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Azure J · Dec 14, 2011

Folks in here talking about StarTroics revival being a proposition based on nostalgia alone need to understand that anything made now would be so radically different, it would pretty much be a re-introduction of the series using the elements most well known, which probably boils down to the most prominent characters (Mike & his Uncle, the Coralcolan Islanders, Mica & the Argonians) and the scenario (Indiana Jones lite with paranormal/extraterrestrial elements). I just want to see what Retro's world builders and designers could do with free reign over something distinctly Western in origin, humor and tone as well as having a different take on the adventure genre that isn't a Zelda like in Nintendo's IP catalog.

guek said:
franchises I want Retro to do in order of descending desirability

1. Starfox
2. F-zero
3. Startropics
4. Killer Instinct (Owned by MS I think...)
5. River City Ransom

Honestly, my list looks something like:

Startropics
New IP
Metroid

This isn't to say that I don't want them on a new Metroid, but the other two ideas are the most appetizing to myself.

Edit: Wave Race is a pretty good pick actually... Also:

ShockingAlberto said:
Fisher-Price seems to be the en vogue insult this season.

I'm going to pioneer "Retarded Spaceship" for the Xbox 3 based off a hunch.

I've never understood the desire people had to rationalize what they were playing with. I saw an arcade stick for the first time in my life sometime earlier this year and thought "hey, that's cool" while my sister was there saying she couldn't play with something so Playskool like. :lol

I think I'm just weird in that video gaming and the design culture behind it has always fascinated me.

ShockingAlberto · Dec 14, 2011

BY2K said:
They did half the tracks. I'd say they were involved a lot.

And we KNOW they are working on something for the Wii U "that everybody wants them to do". So it's obviously something from an existing franchise.

We don't actually know that.

The "game that everybody wants them to do" thing came from a second-hand source. It's no more reliable than if I came here and said the same thing.

Not saying it's true or untrue, but I certainly wouldn't place emphasis on how concretely we know it.

DCKing · Dec 14, 2011

rhoq said:
I want a new Wave Race.

NST has been very quiet lately, so I think there's a good chance that they're actually doing it.

That or Project H.A.M.M.E.R. is back.

It'd be a good showcase for showing of the Wii U's advanced shading capabilities, and it would probably work well with Upad's/Wiimotes motion sensors.

BY2K said:
They did half the tracks. I'd say they were involved a lot.

The programming, game design, and design of the other half of the tracks was done by eight people at Nintendo EAD (which is pretty amazing). Retro just remade the already existing levels for the 3DS - and it seems they just needed to finish the job that was already started at EAD. That's a handful of level designers for a couple of months at best, nothing more.

wsippel · Dec 14, 2011

DCKing said:
NST has been very quiet lately, so I think there's a good chance that they're actually doing it.

That or Project H.A.M.M.E.R. is back.

It'd be a good showcase for showing of the Wii U's advanced shading capabilities, and it would probably work well with Upad's/Wiimotes motion sensors.

I kinda think NST pretty much stopped developing games altogether. Looks like most of the creative staff left and they're now doing what their name implied all along: Technology development. SDK and engine stuff.

Yka · Dec 14, 2011

DCKing said:
NST has been very quiet lately, so I think there's a good chance that they're actually doing it.

That or Project H.A.M.M.E.R. is back.

It'd be a good showcase for showing of the Wii U's advanced shading capabilities, and it would probably work well with Upad's/Wiimotes motion sensors.

I remember reading somewhere (most probably here) that NST dismantled their console development team (Wave Race: Blue Storm and 1080 Avalanche) after Project H.A.M.M.E.R. got cancelled and only the handheld development team is left (Mario vs. Donkey Kong series).

If some studio in North America is doing new F-Zero or Wave Race for WiiU or 3DS, it's Monster Games (Excite Truck, Excitebots, Excitebike: World Rally and Pilotwings Resort).

MDX · Dec 14, 2011

Dascu said:
A new IP would be nice, right guys?

Yes, its important for new series to be introduced in the early stages of WiiU's life.
We have seen the successes of having three or more series of an IP:
GoW, Halo, Mass Effect, CoD, etc. in a console's lifespan.
Developers got a chance to push the console's power with each sequel, and build upon its name to create a popular franchise.

