Fourth Storm
Member
I wrote a polite email a while back and never got a reply. I dunno, maybe it didn't get to the right person.
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WiiU technical discussion (serious discussions welcome)
- Thread starter blu
- Start date
oversitting
Banned
curiosity.
Yeah, that's true. But looking at the small samples already tells us that I think. This is the Renesas die:
"Copyright 2010". That seems too old. The GPU wasn't done until late 2011/ early 2012. (EDIT: Seems I jumped the gun, it seems to be the GPU after all.)
Also, the CPU looks funky:
What's with all those tiny green squares?
Couldn't someone just PhotoShop the image so that it looks drastically different(ie: hand-drawn/shaded). It would be much easier/faster and keep the accuracy. Or is this just splitting hairs, from a legal perspective?
Well, in emailed vgleaks about it to see if they weren't interested, about an hour ago.
There's a big legal difference between a modified version of the photo (what's you're talking about) and a newly-drawn diagram (what I'm talking about). Chipworks copyright will still apply to the former (as it's a "derivative work"), but not the latter.
GhostTrick
Banned
Well, I think the only important thing is the GPU SP count.
Not if you're only paying for a license to the photo
There is a reason people don't share stuff like NPD numbers. It's best to read the TOS first.
Once you pay for a song on iTunes can you post that to the internet?
Edit: To illustrate the legalities at work here:
Let's say I took a photo of Nintendo's new HQ and put it up on some photo-selling website, and you bought it. Now you can't go around distributing it around the internet, because I own the copyright to the photo, and I want to keep selling it to other people. However, if you were to look at my photo and draw a picture of Nintendo's HQ, you'd be free to share that picture to whoever you want, because I don't have any copyright claim on Nintendo's HQ (Nintendo owns that), I just have a claim on the photo itself.
The situation is the same here. Chipworks owns the copyright to the photo, and they can limit it however they want (ie the person who buys it can't redistribute it). They don't, though, have any copyright claim over the chip that they're photographing. That's Nintendo's, IBM's, etc. property, not Chipworks'. So, we're fully entitled to draw a high-level diagram of Wii U's GPU and distribute it around the internet. Simply modifying the original photo isn't enough, though, as we'd still be distributing a version (even if it is a modified version) of their copyrighted photo.
Chronos24
Member
I understand. Like everyone else here... I would love to see some solutions to the mystery that is the WiiU
Chronos24
Member
I appreciate the explanation. So back to business, are we actually going to try and get the photo?
Fourth Storm
Member
Has anyone emailed them if we can get the sizes of the chips or pictures so we know what we are buying? I'm about to do so.
Yeah, that's true. But looking at the small samples already tells us that I think. This is the Renesas die:
"Copyright 2010". That seems too old. The GPU wasn't done until late 2011/ early 2012.
Also, the CPU looks funky:
What's with all those tiny green squares?
You're probably right on the first one. I'd want to be 100% sure, though, before dropping $200 on it.
On the CPU front, I don't really know what the little green things are, especially without it being in the context of a larger pic. They're probably just minor electrical components, or they're above the connections on the bottom of the die to the substrate.
I'd say we should wait 'till Blu's here to see if he wants to do the honours of deciphering the chip.
See wsippel's earlier post.
Edit: This Chipworks A6 photo is 529*537, and compresses to 477KB in PNG (which is a lossless format). Hence, a 50MB PNG with a similar colour palette should be around 5000*5000 in size, which is more than enough.
Fourth Storm
Member
Either a person with technical knowledge, like blu (if he deems his abilities sufficient that is) or someone with decent artistic skill to do a detailed reproduction/diagram for us.
Schnozberry
Member
Could the green sqaures on the CPU be a part of the core interconnects? Ring bus maybe? I am grasping at a guess.
I'll thrown in $10 for the GPU.
I'll thrown in $10 for the GPU.
I'm in as well.
I would like to make the suggestion that (with the mods' approval), when the new thread is created, it has deliberately incorrect information. Once Kotaku has copied it, then the OP can be changed... I doubt they are reading this.
/half-joking
It doesn't really have to be that detailed. Here's an example I threw together in a couple of minutes:
Something like that (although accurate and to scale) is fine, as it gives us the answers to the two main questions:
1. How is the die laid out?
2. How much space do each of the components (eg eDRAM) take up on the die?
The ALU counts, etc., don't need to be in the diagram.
Nah, that's likely the corner of the chip, and the ring bus would be in the centre (and wouldn't look like that, anyway).
I'm in as well.
I would like to make the suggestion that (with the mods' approval), when the new thread is created, it has deliberately incorrect information. Once Kotaku has copied it, then the OP can be changed... I doubt they are reading this.
/half-joking
I will say there should definitely be a Neogaf.com watermark on any image we do put up.
Edit: Alright, I need to get to bed. I'll check back during my lunch break tomorrow.
