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Wii U Speculation Thread of Brains Beware: Wii U Re-Unveiling At E3 2012

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BurntPork

Banned
Would you stop saying that? This has only ever been true for the Wii, and that's not the only console Nintendo has made.

I think that you completely misunderstood what I meant by "unproven technology." I don't mean that they always use old parts. What mean is that... Well, I'm not sure how to explain it. I didn't mean that they're always behind, though.
 

BurntPork

Banned
Revised my final hardware prediction:

Final hardware should have a 3-core PPC at 2.72 Ghz with assymetric cache, 32MB of eDRAM, 680 SPU GPU 560Mhz RV770 (heavily modified to be fully compliant with the latest OpenGL feauture set), 1.5GB of GDDR3 with an extra wide bus (what was 4-stream thing called?).

That's completely impossible. Choose either 640 or 720.
 
Looking at how Gears3, Goldeneye, Halo, COD, Rayman and many other 3rd party games actually give players full fledged offline MP options, I'd say that recently this trend of online only games has somewhat stopped.
It hasn't stopped entirely, anyway its not so important.

Bare in mind that when i made the comment i was adressing AzureJericho about a 6 player local game. At somer point the norm was 4 locally, It got upgrade with LAN support which now a days it has been dropped. Now it goes between 2/4 players.

The point still remains not much 3rd parties will invest valuable time in local, the gross of those energies go online. Thankfully Nintendo likes the local type multiplayer.
And after recently playing Zelda Four Swords, Mario Kart DS and Starfox in a bar with 2 buddies, while drinking beer and eating chili, there is simply no better way to play MP than locally.
Not much point in repeating this, i think we all agree local is the best multiplayer experience.

Wii U has immense potential to set a new standard for local MP games. Game Masters, asymetrical MP... L4D with a real person director. Now if only developers are actually willing to put these ideas to work.
Exactly, think of the time investment. Next round you'll have Devs supporting 3 home platforms yet again. Now in the very same platform they'll have multiple control interfaces available and even more different controllers across platforms.
 

DCKing

Member
AFAIK, the only DirectX based console is the DirectX Box.
Whenever we talk about DirectX, we talk about which DirectX specification the hardware conforms to. The Wii U GPU must conform to DirectX 11, not use it literally. We're not talking about software.
 
It hasn't stopped entirely, anyway its not so important.

Bare in mind that when i made the comment i was adressing AzureJericho about a 6 player local game. At somer point the norm was 4 locally, It got upgrade with LAN support which now a days it has been dropped. Now it goes between 2/4 players.

The point still remains not much 3rd parties will invest valuable time in local, the gross of those energies go online. Thankfully Nintendo likes the local type multiplayer.

Not much point in repeating this, i think we all agree local is the best multiplayer experience.


Exactly, think of the time investment. Next round you'll have Devs supporting 3 home platforms yet again. Now in the very same platform they'll have multiple control interfaces available and even more different controllers across platforms.


Well you could argue that by incorporating a local MP option they can reach audiences with DLC that don't want to play online (quite a huge audience as well), but are willing to pay for more content to be played locally. Games like Just Dance come to mind.

I think especially with games like Gears, L4D, or Little Big Planet it has been proven that local MP games are worth the investment and post launch DLC model. Of course it also depends on what a developer wants to focus on. Cod, Gears or LBP are appropriately designed to be social games, wether online or offline, so it makes sense for them, but then you have games like BF3 or Assassins Creed who would run into huge problems with their engines when trying to do offline splitscreen stuff. (also who would buy 2 online passes)

I'd say that the key to get the best monetization out of your product is to leave the customer to decide how he wants to play and expand the content. There is nothing worse than a game that doesn't feature offline MP just to force players to populate the online servers. Look at Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. I bought every Map Pack to play the coop campaign in splitscreen with my buddies.
 
What do we really know? Could you please sum it up a little bit about the specs? This thread is enormous. And who is the guy who knows the optimistic guy? I haven´t read to many optimistic comments here for a while ;)

The optimistic guy is on a different board. Combining everything I've heard we're looking at something like this for the early alpha kit.

