 2TFLOPS maximum with performance around an AMD 6850 (1,5TFLOPS, 6870 or 6950 with 2,0 to 2,2TFLOPS are def. too power hungry even @28nm), CPU will be somewhere around 100 GFLOPS I guess (i7 2600 is around 118 as fastest consumer CPU)

mrklaw · Nov 22, 2011

blu said:
That was a very good business-side post. Particularly on the bolded part, I find that was nintendo's biggest fumble this entire gen. They misses every single opportunity to court up talented, prospective small (western) 3rd parties. Just because NoA and NoE are nothing but marketing goons, and NCL are traditionally very conservative in reaching out to foreign devs.

and conversely, MS and Sony *did* court the indy developers. Double whammy.

Chris_C · Nov 22, 2011

Made the decision last night to go WiiU and PS4 for next generation. I sure hope WiiU is region free (teh lulz, rite?)

I was scouring YouTube yesterday trying to find videos relating to the console but came up with little more than the bird tech demo, Zelda tech demo and Super Mario Bros.

disap.ed · Nov 22, 2011

ElTopo said:
Don't ask me, ask Ancel. Then again maybe he didn't mean his statement the way I interpret it, or maybe he simply had too high expectations for the other next-gen consoles ?

Or the 1TFLOPS rumor is just wrong. We will see...

But even under a (I would say) worst case scenario of ~500SU @500 Mhz the Nextbox won't be more than 4x as powerful. Sure this is a lot but less of a generational leap than from Xbox360 to Nextbox (6x) and by far less than from Wii to WiiU (30x)

1/2 OT: How can Xenon do 115GLOPS when Intel i7 2600K does 118? I know GFLOPS aren't everything but I thought that Xenon doesn't have the best "image" in regards of performance while the i7 is top of the line.

radioheadrule83 · Nov 22, 2011

Chris_C said:
Made the decision last night to go WiiU and PS4 for next generation. I sure hope WiiU is region free (teh lulz, rite?)

I was scouring YouTube yesterday trying to find videos relating to the console but came up with little more than the bird tech demo, Zelda tech demo and Super Mario Bros.

The Battle Mii demo was quite cool, graphics aren't great but it shows multiplayer potential and has a cutesy Metroid theme - so check that out... Killer Freaks was another good one and Ghost Recon Online. There were brief snippets of Tekken, with the defacing mechanic if I remember rightly... other than that everything else (Darksiders II, Colonial Marines etc) has been PS360 / PC footage I think.

MDX · Nov 22, 2011

Chris_C said:
Made the decision last night to go WiiU and PS4 for next generation. I sure hope WiiU is region free (teh lulz, rite?)

I was scouring YouTube yesterday trying to find videos relating to the console but came up with little more than the bird tech demo, Zelda tech demo and Super Mario Bros.

These are just demos but might end up being a pack in game for the WiiU:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgk3xSwBtUY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8_noxQ4k6o&feature=relmfu

McHuj · Nov 22, 2011

Sadist said:
But isn't the Power 7 chip that Nintendo uses custom built for Wii U?

Of course, the standard Power7 chip is 500+ mm^2. There is no way in hell Nintendo would use an off the shelf power7. By comparison, 360's CPU was around 180mm^2 and Cell was ~230mm when they shipped.

If the Nintendo chip is derived of Power7, it will be highly custom and much, much smaller.

lherre said:
Nop, core 0 has one size, and 1 and 2 have another totally different.

Think that one of the cores is the "master" for the other 2 so its necessities are different.

Is everything else the same? I hate stuff like this. I prefer symmetry.

TunaLover · Nov 22, 2011

Ancel had a discrepancy with Miyamoto back in the day, cause Shigeru said something about BG&E not being a game with consistent gameplay or something... I can't find the link =/

DCKing · Nov 22, 2011

lherre said:
Nop, core 0 has one size, and 1 and 2 have another totally different.

Think that one of the cores is the "master" for the other 2 so its necessities are different.

Ok, now I'm lost. First of all this isn't a conventional SMP setup anymore, and the level of customization indicates that this is not some off-the-shelf Xenon chip anymore either. This must be (close to) the final design... Which further implies that the final system will use GDDR3 like in the devkit.

lherre said:
One question ... why do you still believe that Wii U will have 4 cores and nintendo only send 3 core systems? I mean, is absurd ...

What about when Microsoft sent you four PowerPC G5 cores and you ended up with 3 PPEs, which were not only considerably different but decidedly less powerful too? What's different here?

disap.ed said:
1/2 OT: How can Xenon do 115GLOPS when Intel i7 2600K does 118? I know GFLOPS aren't everything but I thought that Xenon doesn't have the best "image" in regards of performance while the i7 is top of the line.

