Hardware WiiU's CPU weaker than 360/PS3

[KingVamp]

they're not going to paint a Mona Lisa on a Post-It, no matter if they're creative or not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-laSYHqlQA

Close enough?

On-topic

Not too worried myself.

 

[JoostinOnline]

Why is this thread still open. The OP is wrong, that was established a long time ago.

 

[Maxternal]

Why is this thread still open. The OP is wrong, that was established a long time ago.

but it's sooo much fun to argue about that fact (apparently)

Also, just my 2 cents about the GPGPU thing:
IF Ninty is nice enough to provide developers with a good, complete SDK to take advantage of it I'm sure it will be used when needed. It's just that writing support for it from scratch sucks.
I do agree it would be kinda hard work to take advantage of but the nice thing about writing software for a console is you know EXACTLY what's under the hood. You can't necessarily be sure on a PC that the user's GPU will support it and if there's any quirks in their particular brand of GPU. If you list it as a system requirement then you may just lose customers that don't have it or simply don't know what it means.

Also, the if CPU's clock speed is low, late generations of CPU's have been really good at showing us how little that has to matter if it's more EFFICIENT with those clock cycles. (This is me being hopeful despite [member='tueidj']'s guesses at the clock speed ... bring it at least CLOSER to the CPU power of the PS3 and 360, even if it's still under.) I can't say much more because I don't know enough about the different procs being compared. All I know is that they're all Power family processors (not necessarily PowerPC) and that specifically the 360's does not use out-of-order processing which gives it a performance hit. I know even less about the WiiU's proc (but at least I'm in the same boat as everyone else on that one.)

As far as the idea of filling the whole case with heat pipes connected to radiators around the edges of the console to cool the CPU, sounds heavy. I'd double-check if there's any publicly available weight specs to see if that makes any sense.

 

[wiismodrome]

The Wii U CPU is located on an MCM... and very small: http://iwataasks.nin...iiu/console/0/0

 

[tronic307]

The Wii U CPU is located on an MCM... and very small: http://iwataasks.nin...iiu/console/0/0

Awesome find! This practically proves it's not a Power7, which is 300mm^2 for 4 cores @ 45nm. New thread!

 

[the_randomizer]

But it's still a multi-core CPU despite what some loser on Twitter said about it.

https://twitter.com/marcan42

 

[tronic307]

But it's still a multi-core CPU despite what some loser on Twitter said about it.

https://twitter.com/marcan42

Of course; Nintendo specs say "IBM Power®-based multi-core processor". The Gekko core was smaller than a fingernail, and that was 180nm; and this is 45nm. Marcan from Hackmii, right?

 

[tueidj]

But it's still a multi-core CPU despite what some loser on Twitter said about it.

https://twitter.com/marcan42

When did marcan say it wasn't a multi-core CPU? He said it's not a POWER7, which is correct. Surely you wouldn't be the guy trying to argue with him about it - he's only got 2 followers vs. marcan's 17,000+, so it wouldn't make sense to be calling him a loser.

 

[Coto]

But it's still a multi-core CPU despite what some loser on Twitter said about it.

https://twitter.com/marcan42

those are guys from hackmii group. show some respect to them too.

 

[the_randomizer]

But it's still a multi-core CPU despite what some loser on Twitter said about it.

https://twitter.com/marcan42

those are guys from hackmii group. show some respect to them too.

Well, he was telling me it would be weaker than the Xbox 360 CPU since it was compatible with Wii games (same architecture). He claimed he had sources but would not tell me what those "sources" were.

Quote from his Sept 8 post "It's kind of sad how people seem to think that the WiiU will have a POWER7 CPU. Prepare to be disappointed. Hint: Wii backwards compat."

 

[Foxi4]

Regardless of whether or not it would be a POWER7 (it's not, the processor is codenamed Espresso and it's a custom PowerPC build), it could be easily backwards-compatible since the Broadway IS a PowerPC processor. If the two use the same instruction set (or alternatively the new and improved set contains the instructions from the older set as well as new ones), they are compatible natively. (More or less)

It's an entirely different case when two processors are not of the same family (PS2 and PS3, XBox and XBox 360) and the backwards compatibility is based on hardware emulation.

In any case, backwards compatibility is in no way an indication of the architecture's performance - Wii backwards compatibility in no way restricts horse power as it is suggested in the tweet.

 

[the_randomizer]

Regardless of whether or not it would be a POWER7 (it's not, the processor is codenamed Espresso and it's a custom PowerPC build), it could be easily backwards-compatible since the Broadway IS a PowerPC processor. If the two use the same instruction set (or alternatively the new and improved set contains the instructions from the older set as well as new ones), they are compatible natively. (More or less)

It's an entirely different case when two processors are not of the same family (PS2 and PS3, XBox and XBox 360) and the backwards compatibility is based on hardware emulation.

In any case, backwards compatibility is in no way an indication of the architecture's performance - Wii backwards compatibility in no way restricts horse power as it is suggested in the tweet.

This, 1000 times, this. Marcan42 is sorely mistaken, despite his apparent infallibility.

 

[tronic307]

But it's still a multi-core CPU despite what some loser on Twitter said about it.

https://twitter.com/marcan42

those are guys from hackmii group. show some respect to them too.

