Fourth Storm
Member
Found a very interesting tidbit in an interview with AMD's vice president in charge of semi-custom chip business, Saeid Moshkelani. The article is from June, but it appears to have flown under the radar.
Earlier in the article, Moshkelani talks up the console business, with its proven product cycles and long lifespans. It is also made clear that AMD are not interested in niche products, ruling out lesser known handhelds:
With Sony most likely not prepping a follow up to Vita at this stage, the above quotes seem like strong evidence in favor of AMD getting the design win for Nintendo's next generation handheld. We know that Nintendo are pursuing a unified architecture, while looking to draw from their Wii U programming experience. AMD graphics would make a great deal of sense if they can deliver a product with the right power draw. Couple this information with wsippel's finding earlier this year that Nintendo selected an SoC vendor for an unknown future product back in January of 2013. http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=97107539&postcount=11551.
All in all, a semicustom SoC/APU from AMD appears increasingly likely for the 3DS successor. The biggest bomb out of all of this may perhaps be that if this architecture carries over to their next home console, Nintendo may finally ditch PowerPC for ARM on the CPU side.
http://blogs.barrons.com/techtrader...i-talk-wearables-infrastructure-server-chips/Another area of interest for semi-custom is handheld gaming, believe it or not. Everyone thinks it is dead, but the [Nintendo] 3DS is still selling.
Earlier in the article, Moshkelani talks up the console business, with its proven product cycles and long lifespans. It is also made clear that AMD are not interested in niche products, ruling out lesser known handhelds:
Has to be at least $100 million annual revenue for us to go for it, says Moshkelani. Thats a minimum, he explains, not a target.
With Sony most likely not prepping a follow up to Vita at this stage, the above quotes seem like strong evidence in favor of AMD getting the design win for Nintendo's next generation handheld. We know that Nintendo are pursuing a unified architecture, while looking to draw from their Wii U programming experience. AMD graphics would make a great deal of sense if they can deliver a product with the right power draw. Couple this information with wsippel's finding earlier this year that Nintendo selected an SoC vendor for an unknown future product back in January of 2013. http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=97107539&postcount=11551.
All in all, a semicustom SoC/APU from AMD appears increasingly likely for the 3DS successor. The biggest bomb out of all of this may perhaps be that if this architecture carries over to their next home console, Nintendo may finally ditch PowerPC for ARM on the CPU side.