It's called VMX128, specialized units that can do some serious heavy lifting for certain calculations. The Wii U will have something similar, I guess (in fact server POWER7 already has a unit like this).

radioheadrule83 · Nov 22, 2011

TunaLover said:
Ancel had a discrepancy with Miyamoto back in the day, cause Shigeru said something about BG&E not being a game with consistent gameplay or something... I can't find the link =/

He suggested they look at the Super Mario Sunshine camera system apparently.. which sounds more like advice than criticism.

They still respect each other, Ancel commented recently on the differences between their approaches... Miyamoto starting from gameplay mechanics, Ancel liking being more hands on with tools and toying with narration etc. Plus Zelda III is one of his favourite games.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=450829

TunaLover · Nov 22, 2011

DCKing said:
Ok, now I'm lost. First of all this isn't a conventional SMP setup anymore, and the level of customization indicates that this is not some off-the-shelf Xenon chip anymore either. This must be (close to) the final design... Which further implies that the final system will use GDDR3 like in the devkit.

It certeanly have an exotic architecture, doesn't it?

wsippel · Nov 22, 2011

disap.ed said:
1/2 OT: How can Xenon do 115GLOPS when Intel i7 2600K does 118? I know GFLOPS aren't everything but I thought that Xenon doesn't have the best "image" in regards of performance while the i7 is top of the line.

You're comparing different values. Xenon: Single precision theoretic peak. i7: Double precision benchmarked.

disap.ed · Nov 22, 2011

DCKing said:
Ok, now I'm lost. First of all this isn't a conventional SMP setup anymore, and the level of customization indicates that this is not some off-the-shelf Xenon chip anymore either. This must be (close to) the final design... Which further implies that the final system will use GDDR3 like in the devkit.

What sense it would even make to use such a design? For the sake of being different?

blu · Nov 22, 2011

disap.ed said:
What sense it would even make to use such a design? For the sake of being different?

Perhaps one of the cores is not meant to handle the same workloads as the other two? An OS-reserved core?

BurntPork · Nov 22, 2011

disap.ed said:
Who says it will be at 40nm?

It's not going to be 28nm. The process is too new and expensive.

lherre said:
L2 cache isn't near 16 mb, it is less (more less). The 3 cores hasn't the same amount of L2 cache between them.

7MB total? (3MB for core 0, 2MB for core 1 and 2)

Azure J · Nov 22, 2011

All that matters is that it's easy to work with/program for and efficient. So is it?

wsippel · Nov 22, 2011

BurntPork said:
5MB total?

1MB total. L2 cache is SRAM, by the way, not eDRAM. The eDRAM IBM mentioned quite possibly isn't cache at all.

McHuj · Nov 22, 2011

BurntPork said:
It's not going to be 28nm. The process is too new and expensive.

That's true. And I believe the GPU won't be 28nm, but the it won't be new and expensive for the life time of the console.

Is it worth eating the costs on the first 5-10 million units sold in the first year until the process matures so that your console has a more longevity? They're probably aiming to sell 75+ million WiiU over the next 6-8 years, so over the life of the console it might make sense to take an upfront hit.

disap.ed · Nov 22, 2011

McHuj said:
That's true. And I believe the GPU won't be 28nm, but the it won't be new and expensive for the life time of the console.

Is it worth eating the costs on the first 5-10 million units sold in the first year until the process matures so that your console has a more longevity? They're probably aiming to sell 75+ million WiiU over the next 6-8 years, so over the life of the console it might make sense to take an upfront hit.

This and I think by middle of next year the process is probably mature enough.

Also Qualcomm's Krait will start in Q1 @28nm TSMC, with 80mm² this won't be so much smaller than WiiU's GPU most probably. And quantities are also comparable.

lherre · Nov 22, 2011

DCKing said:
What about when Microsoft sent you four PowerPC G5 cores and you ended up with 3 PPEs, which were not only considerably different but decidedly less powerful too? What's different here?

When the people had the alpha or better said pre-alpha kits (if I remember correctly this kits has a dual core ppc not a quad with an ATIX1XXX graphic card, theorically less powerfull than 360) for x360 the machine wouldn't be out in less than a year (or a year) like Wii U.

Besides the size of the devkit is similar to the case showed, if they put more logical components there, this will have to change radically to acommodate the new components (besides they have to redesign the cool system). Too many things and few time to be done properly.

Of course, this is my opinion about it. If they put more "power" inside, hey, I'm happy with it.

The main core initialize the other two, it syncs the load of the other too, etc, etc

mrklaw · Nov 22, 2011

McHuj said:
That's true. And I believe the GPU won't be 28nm, but the it won't be new and expensive for the life time of the console.