Consider the sequels on the Wii:

The successful ones, which unfortunately only produced one sequel:
Galaxy 1 & 2.
Wiifit 1 & 2.
WiiSports 1 & 2.
There was also on only Conduit & Conduit 2

And then we get these weird situations where the follow up game is so different than the original:
Excitetruck & Ecxcitebots
RedSteel & RedSteel 2
One could also include Zelda TP & Zelda SS as an example.

Those examples would not really help attract PS360 gamers that Nintendo is going for with the WiiU. Hopefully, third parties this time around will pick up Nintendo's slack in this regard. But I maintain, that Nintendo needs to get their second parties to come up with some exclusive epic franchises.

MDX · Dec 14, 2011

Yka said:
I remember reading somewhere (most probably here) that NST dismantled their console development team (Wave Race: Blue Storm and 1080 Avalanche) after Project H.A.M.M.E.R. got cancelled and only the handheld development team is left (Mario vs. Donkey Kong series).

If some studio in North America is doing new F-Zero or Wave Race for WiiU or 3DS, it's Monster Games (Excite Truck, Excitebots, Excitebike: World Rally and Pilotwings Resort).

Yes I agree, and they deserve it.

Retro should be doing for the WiiU what
Epic and Bungy have done for the 360
or
Naughty Dog has done for the PS3

EricDiesel · Dec 14, 2011

I really do love Bungy's Heylow series. I agree that Rettro should do a similar kind of trilogy for We You.

But seriously, I do hope Retro expands and Nintendo makes better use of them on Wii U. Big name ports are good, but they need a stronger 1st party offering for people that aren't into Kirby, Mario, and Donkey Kong. No offense to DKCR fans, but I think Retro's talents could be better used elsewhere, to be honest.

Shikamaru Ninja · Dec 14, 2011

Caramello said:
They did most of the tracks, you make it seem like they a bit of help with the art. Of course it didn't take their entire team, the leader of the Mario Kart team at Retro said he left development late to work on other projects. Go read Iwata Asks.

Besides, you said Retro is not for a racing game when they've just done a superb job on one. Retro is for anything.

I mentioned this in another thread. But they did not do "most of the tracks". Read the Iwata's Ask carefully. All the courses your Kart touches are EAD designed courses. The environments of the classic tracks were redone by Retro, the environments of the new tracks were done by EAD although it mentions the Retro concept artists did inspire some of the new environments done in Japan. Retro also helped with the animation and some character models.

In essence. Retro Studios assisted in the environment, modeling and animation. Which is exactly what Monolith did with Zelda: Skyward Swords. The programming, dungeon design / course design, music were pure in-house. This is why EAD thanks them in the special thanks as opposed to saying "co-developed". If Retro were to do most of the tracks then EAD would not have been involved, it would have been an SPD/Retro game instead. EAD's involvement means you are playing in EAD designed game.

bgassassin · Dec 14, 2011

EricDiesel said:
I really do love Bungy's Heylow series. I agree that Rettro should do a similar kind of trilogy for We You.

But seriously, I do hope Retro expands and Nintendo makes better use of them on Wii U. Big name ports are good, but they need a stronger 1st party offering for people that aren't into Kirby, Mario, and Donkey Kong. No offense to DKCR fans, but I think Retro's talents could be better used elsewhere, to be honest.

Instead of doing a shift in design philosophy, I think they could at a minimum moneyhat some exclusive new IPs from some Western devs like how we saw Blue Dragon and Last Remnant in Japan for the 360.

AzaK · Dec 14, 2011

bgassassin said:
Instead of doing a shift in design philosophy, I think they could at a minimum moneyhat some exclusive new IPs from some Western devs like how we saw Blue Dragon and Last Remnant in Japan for the 360.

Yeah, it really needs some new IP's to show it off. Nintendo are notoriously slack in this department (Adult/Core/Hardcore/dudebro/whatever IP's that is). There's gotta be some kick arse Western devs out there that would be chomping at the bit to prove themselves on the first machine of the new generation.......and of course top up their bank account!