3.5Ghz tri-core CPU w/3MB of L2 cache
2+GB of GDDR3 memory
500Mhz GPU w/640 or 800 ALUs and 32MB of some type of embedded memory (DRAM or 1T-SRAM)

Now again this would be only for the alpha kit. The dev kit would need more memory than the final console for debugging so we're looking at the final having at least 1GB of memory. I'm currently expecting 1.5GB of GDDR5. Because of Nintendo's history I'm expecting the CPU to be an (out-of-order) processor. The clock speed is up for debate. I think it will be over 3Ghz, but it's just as believable if it's under and runs more instructions per cycle.

I believe that 500Mhz number is from when the kits were underclocked for stability. We don't know what they run out now as it has been said the clock is higher now. The ALU count in the dev kit is based on the multiple rumors of the early dev kit. Based on what lherre said there was only maybe one thing on their target specs that would indicate the final GPU would be similar to an R700 (or RV770 specifically). We already know it's capable of one or two things that the R700 wasn't.

We had recent confirmation of the amount of eDRAM the console will have. But that doesn't mean the kits already have this so there is a possibility that the E3 demos didn't have this available when they were made.

So on paper it's already more powerful than the PS360. The only real question that should be up for debate is how close it will be to PS4 and Xbox3.
 

MDX

Member
Whenever we talk about DirectX, we talk about which DirectX specification the hardware conforms to. The Wii U GPU must conform to DirectX 11, not use it literally. We're not talking about software.

Why must the WiiU GPU conform to DirectX 11?
Its supposed to be a custom made or not?

Which DirectX version did Wii's Hollywood conform to?
 

Azure J

Member
I'm honestly very eager to see more of Nintendo's online plans especially regarding infrastructure and DLC methods right now. I think if I had to list what it is I'm looking out for news-wise as per some hype-o-meter:

- 1st Party Game announcements
- 3rd Party Game Announcements
- Online handling and/or partnerships
- Updated dev kit leaks

I think that you completely misunderstood what I meant by "unproven technology." I don't mean that they always use old parts. What mean is that... Well, I'm not sure how to explain it. I didn't mean that they're always behind, though.

I got what you mean, it's even explained by Iwata & Nintendo in general as being a part of Gunpei Yokoi's theory of revitalizing technologies that didn't find usefulness in a gaming application at a previous time. It's more like "recycling" what was there than using what's degraded/depreciated/old.


Revised my final hardware prediction:

Final hardware should have a 3-core PPC at 2.72 Ghz with assymetric cache, 32MB of eDRAM, 680 SPU GPU 560Mhz RV770 (heavily modified to be fully compliant with the latest OpenGL feauture set), 1.5GB of GDDR3 with an extra wide bus (what was 4-stream thing called?).

I want to take a shot at this, but there's still so many randoms to account for imo:

- How much more efficient is Power 7 as a processor to the Xenos part/offspring/whatever it is in the devkits currently that is running at a rumored 3.5GHz? Would a lower clock speed part have comparable or better performance?

- GPU stuff is simpler. I feel like 640 - 800 SPUs is the range we should focus on. This is based on the RV770LE namedrop in the alpha kit around E3 time and the only two cards in the R700 generation better than itself (4850 & 4870) that aren't the 4890, the first and only processor mentioned explicitly by game watch (?) as not being the base design. Of course there's always shenanigans to account for (in this case, the working towards a SoC design, again strongly hinted at by wsippel & brain_stew's hints and mutual speculation).

With that all said, my guesstimate is mostly the same as Shanadeus' except with a note that SPUs can be between 640 & 800, and RAM is 1.5 - 2GB GDDR3. Even with this being said, I would not be surprised to see the system with GDDR5, or a higher CPU clock speed. GPU clock tops out at 600MHz no matter what though.
 

blu

Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
Why must the WiiU GPU conform to DirectX 11?
Its supposed to be a custom made or not?

Which DirectX version did Wii's Hollywood conform to?
Don't take 'conform' literally. It's just a way to quantize GPU featuresets in a convenient way.

Flipper/Hollywood would be officially DX7. But that's absolutely irrelevant, as Hollywood would smoke most GPUs from that era, perhaps short of GeForce2 GTS.
 
