Hopefully a little closure here for people expecting some magic to rush forth from the GPU like a genie stowed up in a lamp.
Also takes the edge off a lot of port begging with regards to pretty much most of "next-gen" and that its a real hassle even for multiplatform ports this gen. Nintendo sure made a lot of weird decisions with this box.
Here's an annotated version of the shot with some info from Randy from Chipworks:
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Up: We just learnt from Chipworks that this kind of photo would usually cost about $2500 to do, so it really is incredibly generous of them to do it for us for free.
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- The large orange block on the left is the 32MB of eDRAM (MEM1). Up: It's 40.72mm², and takes up 27.8% of the die. Judging by Chipworks comments above, and the densities Renesas offers for 40nm eDRAM, it is very likely at this point that the MEM1 pool of eDRAM operates with a bandwidth of 70.4GB/s.
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Up: - The lower left units are a high-bandwidth interface such as a SERDES or MIPI. These are used to give very high bandwidth over relatively few wires, so it's likely that this is used to communicate with something elsewhere on the motherboard, possibly a chip handling compression and transfer of video to the gamepad.
Great work from Chipworks again.Up: We just learnt from Chipworks that this kind of photo would usually cost about $2500 to do, so it really is incredibly generous of them to do it for us for free.
I don't think this is true for everyone at all. I bet people in countries where electricity is much more expensive care quite a bit.
Absolutely. Though PPUs were a very terrible design.Sure, probably more efficient than Xenon ever was. But not much newer, or even newer at all.
When you're buying a games console. The last thing you're going to look at is it's power consumption.
32 + 4 + 1, so 37MB. I guess.
Some significant updates to the OP:
We need some kind of tech-glossary here. ^^So what does this mean for the people that aren't that great at specs (like me)
So what does this mean for the people that aren't that great at specs (like me)
Some significant updates to the OP:
Would it be too greedy to now ask for Chipworks for the same type of pics for the CPU?
I somehow doubt people caring that much for their electricity bill (you have to if you base you choice on a console on power consumption) would have an HDTV and a gaming console to begin with.
Awesome.They're on the way.
Up: We just learnt from Chipworks that this kind of photo would usually cost about $2500 to do, so it really is incredibly generous of them to do it for us for free.
Kaz Miirai: "2599 $!"Would it be too greedy to now ask for Chipworks for the same type of pics for the CPU?
Wow! "Great!"They're on the way.
That is indeed the most important thing to take from this. Nintendo once again cornered itself in a technological ghetto hoping that lightning would strike twice.
Which stock R7xx does that stem from?Call a lot of this 352 gflops and under 100 GB/s for edram.
Wow, they're really being generous with all this. Big props, ChipWorks, GAF salutes you!They're on the way.
Yep. All those current gen games barely even run on the Wii U! It's a shame things are never going to get any better, developers are never going to get more used to the Wii U or any of that jazz. Wii U has already hit its maximum potential, people!Yeah, it can barely handle current gen engines.
That was the first thing I looked at when buying a 360. (Trying to snag a Jasper)
So what does this mean for the people that aren't that great at specs (like me)
lol Meelow I love you man haha
So is it clear how much of it is there purely for BC reasons?
Not saying it can't be used for anything else (ie useless unless in Wii mode) but stuff that was put in there to make BC happen.
75 Watts ? The Wii U is only using 33 Watts. If it used 75 it would be very powerful compared to current gen.
I do agree they should have inchreased it, but thats not what this thread is about. Its about determining the actual performance, not what it should have been or could have been.
Well, turns out there are two pools of eDRAM...Call a lot of this 352 gflops and under 100 GB/s for edram.
The speculated bandwidth in the OP is more than sufficient for Wii U, in terms of eDRAM.What's up with the slow ass bandwidth. I thought the whole point of these split memory pools was to get bandwidths of > 200GBps but both here and the Durango we have pretty slow memory. On PC you get video memory bandwidths 100-150GBps on much larger amounts.
This.I would like the thank ChipWorks and the GAF members who made this possible.
Can't wait to see the fully updated OP
Absolutely. Though PPUs were a very terrible design.
And there are the inherent advantages it has over even the most bleeding edge x86 designs, of course: True RISC, 32bit, 32 registers. As far as I know, PPC750 could always address several petabytes of virtual memory, 64bit integers don't help with games at all, and while amd64 doubles the GPRs to 16, PPC750 always had 32. Add the extremely short pipeline, and I think the chip should still outperform any x86/ amd64 core clock-for-clock in many cases, even if it's a design from the last century.
Well done, Thraktor!
I should clarify that Jim from Chipworks has informed me that the CPU is very close to the interfaces on the lower left of the chip. It is very likely that the block w/ the tank oscillator facilitates a high speed low-latency connection to the CPU.
I would like the thank ChipWorks and the GAF members who made this possible.
Can't wait to see the fully updated OP
They're on the way.
I think it's four, not three, as there are four identical blocks, and memory macros are usually partitioned that way. The 1MB SRAM are to the left of the top eDRAM pool.
I think it would only be an issue if another system uses 10-20 times as much power as the WiiU does, and it is being used for many hours every day. If there is only 2-3 times more power, then we're talking about saving a few dollars a month (if the systems are being used for many hours every day).I don't know. I think presuming either way is probably just asking to get ripped. I'm sure there are people on both sides of that argument.
Incredibly generous of Chipworks, that's like 2.5 months rent for me
This.
As long as there is a caveman description at the end that goes like "wii u bad, 720 good".
That doesn't seem quite right to me. SERDES is designed to get high bandwidth out of few wires or traces. There's very little cost to running wires over an MCM (indeed that's pretty much the entire reason for the CPU and GPU being on an MCM), so a SERDES interface seems like massive overkill. On the motherboard, though, where traces are expensive (and given the use of a 64 bit memory bus, it seems Nintendo is intent on minimising the number of them), a SERDES is a sensible choice. Especially if, as Marcan apparently claimed, the actual gamepad image compression is handled on a separate chip, which means you need to transfer uncompressed video and audio across there.