OK, so lherre, brain_stew, any more info on specs? bg, changed your mind on anything?

bgassassin · Dec 14, 2011

AzaK said:
Yeah, it really needs some new IP's to show it off. Nintendo are notoriously slack in this department (Adult/Core/Hardcore/dudebro/whatever IP's that is).

OK, so lherre, brain_stew, any more info on specs? bg, changed your mind on anything?

I'm puzzled why Nintendo told devs the CPU is PowerPC-based when I could not find any PowerPC CPUs that match the description of what we know about Wii U's CPU. 2-way SMT, clocked slightly higher than Xenon, etc. Nothing I saw matched that. Maybe blu knows something I couldn't find.

wsippel · Dec 14, 2011

Reading a bit more about this, the out-of-core concept has me intrigued. As far as I can tell, it's basically the polar opposite of tessellation: Instead of using low poly models and adding polygons using interpolation, you use extremely detailed geometry, far more detailed than any system could handle, and have a (hopefully) extremely efficient algorithm in place that filters out only significant vertices of an object based on factors like visibility, resolution and relevance and builds new models dynamically from those on the fly. That approach seems far more sound in the end for a variety of reasons.

BurntPork · Dec 14, 2011

bgassassin said:
I'm puzzled why Nintendo told devs the CPU is PowerPC-based when I could not find any PowerPC CPUs that match the description of what we know about Wii U's CPU. 2-way SMT, clocked slightly higher than Xenon, etc. Nothing I saw matched that. Maybe blu knows something I couldn't find.

A higher-clocked Xenon fits that description...

AzaK · Dec 15, 2011

bgassassin said:
I'm puzzled why Nintendo told devs the CPU is PowerPC-based when I could not find any PowerPC CPUs that match the description of what we know about Wii U's CPU. 2-way SMT, clocked slightly higher than Xenon, etc. Nothing I saw matched that. Maybe blu knows something I couldn't find.

OK, did I miss something, or has my brain just wiped some part of it's memory? When did Nintendo say it was a PowerPC? I thought Power7 was always what it was?

wsippel said:
Reading a bit more about this, the out-of-core concept has me intrigued. As far as I can tell, it's basically the polar opposite of tessellation: Instead of using low poly models and adding polygons using interpolation, you use extremely detailed geometry, far more detailed than any system could handle, and have a (hopefully) extremely efficient algorithm in place that filters out only significant vertices of an object based on factors like visibility, resolution and relevance and builds new models dynamically from those on the fly. That approach seems far more sound in the end for a variety of reasons.

And where did this out-of-core thing appear from? I must have missed a ream of posts amongst all the talk about launch titles......OK here it is.

TheExplodingHead · Dec 15, 2011

BurntPork said:
A higher-clocked Xenon fits that description...

How much higher do you really think they could clock it before a totally different design becomes more realistic?

bgassassin · Dec 15, 2011

*will check into out-of-core later*

BurntPork said:
A higher-clocked Xenon fits that description...

From what I've seen IBM considers Cell a different line from POWER and PowerPC, and Xenon is classified as a Cell chip if I remember correctly.

AzaK said:
OK, did I miss something, or has my brain just wiped some part of it's memory? When did Nintendo say it was a PowerPC? I thought Power7 was always what it was?

That actually goes back to when the leaks began to happen that I've been able to confirm through other ways. What the target specs apparently given to devs said Tri-core PowerPC.

Azure J · Dec 15, 2011

bgassassin said:
That actually goes back to when the leaks began to happen that I've been able to confirm through other ways. What the target specs apparently given to devs said Tri-core PowerPC.

Care to share your trail of breadcrumbs here? I'm bored and always up to see more of the big picture.

bgassassin · Dec 15, 2011

AzureJericho said:
Care to share your trail of breadcrumbs here? I'm bored and always up to see more of the big picture.

I already vacuumed them up. >_>

IceDoesntHelp · Dec 15, 2011

bgassassin said:
I already vacuumed them up. >_>

Why would you do such a thing, don't you want mice?

wsippel · Dec 15, 2011

AzaK said:
And where did this out-of-core thing appear from? I must have missed a ream of posts amongst all the talk about launch titles......OK here it is.