We're all pretty big geeks in here; we want the specs for the sake of knowing the specs. You bring up a good point about seemingly gimped hardware sometimes doing impressive things, but total hardware power also has its place.
FWIW I think the GPU would be higher priority than the CPU if people really want to buy the picture, since with the GPU you can probably tell how many compute clusters there are (and from that, how many shaders). I don't know what there is to tell from a CPU die apart from how much space the eDRAM takes and the core count which we probably already know.
Fourth Storm
Member
Yup, after all this speculation, some of us just need some closure on the topic.
And we seem to be working towards a GPU purchase. Hopefully, Chipworks replies to my inquiry regarding which part number that actually is. But we should def be able to ascertain SPUs and TMUs easily. ROPS seem to be a bit tougher to eyeball in R700 die shots. They appear to encircle the tmus and spus along with the L2 cache but it's all a bit fuzzy for me.
NinjaTehFish
Banned
Im in for 20 bucks, I haven't been posting in this thread but ive been reading it and keeping up to date (some of you prob know me from the old speculation threads) I'd love to see some in depth chip analysis on this thing.
So true. You'd think IGN or someone would really just spend the couple of hundy and get someone to look at the info and tell us.
Cool.
Matt & Fran would have been all over this! *Sighs*, I really do miss those days... <(*~*)>
Any chip in Wii U do better than Durango?
Also what is Wii U GPU until now we can't figure out?
Any Idea why nintendo choose 2 gb ram with slow speed and Cpu very old?
From the information above can't believe how X project impressed me with weak CPU & RAM.
Next generation 720 & Ps4 will shock us with Avatar Graphics.
Also what is Wii U GPU until now we can't figure out?
Any Idea why nintendo choose 2 gb ram with slow speed and Cpu very old?
From the information above can't believe how X project impressed me with weak CPU & RAM.
Next generation 720 & Ps4 will shock us with Avatar Graphics.
I don't believe so, possibly the 32MB EDRAM
We can't figure out, if the GPU is 40nm, which we think is likely. The transistor count for just the GPU would be over
600million, which is over twice Xenos and is clocked 10% faster as well.
the 12.8GB/s likely hits closer to its maximum bandwidth than 360 or PS3 ever saw, and their speeds are a bit deceptive, since 360's bandwidth was ~11GB/s write and ~11GB/s read, it could just simply do this at the same time, which is a very beneficial thing, but it also means that Wii U's memory could read or write faster than 360 but has to switch between these two things.
As for the old CPU, it's somewhat comparable to bobcats age, both of these chips are modern and modified, but bobcat iirc was designed from AMDs decade old K8, and while IBM's ppc 750 series is older, it was designed with minimal power and size while K8 was a desktop CPU that wasn't designed with these restrictions. Jaguar is an evolved bobcat core if I've been following the leaks correctly, and only sees a 10-15% increase of performance over bobcat, Wii U's CPU is likely to out perform it per clock, but with double the cores Durango will easily win out in performance. (6 cores for games)
Maybe my information helped, but one of the biggest things holding back last generation was RAM size, and of course Wii U's GPU is far more modern with more processing power, so showing a noticeable step up in power over 360 was only a matter of time. XB3 is likely to do the same to Wii U, and probably at launch.
I expect them to trail high end PCs, having said that, Crysis 3 looks very good and stuff like warfighter also has some drastic increase of model fidelity. However, I don't want to kill things that look too realistic, and budgets are also a concern (according to dragon age devs, and common sense) so who knows if we will get to that point just yet.
Some practise for you folks:
Here's a shot of Tahiti.
And here's rv770:
It shouldn't be terribly difficult to find and section out the SIMDs & TMUs. The RBEs (quad ROPs) surround them, and are naturally next to the memory bus. Command processors/geometry setup engines are going to be more central in Tahiti, so it's much easier to spot than in RV770. There's a bunch of miscellaneous stuff near the PCI-E I/O that include stuff like UVD, display controllers etc.
I'd suggest doing some rough pixel-area percentages when it comes to HW blocks.
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gl hf! ;P
Thank you man your information excellent and very clear to me.
The good thing in next generation we will play nice game on these 3 consoles.
Some practise for you folks:
Here's a shot of Tahiti.
And here's rv770:
It shouldn't be terribly difficult to find and section out the SIMDs & TMUs. The RBEs (quad ROPs) surround them, and are naturally next to the memory bus. Command processors/geometry setup engines are going to be more central in Tahiti, so it's much easier to spot than in RV770. There's a bunch of miscellaneous stuff near the PCI-E I/O that include stuff like UVD, display controllers etc.
I'd suggest doing some rough pixel-area percentages when it comes to HW blocks.
---
gl hf! ;P
wow, 50MB chipworks photos suck. ;-)
Some practise for you folks:
Here's a shot of Tahiti.