Well, he was telling me it would be weaker than the Xbox 360 CPU since it was compatible with Wii games (same architecture). He claimed he had sources but would not tell me what those "sources" were.

Quote from his Sept 8 post "It's kind of sad how people seem to think that the WiiU will have a POWER7 CPU. Prepare to be disappointed. Hint: Wii backwards compat."

I don't read single-core into that statement, more like multi-Wii-core, and what would be wrong with that? Power7 cannot run Wii code; there is no support on the silicon for Broadway's floating point method. Plus it's huge and power hungry.

Iwata Especially since the Wii U had to be backwards compatible with Wii.
Shiota Yes. The designers were already incredibly familiar with the Wii, so without getting hung up on the two machines' completely different structures, they came up with ideas we would never have thought of. There were times when you would usually just incorporate both the Wii U and Wii circuits, like 1+1. But instead of just adding like that, they adjusted the new parts added to Wii U so they could be used for Wii as well.
Iwata And that made the semiconductor smaller.

This.
Much more elegant than slapping a 200W server chip into a console.

 

[Foxi4]

I don't read single-core into that statement, more like multi-Wii-core, and what would be wrong with that? Power7 cannot run Wii code, there is no support on the silicon for Broadway's floating point method. Plus it's huge and power hungry..

Fair enough, but it has a separate floating point unit, and if it uses the same instruction set, I'm pretty sure it would be entirely capable to do so. If not, these operations could be diverted by the OS to the GPU using GPGPU - the system would still keep up. Native backwards compatibility rarely works at a 1:1 basis, there's always some kind of an overlay which manages the structural differences.

 

[tueidj]

Well, he was telling me it would be weaker than the Xbox 360 CPU since it was compatible with Wii games (same architecture).

When did he ever mention the Xbox 360?

Fair enough, but it has a separate floating point unit, and if it uses the same instruction set, I'm pretty sure it would be entirely capable to do so. If not, these operations could be diverted by the OS to the GPU using GPGPU - the system would still keep up. Native backwards compatibility rarely works at a 1:1 basis, there's always some kind of an overlay which manages the structural differences.

Riiight, it's just a big coincidence that Espresso shares the exact same special features as Broadway (DMA engine, write-gather pipe, locked cache, paired singles etc.). I'm sure it's really a current gen CPU design and they "forgot" to mention 64-bit capability...
We all remember how much more advanced the wii's cpu (Broadway) was compared to the gamecube's (Gecko), don't we? (Hint: it was identical except for the clock speed.)

 

[Foxi4]

Riiight, it's just a big coincidence that Espresso shares the exact same special features as Broadway (DMA engine, write-gather pipe, locked cache, paired singles etc.). I'm sure it's really a current gen CPU design and they "forgot" to mention 64-bit capability...
We all remember how much more advanced the wii's cpu (Broadway) was compared to the gamecube's (Gecko), don't we? (Hint: it was identical except for the clock speed.)

I'm not suggesting that it's not a Broadway derrivative, I'm saying that currently we don't know what Espresso is, and we probably shouldn't follow rumours until a "live speciement" is analyzed.

Besides, we all know that the Wii was meant to be a budget console, derrived entirely from Gamecube R&D. Even the WiiMotes were originally a Gamecube accessory, at least according to the patent pictures I found. It was built to cash in quick on something that's cheap - access the masses. The Wii U is not in the same category of hardware.

 

[tronic307]

Nintendo has always gone for hardware backwards compatibility, where present: The GameBoy morphed into the 3DS over two decades. Wii graphics, however, may have to be virtualized on the GPU.
Nintendo techs are backwards compatibility wizards; I'm not worried about that feature hindering the system. I'm just worried about my ability to grab a Wii U in 2012.

 

[tueidj]

I'm not suggesting that it's not a Broadway derrivative, I'm saying that currently we don't know what Espresso is, and we probably shouldn't follow rumours until a "live speciement" is analyzed.

That happened several months ago.

Besides, we all know that the Wii was meant to be a budget console, derrived entirely from Gamecube R&D. Even the WiiMotes were originally a Gamecube accessory, at least according to the patent pictures I found. It was built to cash in quick on something that's cheap - access the masses. The Wii U is not in the same category of hardware.

So you're saying "gamecube + wifi + bluetooth + sd + usb + nand + ram = wii" was just a cheap fix, but "wii + ram + HD graphics = wii U" is somehow completely different? How could it possibly not be the "same category of hardware" when it's designed to run wii games exactly like the wii did?

 

[Foxi4]

So you're saying "gamecube + wifi + bluetooth + sd + usb + nand + ram = wii" was just a cheap fix, but "wii + ram + HD graphics = wii U" is somehow completely different? How could it possibly not be the "same category of hardware" when it's designed to run wii games exactly like the wii did?

Of course it was a cheap fix - you said it yourself, it was a supped up Gamecube. SD, WiFi, Bluetooth and USB controllers were cheap at the time, the NAND of the Wii isn't all that big so let's not get crazy over it. It was nothing like the generation jump provided by the competition. The Wii U on the other hand is designed to catch up and top the current competitors while still being sufficient once the nextgens arrive. That's how it's a different category of hardware - the Wii was an affordable but weak console, the WiiU strives to be a proper nextgen.

 

[tueidj]

Sounds more like you just described it as striving to be adequate.