Yeah, that was about the same guy. I assume it means "open world" because that's the most obvious implementation (and it's what Bernardin used to be working on with Crusta and Google Earth), but now I wonder if the technology couldn't be used for other stuff like character models as well.

sarusama · Dec 15, 2011

wsippel said:
Reading a bit more about this, the out-of-core concept has me intrigued. As far as I can tell, it's basically the polar opposite of tessellation: Instead of using low poly models and adding polygons using interpolation, you use extremely detailed geometry, far more detailed than any system could handle, and have a (hopefully) extremely efficient algorithm in place that filters out only significant vertices of an object based on factors like visibility, resolution and relevance and builds new models dynamically from those on the fly. That approach seems far more sound in the end for a variety of reasons.

Would you care to elaborate on some of these reasons? Out-of-core can be a fancy buzzword (remember NURBS from the 90s).

As an aside, if you were to be technical about it, any game is already "out-of-core": you have all your game and level data on slow mass-storage devices (i.e., game disc) and you load appropriate parts into the console's tiny main memory for processing.

sfried · Dec 15, 2011

Something about Retro guys hiring out-of-core expert, according to wsippel.

Is this the only thing I've missed (that's important) so far? What's this talk about the CPU being clocked higher than the Xenon? The CPU finally have some leaked specs?

Thraktor · Dec 15, 2011

bgassassin said:
I'm puzzled why Nintendo told devs the CPU is PowerPC-based when I could not find any PowerPC CPUs that match the description of what we know about Wii U's CPU. 2-way SMT, clocked slightly higher than Xenon, etc. Nothing I saw matched that. Maybe blu knows something I couldn't find.

A CPU being PowerPC-based just means it uses the PowerPC instruction set, which includes everything from old G3 Mac processors, to the Wii, XBox360 and PS3's processors, and IBM's more recent Power6 and Power7 processors as well. It's important to realize, though, that console processors these days are generally custom designs, although usually based on an existing processor. Official news thus far, such as the reference to Watson, lots of eDRAM, Wii BC, etc., points towards Wii U's CPU being a derivative of the Power7 architecture. However, given that the Power7 is a large, expensive, power-hungry 8-core monster of a server chip, we can expect that there will be some quite substantial modifications to make the new design suitable for a console.

Another factor worth taking into account is that it's quite likely that the processor wasn't ready for early dev-kits, and in that case many of the rumours we've been hearing have been based on stand-in hardware. In fact, its entirely possible that they actually used an XBox360 CPU, or a modified version thereof, in the original dev-kits, which would explain the initial rumours about the similarity between the two chips.

bgassassin said:
From what I've seen IBM considers Cell a different line from POWER and PowerPC, and Xenon is classified as a Cell chip if I remember correctly.

Cell and Xenon are both PowerPC processors, but are not part of IBM's POWER line (e.g. POWER5, POWER6, POWER7, etc.). It can be a bit of a confusing distinction, especially if, like me, you avoid IBM's ugly POWER capitalization for it's line. The Xenon is essentially 3 Cell PPEs stuck together.

AzaK · Dec 15, 2011

wsippel said:
Yeah, that was about the same guy. I assume it means "open world" because that's the most obvious implementation (and it's what Bernardin used to be working on with Crusta and Google Earth), but now I wonder if the technology couldn't be used for other stuff like character models as well.

Yeah, looking at some info on out-of-core it's just a term that generally means "not having everything in memory at once". With that definition most open world games probably are out-of-core already.

I guess for taking high-res models and making them lower res when needed it's more like a dynamic LoD algorithm. Maybe something like this although that one produces discrete LoD's as opposed to infinite.

bgassassin · Dec 15, 2011

sfried said:
Is this the only thing I've missed (that's important) so far? What's this talk about the CPU being clocked higher than the Xenon? The CPU finally have some leaked specs?

The CPU clock is from one of the old Cafe rumors. My current issue (well started a few weeks ago) is that devs have been told to expect something that I've not been able to find a foundation to.