Is it worth eating the costs on the first 5-10 million units sold in the first year until the process matures so that your console has a more longevity? They're probably aiming to sell 75+ million WiiU over the next 6-8 years, so over the life of the console it might make sense to take an upfront hit.

but rumours were suggesting they were going SoC immediately. That, combined with the relatively small form factor shown at E3, doesn't suggest they're doing anything remotely radical or forward looking.

Taking a hit would suggest at least keeping CPU/GPU separate for maximum performance, and aiming to move to a SoC in a couple of years.

Marco1 · Nov 22, 2011

Weird but after loving PS3 and the 360 this gen, the WiiU is the only console I want next gen.

mrklaw · Nov 22, 2011

Marco1 said:
Weird but after loving PS3 and the 360 this gen, the WiiU is the only console I want next gen.

WiiU is a guaranteed purchase for Nintendo games. Whether I buy a PS4 or not depends on how powerful it is (I like my tech) and how well they do getting high quality 3rd party support.

realistically I think I'll still need a PS4 to complement the WiiU

MDX · Nov 22, 2011

lherre said:
The main core initialize the other two, it syncs the load of the other too, etc, etc

Is this inherent to Power7, or other multicore CPUs, or this unique to the the WiiU?

McHuj · Nov 22, 2011

mrklaw said:
but rumours were suggesting they were going SoC immediately. That, combined with the relatively small form factor shown at E3, doesn't suggest they're doing anything remotely radical or forward looking.

Taking a hit would suggest at least keeping CPU/GPU separate for maximum performance, and aiming to move to a SoC in a couple of years.

I think I agree. I was hoping the lack of news and the relaunch at next E3 was an indication that they were rethinking things.

bgassassin · Nov 22, 2011

lherre said:
L2 cache isn't near 16 mb, it is less (more less). The 3 cores hasn't the same amount of L2 cache between them.

That's fine. Even though I haven't fully accepted it, those old posts from that Espresso poster still lurk in my brain. He seemed to indicate at least the fist kit had about 3-4MB so this post reaffirms that. And I've seen 3 indicated in a few different spots. And from your other post about the asymmetrical L2 cache and Nintendo liking weird numbers, I could see one core having 1.5MB of L2 while the other two have 768KB. Which is still pretty big for a CPU. I just like to think bigger.

However that would also mean what he said was true in that the cores really are "Wii-descendents" and not POWER7-based. At least for the first kit.

Plinko said:
Where are you grtting this info? I haven't seen anything remotely close to this from the sources on the board.

I posted the link about it here. I demand you pay closer attention to my 600+ posts in this thread.

Sadist said:
But isn't the Power 7 chip that Nintendo uses custom built for Wii U?

Well we went with POWER7 because of some of the indications directly from IBM people. The press release only said Power, so that could mean the CPU is either PowerPC-based or POWER-based.

JoshuaJSlone · Nov 22, 2011

Aizu_Itsuko said:
I wouldn't use such a strong statement as brain_stew because the Wii was indeed breaking sales records during its first years, but there's some truth behind his words.

We've never witnessed a market leader have such a drastic decline in sales and popularity in gaming history until now with the Wii, and it's because of two factors, the large non-traditional gamers audience it has and the lack of strong third party support, in most cases a direct result of the hardware limitations the system has.

I think the amount of decline is sometimes exaggerated--it seems like a bigger difference since PS3 and X360 have had the real unusual event of very late increases.

Here's what I did. Took the quarterly shipment data for Wii, as well as the old quarterly "shipment" data for PS2 which was really more like "produced" but is what we've got. I then got a value for a rolling year, so for every quarter we see the sum of the previous four quarters.

MDX · Nov 22, 2011

disap.ed said:
I know what you mean and I think this is something that we will be looking forward also in the PC space, but I think it is too early for this. Even if there are a CPU and a GPU on one die like on Intel i family and AMD's Fusion APUs they are still more or less seperate parts (I think they share only the memory controller).

So this is not what IBM achieved with the new 360?

We've been waiting for the realization of all the talk about the combination of CPU and GPU into a single chip for some time now. AMD and Intel will be achieving that goal in the not too distant future, but a major software giant (along with some other hardware help) beat them to the punch.

Microsoft's latest redesign of the Xbox 360 houses a CPU and GPU combo chip, which includes IBM's triple-core design with ATI's graphics core, and is called Vejle, named after a city in Denmark (not Valhalla, as many previously believed).

The two parts originally debuted as 90nm parts (codenamed Xenon for the IBM CPU and Xenos for the ATI GPU) but are now married as one 45nm part produced by IBM and Globalfoundries.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/xbox-360-gpu-vejle-vahalla-stealthbox,news-34120.html

Sounds like Nintendo just took a modified version of the Vejle for their dev kits.

bgassassin · Nov 22, 2011

JoshuaJSlone said:
I think the amount of decline is sometimes exaggerated--it seems like a bigger difference since PS3 and X360 have had the real unusual event of very late increases.