And here's rv770:
It shouldn't be terribly difficult to find and section out the SIMDs & TMUs. The RBEs (quad ROPs) surround them, and are naturally next to the memory bus. Command processors/geometry setup engines are going to be more central in Tahiti, so it's much easier to spot than in RV770. There's a bunch of miscellaneous stuff near the PCI-E I/O that include stuff like UVD, display controllers etc.
I'd suggest doing some rough pixel-area percentages when it comes to HW blocks.
---
gl hf! ;P
Thanks. I've been looking at die shots like those for the past year or two, so I'd be fairly confident in working out a standard R700-era die. The problem is that this isn't a run-of-the-mill GPU, as there's eDRAM on there, along with a DSP, a couple of ARM cores, etc, and for all we know AMD have made significant changes to the graphics core itself. Also, as far as the "ROPs next to memory controller" rule, there are two banks of memory in play here, the eDRAM and DDR3, and one challenge will be figuring out how the GPU interfaces with each. Now, of course this is all the stuff that makes the analysis interesting, but it's also the stuff that makes the analysis tricky, at least from my perspective.
You've no interest in doing the honors for us, do you?
Angel Whispers
Member
It can handle UE4, and that's all anybody concerned about it needs to know. Epic confirmed that it was UE4 capable on 12th July last year. That said, Epic and UE4 shouldn't be that big a deal during this 8th Gen. As for Agni's Philosophy (Luminous), that big thread on here is a pretty much a waste of time - they said it would be scalable from PCs to PS3 to mobiles and tablets; With that in mind, and knowing that the Wii U is more powerful than the PS3, mobiles and tablets, it's not unreasonable or unthinkable to say that it can handle Luminous, too.
720 & Ps4 can beat wii u in resolution & frames , Direct X 3D 11.1 ......long miles.
Not like the difference between 360 & ps3.
mmmmmmm.......we should call wii U semi next generation.
Because when i start searching about nintendo history there is only one way to match-up with Ps4 & 720p after the second year with low price.
This is what i am thinking about only usb for Wii U with 4 gb RAM after 2 years will be cheap.
Nintendo thinking how to make there consoles cheap too much.
Anybody believe my idea
This is what i am thinking about only usb for Wii U with 4 gb RAM after 2 years will be cheap.
Nintendo thinking how to make there consoles cheap too much.
Anybody believe my idea
So... step up for WiiU?
UE4 and Luminous are engines so they're scalable in far more ways than just resolution. WiiU can certainly handle these engines, but it won't be a case of "name engine" at lower res.
Because when i start searching about nintendo history there is only one way to match-up with Ps4 & 720p after the second year with low price.
This is what i am thinking about only usb for Wii U with 4 gb RAM after 2 years will be cheap.
Nintendo thinking how to make there consoles cheap too much.
Anybody believe my idea
There wouldn't be any point, RAM on a USB connection would defeat the point of RAM unfortunately. You might as well just use some of the solid state storage memory, even that would be better suited but still not effective. In the case of the RAM add on you posted that was connected to a dedicated fast connection built specifically for that purpose.
It's like Vita to 3ds or Xbox to GC.
You remember how rubbish many games ported from PS2,Xbox to GC .
Situation here will be the same but Wii U handle many good thing but with low RAM & weak GPU.
tkscz
Member
except the GC was stronger than the PS2 and nearly at the same level as the XB. It'd be better to say PS2 to Xbox, where in some games (Splinter Cell) the difference was night and day.
No offense... but i'm a bit baffled by your input.
First, you come in this thread and others (the "Xenoblade 2" thread) and ask what WiiU is capable of. Then, just the same day, you seem like you are an expert on all things WiiU related and seem to know better than others what other people should expect, and you even have some ingenious upgrade (excuse the sarcasm) for the RAM in mind over USB.
Please, i don't mean to offend, but people in this thread are trying to maintain a higher level of quality in discussion. There are actual game developers in this topic, people who are ingeneers etc.
Anybody believe my idea
No, lol. They don't have an expansion port for one, so any RAM would have to connect to the USB port or maybe one of the ports on the controller, both of which would be too slow to use as an extended pool of RAM. Performance between the pools would be too inconsistent, with the latter being far slower. So it would be a cache at best.
And besides, they don't want a fragmented console, there's a reason why they haven't done RAM expansion since the N64 a decade and a half ago. The whole point of consoles is static hardware.
Some people like devkits, so have a pic of a more recent one:
Source? Anyone know if this is legit? Controller looks DS3-ish but elongated and not so thin in the middle part, but doesn't look like it has enough room for a screen or touchpad. Is that the dev kit controller or something the developer just uses for testing?
I think GPU for Consoles show polygon:
PS2: 15-20 Million.
GCN: 20+ million with good Cpu.
Xbox: 115 million.
Wii: double GCN 40+ million ....!
Here if we get the information for 720,Ps4,Wii U for GPU & CPU we can comparison.
That just looks like the Wii Procontroller (not WiiU). And if Wsippel is posting it, i doubt it's fake.
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