IceDoesntHelp said:
Why would you do such a thing, don't you want mice?

No way. Little boogers would never leave if I didn't do that.

AzaK · Dec 15, 2011

sarusama said:
Would you care to elaborate on some of these reasons? Out-of-core can be a fancy buzzword (remember NURBS from the 90s).

Not having ever developed with tessellation, I would assume one of the benefits is that the highest resolution model accurately reflects what the artist made. Whereas with tesselation it goes the other way. It might end up looking a little deformed if it "upped the resolution" and rounded out a face or something unexpected. The downside of course would be memory consumption for vertices.

That said, it might not be an issue.

Gaborn · Dec 15, 2011

ShockingAlberto said:
Fisher-Price seems to be the en vogue insult this season.

I'm going to pioneer "Retarded Spaceship" for the Xbox 3 based off a hunch.

I think it's because people have been smacked down when they claim "it looks so uncomfortable" since EVERYONE who has held it said it was comfortable. So they attack the appearance.

wsippel · Dec 15, 2011

sarusama said:
Would you care to elaborate on some of these reasons? Out-of-core can be a fancy buzzword (remember NURBS from the 90s).

As an aside, if you were to be technical about it, any game is already "out-of-core": you have all your game and level data on slow mass-storage devices (i.e., game disc) and you load appropriate parts into the console's tiny main memory for processing.

But you usually load complete parts, not dynamically generate parts from gigantic assets. Anyway, the reason this approach seems superior is kinda obvious I guess? It's hard to do in text form, but I'll try. Let's asume you have a single curve that looks like this: "(0; 0), (1; 0.5), (2; 1), (3; 0.5), (4; 0), (5; -0.5), (6; -1), (7; -0.5), (8;0)" - but the whole thing has to fit into memory, and you only have room for two coordinates. You'll probably only store "(0; 0), (8; 0)". You can tessalte this all you want, it'll stay flat, no matter which part of said curve you focus on. With out-of-core, you store the whole thing as is, and pull two coordinates at a time as needed to build the line on the fly. If the first vertex isn't in the viewport, you pull the second and the last vertex to build your curve/ line ((1; 0.5), (8, 0)). You keep every single detail.

ozfunghi · Dec 15, 2011

AzaK said:
Not having ever developed with tessellation, I would assume one of the benefits is that the highest resolution model accurately reflects what the artist made. Whereas with tesselation it goes the other way. It might end up looking a little deformed if it "upped the resolution" and rounded out a face or something.

It should also help speed up development i would think.

AzaK · Dec 15, 2011

bgassassin said:
The CPU clock is from one of the old Cafe rumors. My current issue (well started a few weeks ago) is that devs have been told to expect something that I've not been able to find a foundation to.

I guess my question would then be....would a PowerPC CPU be better or worse, assuming it could hit the rumoured specs?

bgassassin · Dec 15, 2011

^ Well Thraktor cleared it up for me so that would still lead me to believe the CPU is POWER7-based.

Thraktor said:
A CPU being PowerPC-based just means it uses the PowerPC instruction set, which includes everything from old G3 Mac processors, to the Wii, XBox360 and PS3's processors, and IBM's more recent Power6 and Power7 processors as well. It's important to realize, though, that console processors these days are generally custom designs, although usually based on an existing processor. Official news thus far, such as the reference to Watson, lots of eDRAM, Wii BC, etc., points towards Wii U's CPU being a derivative of the Power7 architecture. However, given that the Power7 is a large, expensive, power-hungry 8-core monster of a server chip, we can expect that there will be some quite substantial modifications to make the new design suitable for a console.

Another factor worth taking into account is that it's quite likely that the processor wasn't ready for early dev-kits, and in that case many of the rumours we've been hearing have been based on stand-in hardware. In fact, its entirely possible that they actually used an XBox360 CPU, or a modified version thereof, in the original dev-kits, which would explain the initial rumours about the similarity between the two chips.

That was the conclusion I was drawing based on things I read, but wasn't sure. Thanks for the confirmation.

I've felt for awhile that they will use three POWER7 cores modified for gaming, just like Xenon used modified three Cell PPEs.