The optimistic guy is on a different board. Combining everything I've heard we're looking at something like this for the early alpha kit.

3.5Ghz tri-core CPU w/3MB of L2 cache
2+GB of GDDR3 memory
500Mhz GPU w/640 or 800 ALUs and 32MB of some type of embedded memory (DRAM or 1T-SRAM)
That's not being optimistic, the guy is downright a fucking dreamer. I find it hard to believe you'll get those specs from Nintendo. Even less in a box of that size. This doesn't mean it would be technically impossible to have that hardware inside that small box, is just that Nintendo won't invest in doing it.
 

Azure J

Member
By optimistic guy, are we talking about the guy who thinks a 6850 will fit in the casing of a Wii U as per E3? :p

That was a fun read. :lol
 

BurntPork

Banned
That's not being optimistic, the guy is downright a fucking dreamer. I find it hard to believe you'll get those specs from Nintendo. Even less in a box of that size. This doesn't mean it would be technically impossible to have that hardware inside that small box, is just that Nintendo won't invest in doing it.

Keep in mind that the memory part is pretty much confirmed via a dev here, but that's the amount in the dev kit and the actual unit will have half that.

EDIT: Oh, wait, you mean someone else.

By optimistic guy, are we talking about the guy who thinks a 6850 will fit in the casing of a Wii U as per E3? :p

That was a fun read. :lol

Where? Show me.
 
Keep in mind that the memory part is pretty much confirmed via a dev here, but that's the amount in the dev kit and the actual unit will have half that.
Sadly that's more in line with reality. I mean we all know that Nintendo won't stack up in processing against the other 2, but having 2 GB in there would have made things more smooth and better for everyone involved in development.
 

BurntPork

Banned
Sadly that's more in line with reality. I mean we all know that Nintendo won't stack up in processing against the other 2, but having 2 GB in there would have made things more smooth and better for everyone involved in development.

Oh, so you don't mean someone else. What are you expecting, then?
 
That's not being optimistic, the guy is downright a fucking dreamer. I find it hard to believe you'll get those specs from Nintendo. Even less in a box of that size. This doesn't mean it would be technically impossible to have that hardware inside that small box, is just that Nintendo won't invest in doing it.

I think you misread my post. Those are the combined specs from what we know about the alpha kit. These are the bits and pieces we've heard over the months and I'm just putting them together.

The optimistic person I'm talking about has indicated other things like the controller having analog triggers.

- How much more efficient is Power 7 as a processor to the Xenos part/offspring/whatever it is in the devkits currently that is running at a rumored 3.5GHz? Would a lower clock speed part have comparable or better performance?

- GPU stuff is simpler. I feel like 640 - 800 SPUs is the range we should focus on. This is based on the RV770LE namedrop in the alpha kit around E3 time and the only two cards in the R700 generation better than itself (4850 & 4870) and not the 4890. Of course there's always shenanigans to account for (in this case, the working towards a SoC design, again strongly hinted at by wsippel & brain_stew's hints and mutual speculation).

With that all said, my guesstimate is mostly the same as Shanadeus' except with a note that SPUs can be between 640 & 800, and RAM is 1.5 - 2GB GDDR3. Even with this being said, I would not be surprised to see the system with GDDR5, or a higher CPU clock speed. GPU clock tops out at 600MHz no matter what though.

Brain_stew's hint should be focused more on the usage of the embedded memory over the SoC possibility. Also I think you're confusing rumors. The "not a 4890" rumor was that the GPU was capable of performing beyond 1FLOP which would only leave the 4870. Then wsippel was told it was a RV770LE in the first kit. Though putting "2 and 2 together" an underclocked 4870 (based on what was told to wsippel would be on par with a 4830. Almost forgot that I do believe the clock can be higher than 600Mhz.


By optimistic guy, are we talking about the guy who thinks a 6850 will fit in the casing of a Wii U as per E3? :p

That was a fun read. :lol

Nah I'm talking about the guy from IGN boards.
 
Those are the combined specs from what we know about the alpha kit. These are the bits and pieces we've heard over the months and I'm just putting them together.

The optimistic person I'm talking about has indicated other things like the controller having analog triggers.