Here's what I did. Took the quarterly shipment data for Wii, as well as the old quarterly "shipment" data for PS2 which was really more like "produced" but is what we've got. I then got a value for a rolling year, so for every quarter we see the sum of the previous four quarters.
http://joshuajamesslone.name/images/date/20111122ps2wiirollingyear.png

Do you know or remember what gave the PS2 that second wind?

MDX · Nov 22, 2011

bgassassin said:
Well we went with POWER7 because of some of the indications directly from IBM people. The press release only said Power, so that could mean the CPU is either PowerPC-based or POWER-based.

Its more than just indications, they right out said it.

lherre · Nov 22, 2011

bgassassin said:
Do you know or remember what gave the PS2 that second wind?

maybe pstwo?

stilgar · Nov 22, 2011

bgassassin said:
Do you know or remember what gave the PS2 that second wind?

PSTwo maybe?

DCKing · Nov 22, 2011

bgassassin said:
Well we went with POWER7 because of some of the indications directly from IBM people. The press release only said Power, so that could mean the CPU is either PowerPC-based or POWER-based.

IBM has stated that the Wii U CPU was based on technology used in Watson, the POWER7-based supercomputer. Furthermore, some IBM PR dude confirmed it's a POWER7 literally on Twitter.

I don't know whether all of this is turning out to be some big misunderstanding because everything we've heard about this CPU outside of IBM PR doesn't sound anything like the server chip at all.

@lherre: Could you say something about how similar the cores are?

Because what I'm thinking this could mean two different things. One is that there's one full-size (4-way SMT, all of the usual cache) POWER7 core and two slimmed down ones (half the cache, 2-way or no SMT, other simplifications). Basically a way to achieve a smaller die size and lower power consumption. The second is that there's one full-fledged POWER7 core and two cores that are something different entirely, like based on PowerPC A2, Broadway or on PPE.

bgassassin · Nov 22, 2011

I'm getting an indication it was the PSTwo.

MDX said:
Its more than just indications, they right out said it.

I have a stupid and crazy idea thanks to how my brain works, but I think it's too stupid and crazy to post.

DCKing said:
IBM has stated that the Wii U CPU was based on technology used in Watson, the POWER7-based supercomputer. Furthermore, some IBM PR dude confirmed that fact literally on Twitter.

I don't know whether all of this is turning out to be some big misunderstanding because everything we've heard about this CPU outside of IBM PR doesn't sound anything like the server chip at all.

@lherre: Could you say something about how similar the cores are?

Because what I'm thinking this could mean two different things. One is that there's one full-size (4-way SMT, all of the usual cache) POWER7 core and two slimmed down ones (half the cache, 2-way or no SMT, other simplifications). Basically a way to achieve a smaller die size and lower power consumption. The second is that there's one full-fledged POWER7 core and two cores that are something different entirely, like based on PowerPC A2, Broadway or on PPE.

LOL. I said that part in bold. And my stupid, crazy idea kinda sounds like this except with one modified POWER7 core and two modified 476FP cores.

blu · Nov 22, 2011

MDX said:
Is this inherent to Power7, or other multicore CPUs, or this unique to the the WiiU?

Power7 is an entirely SMP design (massive, at that). That bit of info smells of an OS-dedicated core (wasteful, but still not entirely unheard of).

DCKing · Nov 22, 2011

bgassassin said:
LOL. I said that part in bold. And my stupid, crazy idea kinda sounds like this except with one modified POWER7 core and two modified 476FP cores.

I wasn't disagreeing

AzaK · Nov 22, 2011

BurntPork said:
7MB total? (3MB for core 0, 2MB for core 1 and 2)

Where are you getting these sizes for L2 cache? The Power 7 has 256KB standard L2, right?

blu said:
Perhaps one of the cores is not meant to handle the same workloads as the other two? An OS-reserved core?

blu said:
Power7 is an entirely SMP design (massive, at that). That bit of info smells of an OS-dedicated core (wasteful, but still not entirely unheard of).

Indications from lherre say there's a master with more L2 and 2 others with less, so it might handle OS AND applications, while the other two are app only.

wsippel said:
1MB total. L2 cache is SRAM, by the way, not eDRAM. The eDRAM IBM mentioned quite possibly isn't cache at all.

That sounds more like it. With 256KB being the standard L2 cache on these things, a master core with more could be 512, with standard for the other 2.

AzaK · Nov 22, 2011

bgassassin said:
LOL. I said that part in bold. And my stupid, crazy idea kinda sounds like this except with one modified POWER7 core and two modified 476FP cores.

Bgassassin, can you explain why you think this and why you think Nintendo would do it? Just cost/heat or does it offer some magic mojo enhancing capabilities?

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