And likewise I definitely don't believe the CPU was ready either and that they may have used a modified Xenon early on.

bgassassin · Dec 15, 2011

Thraktor said:
Cell and Xenon are both PowerPC processors, but are not part of IBM's POWER line (e.g. POWER5, POWER6, POWER7, etc.). It can be a bit of a confusing distinction, especially if, like me, you avoid IBM's ugly POWER capitalization for it's line. The Xenon is essentially 3 Cell PPEs stuck together.

Actually I've seen quite a few references to PowerPC, POWER, and Cell being considered as three separate lines of chips.

BurntPork · Dec 15, 2011

TheExplodingHead said:
How much higher do you really think they could clock it before a totally different design becomes more realistic?

Well, according to ~~Ubisoft~~ 01net, the clock was only slightly higher.

bgassassin said:
From what I've seen IBM considers Cell a different line from POWER and PowerPC, and Xenon is classified as a Cell chip if I remember correctly.

Good point.

sarusama · Dec 15, 2011

AzaK said:
It might end up looking a little deformed if it "upped the resolution" and rounded out a face or something unexpected. The downside of course would be memory consumption for vertices.

First, memory consumption is a huge challenge for real-time image synthesis. Remember your back up is very slow (disc) and your memory is small (1GB). Having explicit data is expensive.

Second, It all depends on how assets are generated. I would wager that a lot of techniques used to generate assets these days are subdivision based. A simple example is to use a compressed normal map to store surface detail then combine that with on-the-fly subdivision to extrude dynamically generated vertices correspondingly. That dramatically cuts down on bandwidth and storage, of course at with the tradeoff of higher compute time.

Third, results of subdivision cannot be unexpected. The algorithms used are perfectly deterministic and the end-result can be visualized during asset generation.

wsippel said:
But you usually load complete parts, not dynamically generate parts from gigantic assets. Anyway, the reason this approach seems superior is kinda obvious I guess? It's hard to do in text form, but I'll try. Let's asume you have a single curve that looks like this: "(0; 0), (1; 0.5), (2; 1), (3; 0.5), (4; 0), (5; -0.5), (6; -1), (7; -0.5), (8;0)" - but the whole thing has to fit into memory, and you only have room for two coordinates. You'll probably only store "(0; 0), (8; 0)". You can tessalte this all you want, it'll stay flat, no matter which part of said curve you focus on. With out-of-core, you store the whole thing as is, and pull two coordinates at a time as needed to build the line on the fly. If the first vertex isn't in the viewport, you pull the second and the last vertex to build your curve/ line ((1; 0.5), (8, 0)). You keep every single detail.

Ah, but you're assuming that you can only store the original data. Typically, you'd store some form of parametric patch representation that reconstructs (an approximation to) the original surface.

Yes, you do have a valid point in that you may not be able to reconstruct the surface perfectly, but in your example you're also stuck showing only 2 vertices. If you zoom out such that you could see more, you wouldn't be able to show some parts. Reconstruction would not give you the perfect answer, but it'll be better than nothing. Usually you can work around the imperfection by generating assets a certain way, but you can't get around the hardware limitation that your disc is slow and your main memory small. If all your compute units are sitting there idling while waiting for stuff to come in from memory, it makes more sense to have them compute the missing data instead.

Thraktor · Dec 15, 2011

bgassassin said:
That was the conclusion I was drawing based on things I read, but wasn't sure. Thanks for the confirmation.

I've felt for awhile that they will use three POWER7 cores modified for gaming, just like Xenon used modified three Cell PPEs.

And likewise I definitely don't believe the CPU was ready either and that they may have used a modified Xenon early on.