Nah I'm talking about the guy from IGN boards.
I understand. Can you do a transcription of what the optimistic guy said? The bolded part picked my interests because at first i couldn't believe Nintendo didn't make the 2 triggers analog. As well as i can't believe that to this day they refuse to use depressable thumbsticks :(
 

Azure J

Member
Brain_stew's hint should be focused more on the usage of the embedded memory over the SoC possibility. Also I think you're confusing rumors. The "not a 4890" rumor was that the GPU was capable of performing beyond 1FLOP which would only leave the 4870. Then wsippel was told it was a RV770LE in the first kit. Though putting "2 and 2 together" an underclocked 4870 (based on what was told to wsippel would be on par with a 4830. Almost forgot that I do believe the clock can be higher than 600Mhz.

Well damn, that's better than anything put forward to date. :D

Inner thoughts edit: Wow, how didn't I get what you meant with that linked post? Critical thinking failure right there. :p

What's your thoughts on the clocking of the CPU though? You think they can match that 3.5GHz without the system imploding on itself while the GPU is clocked at 500MHz+?
 

BurntPork

Banned
Well damn, that's better than anything put forward to date. :D

What's your thoughts on the clocking of the CPU though? You think they can match that 3.5GHz without the system imploding on itself while the GPU is clocked at 500MHz+?

I think they're using a modified Xenon for the CPU right now and that the final CPU will be OOE, allowing for a lower clock speed without a loss in performance.
 

Shiggy

Member
Am I the only person who's at the same time sad if EAD Tokyo doesn't finally work on a new franchise and who's also sad if they don't work on Mario WiiU?

smg10eupa.jpg
 

wsippel

Banned
Im not a fan of the "this > that" type of disscussion when it's not backed up with some arguments. Well you did say its cheaper.

From my point of view wsippel, there's lot more of potential uses for gameplay in a multi touch screen than in a single touch one.
Im not so sure. Multitouch is nice for devices without any other physical input and small screens. Also, as mentioned, reliability is not great at all. Dry skin? Wet hands? Well, you're fucked. The best possible option would be a combination of Wacom Cintiq and Bamboo tech, but that would make the pad more expensive than the console itself.
 

Azure J

Member
Am I the only person who's at the same time sad if EAD Tokyo doesn't finally work on a new franchise and who's also sad if they don't work on Mario WiiU?

smg10eupa.jpg

Nope, EAD Tokyo & Retro are two studios that should be allowed free reign to do whatever the fuck they want, even if I'll be sad they're not on Mario/DK (Tokyo) or Metroid/DK (Retro).
 

MDX

Member
From what I heard it currently uses a variation of OpenGL ES 2.0

So, the PS3 was using OpenGL ES 1.0 with some features of OpenGL ES 2.0.
But basically the WiiU has the advantage of a programmable pipeline over the PS3.
But what kind of advantage are we talking about?

and some of GLSL 3.x which would be for shading.


Considering OpenGL 4.2 specifications came out right after E3.
Is there a good chance it be supported by the WiiU?
 

BurntPork

Banned
Re-revised specs:

Final hardware should have a 3-core PPC at 2.1-3.5 Ghz with assymetric cache, 32MB of eDRAM, 640-800 SPU GPU 500-600Mhz RV770 (heavily modified to be fully compliant with the latest OpenGL feauture set), 1.5-2GB of GDDR3 or GDDR5 with an extra wide bus (what was 4-stream thing called?).

Worst case scenario, 2.1Ghz/640 SPU, 500 Mhz/1.5 GB.
Best case scenario, 3.5 Ghz/800 SPU, 600 Mhz/2 GB GDDR3, 1.5 GDDR5.

You think that 1.5GB is the worst case? If so, you're going to be disappointed for sure.
 

blu

Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
So, the PS3 was using OpenGL ES 1.0 with some features of OpenGL ES 2.0.
But basically the WiiU has the advantage of a programmable pipeline over the PS3.
But what kind of advantage are we talking about?
PS3's PSGL was based on ES1.x just because at the time ES2.x was not ready. PSGL is as programmable as your core ES2.x, and then some. But despite the fact PSGL was not the lowest level of programmability on the system (one can create manually command buffers to the G79), NV's Cg shader compiler was a mandatory API, whether in PSGL or in the 'to-the-metal' command buffers.
 
