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[Disorientator]

This probably has to do more about me being a complete noob that anything else, so sorry in advance if old/already talked-about a hundred times.

Nintendo Patent Application
Publication Date: 08/23/2012
Filing Date: 02/23/2012 (Feb.23 2011 at JPO)

Patent seems to talk about running games - on the 3DS (?) - designed for an older system ("old apparatus"), in "compatible" mode.

The following schematic shows the general layout of the two systems:

(notice that the "old apparatus" is portrayed with a single CPU & GPU while the "new" one sports a pair of each)

This shows the "game process" in "Normal" and "Compatible" modes:

(notice the "IMAGE PROCESSING (Resolution Conversion and Filtering)" step in "compatible" mode)


My question: Is the "new" system the 3DS (and if it is, why the 2 GPUs) and the "old" system the DS?

 

[Mr. Wonderful]

New thread for new news? This seems like potentially a pretty big deal.

Or nothing could come of it.

Or a new 3DS refresh.

 

[Disorientator]

Makes a bit more sense now: (?)

• 
  The GPU 313 is a 3DCG drawing unit having a dedicated circuitry configuration for executing drawing processing by using 3-dimensional computer graphics (3DCG), and generates an image, based on an instruction from the CPU 311.

• The GPU 314 is a 2DCG drawing unit having a dedicated circuitry configuration for executing drawing processing by using 2-dimensional computer graphics (2DCG), and generates an image, based on an instruction from the CPU 312.

• The 3-dimensional computer graphics and the 2-dimensional computer graphics are much different in their drawing methods. Therefore, the manner of drawing instructions performed by the CPU 311 to the GPU 313, and the manner of drawing instructions performed by the CPU 312 to GPU 314 are much different from each other.

• That is, since the architecture of the GPU 313 (or processing by the GPU 313) and the architecture of the GPU 314 (or processing by the GPU 314) are different from each other, the manner of instructions to the GPU 313 and the manner of instructions to the GPU 314 are completely different from each other. For example, the GPU 313 generates an image drawn by taking an image of a 3D object with a virtual camera which (virtually) takes an image of the 3D object, by using information about the vertexes of the 3D object to be drawn and information about the virtual camera, whereas the GPU 314 generates an image drawn by combining 2D images.

• It is noted that as will be described later with reference to FIG. 2, the GPU 314 of the game apparatus 10 (new apparatus) is the same as that of the game apparatus 110 (old apparatus).