I can't say I'm a huge fan of the 3-core theory. It seems to stem from early comparisons with the XBox360's CPU, but that was pretty much the only 3-core CPU ever mass-produced, 3-core chips are an incredibly obscure design. In particular, looking at the Power7 architecture, 3-core doesn't really make sense. If you look at the actual physical design of the Power7, you'll notice that much of the design is based on the positioning of the cores relative to the eDRAM L3 cache, providing each core with low latency access to parts of the L3 cache which are physically near it. Any attempt to turn the Power7 into a 3-core would result in a rather awkward design. My guess is that we'd be looking at something akin to a Power7 chopped in half and slimmed down a bit; 4 cores, 2 way SMT, about 2.8Ghz, 10-12MB eDRAM, some execution units removed from the cores, etc.

bgassassin · Dec 15, 2011

Thraktor said:
I can't say I'm a huge fan of the 3-core theory. It seems to stem from early comparisons with the XBox360's CPU, but that was pretty much the only 3-core CPU ever mass-produced, 3-core chips are an incredibly obscure design. In particular, looking at the Power7 architecture, 3-core doesn't really make sense. If you look at the actual physical design of the Power7, you'll notice that much of the design is based on the positioning of the cores relative to the eDRAM L3 cache, providing each core with low latency access to parts of the L3 cache which are physically near it. Any attempt to turn the Power7 into a 3-core would result in a very awkward design. My guess is that we'd be looking at something akin to a Power7 chopped in half and slimmed down a bit; 4 cores, 2 way SMT, about 2.8Ghz, 10-12MB eDRAM, some execution units removed from the cores, etc.

That actually stems from Nintendo target specs, so it's not really a theory. Though I won't complain if they did add a fourth. (Doubt they will though.)

I think you're missing what I was saying. IBM would take three modified POWER7 cores and make a chip from the ground up just like they did with Xenon. In other words just looking at a POWER7 chip for what Wii U's CPU can be would be as irrelevant as looking at Cell for Xenon.

Also it has, or will have, 3MB of L2 Cache (asymmetrically split) and 32MB of eMemory.

Thraktor · Dec 15, 2011

bgassassin said:
That actually stems from Nintendo target specs, so it's not really a theory. Though I won't complain if they did add a fourth. (Doubt they will though.)

I think you're missing what I was saying. IBM would take three modified POWER7 cores and make a chip from the ground up just like they did with Xenon. In other words just looking at a POWER7 chip for what Wii U's CPU can be would be as irrelevant as looking at Cell for Xenon.

Also it has, or will have, 3MB of L2 Cache (asymmetrically split) and 32MB of eMemory.

Hmm, I've been out of the loop on Wii U news for a while, where have the target specs come from?

Taking three modified Power7 cores and building a chip around them is a possibility, but if you're working on a cache-heavy design you're just going to end up with something that looks a lot like the Power7. One possibility is that the chips physically have 4 cores, but one is disabled to increase yields, like on the Cell.

Using 32MB of L3 eDRAM cache sounds a bit strange, given that's the same amount as on the full 8-core Power7, but it's not out of the realm of possibility. Similarly with the 3MB of L2 cache; the Power7 has just 256kB per core, but increased amounts aren't unreasonable.

Buddha Beam · Dec 15, 2011

BY2K said:
Lights deems out, a trailer starts.

The screen is black, all you can hear is the faint sound of engine's roar with the flash of a few racing cars passing by, but it's too blurry and fast to tell exactly what they are.

Produced by:

Another shot of the racing cars, engines blasting.

Developed by:

We then get a clear shot of the Blue Falcon along with the other 3 original racers not far behind (Golden Fox, Wild Goose and the Fire Stingray) with this music fading in.

Another black screen with the (tentative) title: F-Zero HD

If there's going to be an F Zero game, especially if it's made by Retro, than it needs to be a Captain Falcon beat 'em up spin off.

AzaK · Dec 15, 2011

bgassassin said:
That actually stems from Nintendo target specs, so it's not really a theory. Though I won't complain if they did add a fourth. (Doubt they will though.)

Could it be a "3DS" type of affair? That is, devs can expect to use 3 cores, but the OS itself will use one? Maybe even allow it to be used later on down the track, or nearer to release?

bgassassin · Dec 15, 2011

^ Well they didn't make a fourth core on Xenon and Nintendo seems to be copying/improving on that.

Thraktor said:
Hmm, I've been out of the loop on Wii U news for a while, where have the target specs come from?