I understand. Can you do a transcription of what the optimistic guy said? The bolded part picked my interests because at first i couldn't believe Nintendo didn't make the 2 triggers analog. As well as i can't believe that to this day they refuse to use depressable thumbsticks :(

From the top of my head:

- Analog triggers have been added and a racing game is being designed to take advantage of them.

- The Wii U's version of Battlefield will be "at worst" (in my words) close to the PC version.

- There are going to be a decent amount of high-level FPSs during Wii U's first year.

He also said there would be more Wii U news before the end of the year, but this was before Nintendo officially announced the re-unveil. So that may have changed. There were some other things said (most of which were pretty vague). But looking at other posts here I do believe he knows someone now.

Well damn, that's better than anything put forward to date. :D

Inner thoughts edit: Wow, how didn't I get what you meant with that linked post? Critical thinking failure right there. :p

What's your thoughts on the clocking of the CPU though? You think they can match that 3.5GHz without the system imploding on itself while the GPU is clocked at 500MHz+?

When we talked about that a little while back, blu found a doc on the POWER7 and estimated the core to be ~23w. After lherre said the CPU cores have asymmetrical cache and that one is in essence a "master" core, that's made some changes in how to look at things for me at least. Originally I was thinking a modified POWER7 and threw out there the idea of two modified 476FPs, but this wouldn't work for my idea on the CPU clock. Considering Wii U's CPU being developed concurrently with POWER7, we could be looking at something built from the ground up so to speak based on the POWER7 core, but designed with two threads per core and other power saving features. I think they could cut the wattage down at least by half and maybe even less for a 20w-30w CPU.

For the GPU I don't think it's a coincidence that IBM announced the process for the CPU, but we heard nothing from AMD. I think Nintendo is waiting to see if 28nm will be available to use or not. This to me is why the clocks aren't final since Nintendo likes syncing the clocks. I'm sure they know what they want the clocks to be, they just have to see what can be accomplished. They might be seeking higher clocks on the smaller process. The 4770 is clocked at 750Mhz with 640 ALUs and is already at 80w at 40nm. It also has a die size of 137mm2.

We don't know how much the Wii case can handle considering how low-powered it was. Now we have a case that got longer, which obviously increases the surface area (in some manner) so we have that to factor in as well. I suspect that with proper cooling the case can handle up to 100w.

Considering OpenGL 4.2 specifications came out right after E3.
Is there a good chance it be supported by the WiiU?

My programming skills are very limited (an rusty on top of that), but they should, and blu can correct me if I'm wrong, be able to add extensions to their API to achieve a similar level of functionality. I would expect they would stick with some version of ES 2.0 though.
 
bgassassin: Don't forget that as for the CPU, lherre has said that there is no mention of L3 cache in the manual. Would this affect the TDP dramatically? Also, I read you mention earlier that L3 cache would be unnecessary in a console. Mind giving me some quick education as to why? Thanks for making this a fun thread, btw.

I've also been thinking about the 32 MB eDRAM, which is apparently local to the GPU if rumor is to be believed. I wonder if this is 1T-SRAM (isn't this supposedly faster than eDRAM while still maintaining the small size advantage? Has this changed at all in recent years?) It seems that this might be necessary for Wii BC. Someone mentioned that the Wii CPU cannot run code from the GDDR3 because of the latency. This makes me wonder if the Wii U CPU will be able to access the 32 MB for BC purposes, even if the bus is not super-wide. Would this be possible if the the 1T-SRAM is located on its own module as the eDRAM is on the 360?

Also wondering if a 256-bit bus for the GDDR3 is a possibility. Would it be too pricey? Assuming similar clocks, wouldn't that negate the speed advantage of GDDR5 and keep the low latency of the GDDR3? This seems like something Nintendo would like to do, especially since it does not appear that 1t-SRAM will be the main RAM pool once again this time.

Good job, everyone! My brain is fine. Keep it up! :p
 

Azure J

Member
Also wondering if a 256-bit bus for the GDDR3 is a possibility. Would it be too pricey? Assuming similar clocks, wouldn't that negate the speed advantage of GDDR5 and keep the low latency of the GDDR3? This seems like something Nintendo would like to do, especially since it does not appear that 1t-SRAM will be the main RAM pool once again this time.

This was actually brought up before and I still wonder if there's something here. It sounds like there's a massive benefit to be reaped here, but doesn't 256 bit make the board complexity something insane? Or is it heat? I seem to have forgotten what messing with the bus does overall. :/
 
@bgassassin: thanks for your answer and your thoughts. I like the tech-talk, even if we know nothing for shure. Let´s hope Nintendo pushes the little Box to the Max. I don´t think it will be 1080p for most Games, but the Nintendogames will shine in beautiful 720p grace :)
 

FyreWulff

Member
@bgassassin: thanks for your answer and your thoughts. I like the tech-talk, even if we know nothing for shure. Let´s hope Nintendo pushes the little Box to the Max. I don´t think it will be 1080p for most Games, but the Nintendogames will shine in beautiful 720p grace :)

I don't expect anybody to be pushing 1080p as a standard next gen anyway. I expect a hard 720p minimum unlike the 360/PS3, but I think they learned their lesson from trying to enforce 720p this gen with not enough juice for it in all cases.

What I DO expect and hope is that everyone will have a scaler in the console like Microsoft did for the 360, so people don't have to worry about their cheap TV's scaler doing a piss poor job.
 

BurntPork

Banned
I really hope Wii U has at least 16ROPs, but it'll probably have 8 or 12. :(

Fun fact: I missed the submit button at first and ended up staring at the screen for 10 seconds before realizing it.
 

MDX

Member
My programming skills are very limited (an rusty on top of that), but they should, and blu can correct me if I'm wrong, be able to add extensions to their API to achieve a similar level of functionality. I would expect they would stick with some version of ES 2.0 though.

ES2.0 might be all they need

OpenGL 4.2 continues support for both the Core and Compatibility profiles first introduced with OpenGL 3.2, enabling developers to use a streamlined API or retain backwards compatibility for existing OpenGL code, depending on their market needs, as well as continued compatibility with OpenGL ES 2.0 for easier porting between mobile and desktop platforms
 
From the top of my head:

- Analog triggers have been added and a racing game is being designed to take advantage of them.

- The Wii U's version of Battlefield will be "at worst" (in my words) close to the PC version.

- There are going to be a decent amount of high-level FPSs during Wii U's first year.

He also said there would be more Wii U news before the end of the year, but this was before Nintendo officially announced the re-unveil. So that may have changed. There were some other things said (most of which were pretty vague). But looking at other posts here I do believe he knows someone now.
Thanks for posting a quick summary bgassassin.

Yea, vague as fuck, it shows the guy knows shit. He threw the analog piece of info there because there's a good possibility it could be added since it even look like there are analog at first sight. Typical BS drivel near a console unveiling we usually get from some guys desperate for attention.

I don't bother much with the tech talk way too speculative, applications for the controller are much more interesting and could end up being things will see in practice.
 

THE:MILKMAN

Member
Am I reading too much into the first sentence of the IBM press release?

IBM said:
IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that it will provide the microprocessors that will serve as the heart of the new Wii U™ system from Nintendo.

Note the bolded.

Is that just the chips from Wii for BC, or is it something else?
 
Am I reading too much into the first sentence of the IBM press release?



Note the bolded.

Is that just the chips from Wii for BC, or is it something else?

Hmmmm. I think you're reading too much into it. Although I've toyed with the idea of a shrunken down Broadway playing the role of Wii's Starlet ARM I/O processor. If it was on the GPU, it would have easy access to any theoretical 1t-SRAM for backwards compatibility purposes.
 

THE:MILKMAN

Member
Hmmmm. I think you're reading too much into it. Although I've toyed with the idea of a shrunken down Broadway playing the role of Wii's Starlet ARM I/O processor. If it was on the GPU, it would have easy access to any theoretical 1t-SRAM for backwards compatibility purposes.