Taking three modified Power7 cores and building a chip around them is a possibility, but if you're working on a cache-heavy design you're just going to end up with something that looks a lot like the Power7. One possibility is that the chips physically have 4 cores, but one is disabled to increase yields, like on the Cell.

Using 32MB of L3 eDRAM cache sounds a bit strange, given that's the same amount as on the full 8-core Power7, but it's not out of the realm of possibility. Similarly with the 3MB of L2 cache; the Power7 has just 256kB per core, but increased amounts aren't unreasonable.

Multiple places all saying the same thing so for me at least it's too consistent to argue against. We also know that it has 2-way SMT. And we learned recently that one of the cores acts like a "master" core to the other two.

The 32MB is most likely on an MCM with the GPU like Hollywood and Xenos. I think it's 1T-SRAM.

As for the 3MB of L2 cache, the PowerPC A2 PowerEN has 8MB of L2 cache (Blue Gene/Q as 32MB of L2 cache) that uses the same eDRAM as the L3 cache in POWER7 so the increase isn't an issue due to the density of IBM's eDRAM. From what I've read it's 2.1mm2/MByte. They can place a pretty big amount of it on a chip. Going back to the master core, it also has more cache than the other two cores (the asymmetrical cache I was referring to) so I'm thinking it breaks down like 1.5MB/768KB/768KB. Some of also have a hypothesis where that core is a 4-way SMT core with two for gaming and two for OS.

majortom1981 · Dec 15, 2011

Dont forget about the powerpc 470 processors. They are ibms embeded processors. They can be configured to the specs nintendo wants but are not necessarily power 7 cpus.

bgassassin · Dec 15, 2011

majortom1981 said:
Dont forget about the powerpc 470 processors. They are ibms embeded processors. They can be configured to the specs nintendo wants but are not necessarily power 7 cpus.

Apparently those chips are comparable to an ARM chip and don't have SMT. I'd assume they could modify the core to add it, but that sounds like more work. But I won't rule it completely out due to how vague IBM's PR was on the matter.

BurntPork · Dec 15, 2011

bgassassin said:
Apparently those chips are comparable to an ARM chip and don't have SMT. I'd assume they could modify the core to add it, but that sounds like more work. But I won't rule it completely out due to how vague IBM's PR was on the matter.

At least IBM's wasn't as vague as AMD's.

bgassassin · Dec 15, 2011

Sorry. When I said PR I didn't mean press release, but public relations. The "Watson" comment on its own is pretty vague.

BurntPork · Dec 15, 2011

bgassassin said:
Sorry. When I said PR I didn't mean press release, but public relations. The "Watson" comment on its own is pretty vague.

That changes nothing.

herzogzwei1989 · Dec 15, 2011

I just hope that Wii U's CPU cores are beefier than the PPEs in Xenon and CELL.

Shin Johnpv · Dec 15, 2011

Is it still a possibility that it's a 4 core chip, and one is just completely dedicated to the OS? I know llhere (spelling?) has talked about it just being 3 cores, but could they only be talking about the 3 available to the gaming side of things in the dev kits and in the manuals that came with them?

I don't know just throwing another idea out there.

*edit* Maybe not, now I think I recall llhere saying something about that, but fuck 15 hour work days have killed my memory right now.

bgassassin · Dec 15, 2011

Shin Johnpv said:
Is it still a possibility that it's a 4 core chip, and one is just completely dedicated to the OS? I know llhere (spelling?) has talked about it just being 3 cores, but could they only be talking about the 3 available to the gaming side of things in the dev kits and in the manuals that came with them?

I don't know just throwing another idea out there.

*edit* Maybe not, now I think I recall llhere saying something about that, but fuck 15 hour work days have killed my memory right now.

Be careful. I hope you haven't been doing that for too many days straight. It's been a year since I reduced my work schedule from looking like that and I still have problems with memory, speech, and writing/typing. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Everything seemed pretty clear about three cores. Considering what we know I would assume if the intent was a fourth core for OS they would have told devs that plan.

blu · Dec 15, 2011

I'll just reiterate my original position that the OOE/in-order-ness of the chip will tell us a lot about its origins. Until then we know what the PRs and sound logic have told us - it's of the power/ppc lineage.

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