Well, it was a thought. I have another question if you don't mind me asking (If you have any ideas)

The press release also states this:

IBM said:
The new memory technology, a key element of the new Power microprocessor that IBM is building for the Nintendo Wii U console, can triple the amount of memory contained on a single chip]

Triple compared to what?
 
Well, it was a thought. I have another question if you don't mind me asking (If you have any ideas)

The press release also states this:



Triple compared to what?

I believe that's a statement on their embedded RAM technology. Basically, they can fit more of it on to the CPU than their competitors (I suppose Intel and AMD). It's somewhat baffling that their press release seems to confirm eDRAM being present on the CPU, but lherre's reliable source fails to mention any L3 cache, which the eDRAM is used for. Perhaps the rumored 3 MB (2:1:1 for the 3 cores) of L2 cache is eDRAM instead of whatever L2 cache normally is.
 

THE:MILKMAN

Member
I believe that's a statement on their embedded RAM technology. Basically, they can fit more of it on to the CPU than their competitors (I suppose Intel and AMD). It's somewhat baffling that their press release seems to confirm eDRAM being present on the CPU, but lherre's reliable source fails to mention any L3 cache, which the eDRAM is used for. Perhaps the rumored 3 MB (2:1:1 for the 3 cores) of L2 cache is eDRAM instead of whatever L2 cache normally is.

Thanks. It is all very confusing when even a official press release isn't very clear...
 
Thanks. It is all very confusing when even a official press release isn't very clear...

Np. I'm sure there are others in this thread who can shed some more light on these matters. As far as this tech stuff goes, I'm really just a hobbyist.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of a 28 nm Broadway being a part of the GPU package. I mean, there are only so many options. We know they are going to deliver a certain amount of horsepower (as per developer comments and a select few reliable sources on these boards), but we also know the case size is even smaller than the Xbox 360 slim and not all that much bigger than Wii itself. This is why I'm thinking that 28 nm is more likely than not as far as the GPU goes. It's very unlikely that they can get the performance they are targeting into that case if both the GPU and CPU are 45 nm.

Now, they could clock the GPU at 607.5 Mhz, which is 2.5x Hollywood and have the shrunken Broadway as part of some Hollywood-esque multi-chip-module. There were rumors of a quad-core ARM processor being included last year, but even if they were gunning for 4 Wii U controllers at once (which realistically they are not, even though a patent seems to reveal a mode where the GPU supports up to four outputs), that seems a bit like overkill.
 
^ I don't see Broadway making it into the console. That's really an unnecessary cost.

bgassassin: Don't forget that as for the CPU, lherre has said that there is no mention of L3 cache in the manual. Would this affect the TDP dramatically? Also, I read you mention earlier that L3 cache would be unnecessary in a console. Mind giving me some quick education as to why? Thanks for making this a fun thread, btw.

I've also been thinking about the 32 MB eDRAM, which is apparently local to the GPU if rumor is to be believed. I wonder if this is 1T-SRAM (isn't this supposedly faster than eDRAM while still maintaining the small size advantage? Has this changed at all in recent years?) It seems that this might be necessary for Wii BC. Someone mentioned that the Wii CPU cannot run code from the GDDR3 because of the latency. This makes me wonder if the Wii U CPU will be able to access the 32 MB for BC purposes, even if the bus is not super-wide. Would this be possible if the the 1T-SRAM is located on its own module as the eDRAM is on the 360?

Also wondering if a 256-bit bus for the GDDR3 is a possibility. Would it be too pricey? Assuming similar clocks, wouldn't that negate the speed advantage of GDDR5 and keep the low latency of the GDDR3? This seems like something Nintendo would like to do, especially since it does not appear that 1t-SRAM will be the main RAM pool once again this time.

Good job, everyone! My brain is fine. Keep it up! :p

I think I can safely say it's not fun for everyone. :p

I didn't consider the L3 cache when I wrote that, but since it wasn't included in my target for heat that would help it reach that desired wattage. Although I can't remember if the ~23w included all the cache. The L3 cache comment was based on other things I had read, part of which came from Eggebrecht who emphasized the importance of L2 cache, the amount that Gamecube had and its importance to game code. I know not having it would keep the die size and transistor count down, but from a programming perspective someone like blu would be better suited to answer that.

I've been expecting it to be 1T-SRAM probably since it was still Project Cafe. My searches have found nothing saying that 1T-SRAM has been passed in speed, though I can't say with fact that is still the case. But with it being SRAM I'd assume it is still faster. Your comment about the CPU and accessing the eMemory for BC may also apply to Wii U games based on brain_stew's *wink*.

After reasoning it out more and remembering other things, if the items that need the most bandwidth are moved onto the eMemory die like Xenos, you wouldn't need a large bus. That would keep the size down as well. From what it sounds like Nintendo might determine which GDDR they use by how they clock the CPU/GPU.

Forget about clock sync. It used to be that it was easier to set multipliers at larger gradients. Modern programmable clock multiipliers are much more flexible.

Miyamoto himself said they were still playing around with the clocks back around E3 so I would need to see Nintendo not do it to believe they won't.
 
@bgassassin: thanks for your answer and your thoughts. I like the tech-talk, even if we know nothing for shure. Let´s hope Nintendo pushes the little Box to the Max. I don´t think it will be 1080p for most Games, but the Nintendogames will shine in beautiful 720p grace :)

I think the biggest issue with this was that Reggie was in PR talk mode with the 1080p stuff.

ES2.0 might be all they need

I think the real point of emphasis is that it's taking from GLSL 3.x which based on Wikipedia would be 3.30.6 and that was used with OpenGL 3.3. So maybe (hopefully) the final version will borrow from GLSL 4.20.6, unless there isn't that much of a difference... which I assume there is.

Thanks for posting a quick summary bgassassin.

Yea, vague as fuck, it shows the guy knows shit. He threw the analog piece of info there because there's a good possibility it could be added since it even look like there are analog at first sight. Typical BS drivel near a console unveiling we usually get from some guys desperate for attention.

I don't bother much with the tech talk way too speculative, applications for the controller are much more interesting and could end up being things will see in practice.

He knows somebody at least. Recent posts by lherre and brain_stew, and older ones by wsippel confirm to me he knows someone that at least has a dev kit.
 
Miyamoto himself said they were still playing around with the clocks back around E3 so I would need to see Nintendo not do it to believe they won't.
I have no doubts that they're still playing with the chip speeds, but they should be much more flexible gradients than the CPU clock being an integer multiplier of the GPU clock.
 

blu

Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
I think the biggest issue with this was that Reggie was in PR talk mode with the 1080p stuff.
Isn't that a major part of his job description? ; )

I think the real point of emphasis is that it's taking from GLSL 3.x which based on Wikipedia would be 3.30.6 and that was used with OpenGL 3.3. So maybe (hopefully) the final version will borrow from GLSL 4.20.6, unless there isn't that much of a difference... which I assume there is.
Given tessellation is in the picture, WiiU will need GLSL4.x shading functionality. But as you noted, it all can come as extensions to ES2, or heck, they can even patch the core functionality. It's not like WiiU would need to pass some GLES2 conformance tests.
 
Thanks for posting a quick summary bgassassin.

Yea, vague as fuck, it shows the guy knows shit. He threw the analog piece of info there because there's a good possibility it could be added since it even look like there are analog at first sight. Typical BS drivel near a console unveiling we usually get from some guys desperate for attention.

I don't bother much with the tech talk way too speculative, applications for the controller are much more interesting and could end up being things will see in practice.

Analogue Triggers would also mean full GC compatibility if the rumours of GC VC games are somewhat true. Still it would need the full Analogue to digital snap in feature of the GC triggers to work.

As for the tech talk. Yeah I've been keeping out of that discussion, mainly because I'm no tech guy, and to a lesser extend because it's pretty much pointless right now. Knowing Nintendo we might have to wait for the consoles launch and beyond to get some vague fix on the horsepower in this box.
 
Some nice new tid-bits of info and speculation, but bgassassin, seeing as you're the most reliable in my eyes, what are you looking at for the Wii U's final specs, taking on board the alleged alpha kit specs?

Also, analogue triggers eff yeaaah. Also, these FPS games mentioned... new IP's? Regurgitated current gen ports? Future gen cross-platfrom titles?
 
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