3DS INSIDE OUT!

[lostdwarf]

OK I have done all the research I can - and it seems 100% certain - that the 3DS does NOT have a separate PICA chip. yes thats right.
The 3DS has a co-developed Nintendo/Arm SOC CPU 'SUPPORTED' by DMP's Meastro Technology.
http://www.dmprof.com/english/e_products/e_case/#nintendo
http://www.dmprof.com/e_news/e_press/372/

Here I have a full 3DS teardown.
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_...0110228/189942/
Please have a look at this in depth look at the 3DS.
Basically I think the PICA is built into the SOC. DMP's website has a nice article on it's partnership with Nintendo too.
The PICA200 is confirmed to be used by Nintendo but it is not a separate chip on the board.

from Iwata asks a while ago:
#
Iwata:
Which brings us back to how you had designed the first SoC with some leeway in power.
Umezu:
Yes. Making it 3D increased the power needed, and I ended up using all the extra power.
Iwata:
Programmable shaders19 for showing shadows in 3D graphics have come into general use, but for Nintendo 3DS we adopted a technology from Digital Media Professionals (DMP).20 Could you explain that?

19Programmable shader: A shader is a software tool mainly for representing light and shadow in graphics. A programmable shader allows programmers to determine how they would like the effects of light and shadow to be calculated. The high degree of freedom makes a wider variety of effects possible.

20Digital Media Professionals Inc.: A company that mainly develops and sells graphics processors. Headquarters: Mitaka, Tokyo.
Umezu:
What eats more electricity than anything in a handheld gaming device is the LCD backlight.
Iwata:
The Nintendo 3DS system has two of those - and the upper one is for 3D.
Umezu:
Right. And the 3D one has to deliver separate images to the left and right eyes. Which means that in 3D the amount of light delivered to each eye is halved. In order to make it look just as bright as usual, you have to increase the brightness of the backlight, which increases the power used even more.
Iwata:
Choosing 3D led to the need to double the graphics and increase the brightness of the backlight, so there must have been a lot of challenges with regard to power.
Umezu:
I knew from the very start that the LCDs would require lots of power, so I thought we couldn’t use that much for graphics. I spent quite a lot of time looking into programmable shading, but when you use that method for a handheld game system, you also have software processing in the SoC, and a number of steps become necessary for calculating the shading to render one point on the screen, so it can’t keep up if the operating frequency21 isn’t fast enough.

21Operating frequency: Also known as clock rate. It signifies the rate for synchronising the parts of a circuit.
Iwata:
In other words, that method eats up too much power.
Umezu:
Yes. We knew that DMP’s technology had the merit of calculating with the hardware, so we could cut down on the power used.
Iwata:
DMP’s technology achieves with the hardware most of the shadow calculation usually done by a programmable shader, so even a slower operating frequency can achieve the same results. With today’s semiconductor technology, the frequency has a direct influence on power use, so it’s very beneficial in that regard.
Umezu:
Yes. I thought DMP’s technology was best for saving power, given the limits of a handheld gaming system. What’s more, to save power just a little more, we prepared a power-saving mode for the backlight.

http://www.nintendo.co.uk/NOE/en_GB/news/i..._31133.html#top
link to the whole page.


Also I can confirm
1 x RAM = Fujitsu
1 x NAND = Toshiba
1 x CPU = Nintendo/Arm

True detailed specs still unknown.

not a revelation of news but the teardown should please fans as the photo's are very nice quality.

 

[Foxi4]

GPU is probably built-in inside the Nintendo/ARM chip. Besides, photos of the PCB have been around for weeks, if not months. It's already a well-known fact.

 

[lostdwarf]

GPU is probably built-in inside the Nintendo/ARM chip. Besides, photos of the PCB have been around for weeks, if not months. It's already a well-known fact.

I do say that in my post. There are NO photos of this quality online anywhere.
Also I am the first to confirm that NONE OF THE CHIPS on the board are the pica200.

 

[Foxi4]

I'd give you links to high-quality photos, unfortunately they so happen to be on a website which also posts copyright-infringing material. What I CAN tell you is that you'll find them if you google for

" 后盖才是亮点！任天堂3DS初上手拆解心得 "

They were available since 22nd of february.

 

[Deleted_171835]

I'd give you links to high-quality photos, unfortunately they so happen to be on a website which also posts copyright-infringing material.

Why don't you just re-up the photos?
pix.gbatemp.net

 

[Foxi4]

The phrase I pasted will lead you directly to the page via google. There's no need to upload them. In any case, they feature each and every part of the device.

 

[Deleted_171835]

The phrase I pasted will lead you directly to the page via google. There's no need to upload them. In any case, they feature each and every part of the device.

This?
http://3ds.tgbus.com/hardware/201102/20110219163347.shtml

 

[Foxi4]

Indeed. The second link leads to the forum where pictures can also be found. In any case, *That* site has copyright-infringing material on-site, you're not supposed to post a link here. There are 12 pages in total of detailed pictures of every mechanical and electronical part there.

 

[lostdwarf]

I'd give you links to high-quality photos, unfortunately they so happen to be on a website which also posts copyright-infringing material. What I CAN tell you is that you'll find them if you google for

" ??????????3DS??????? "

They were available since 22nd of february.

Yes these were available ages ago and they are not very good photo's, argue all you will (troll all you will)

These photos I have are detailed and you can make out EVERY letter and number on every chip. Also this is in full English.
I will also say again... NO PICA on the main board, also we have named the make and product number of EVERY chip.

What you are doing is trying to re-post OLD NEWS, I am trying to provide you with something a little more

 

[Foxi4]

I'm not trying to re-post old news, I'm saying that your news are nothing new or extraordinarily suprising.

The pictures posted earlier were high-detailed, if you can't read every single letter on every chip, you clearly need glasses or a new monitor.

I'm not saying "bad job, don't do that again". I just tought you might've been unaware of the photos posted earlier. Every news post is worth the attention.

 

[lostdwarf]

I'm not trying to re-post old news, I'm saying that your news are nothing new or extraordinarily suprising.

The pictures posted earlier were high-detailed, if you can't read every single letter on every chip, you clearly need glasses or a new monitor.

I'm not saying "bad job, don't do that again". I just tought you might've been unaware of the photos posted earlier. Every news post is worth the attention.

I challenge you to read all the writing on the ARM chip on those pictures. Next I challenge you to read all the writing on the Fujitsu chip from those terrible photo's.
You can't.

now please stop trolling.

 

[Foxi4]

I'm not trying to re-post old news, I'm saying that your news are nothing new or extraordinarily suprising.

The pictures posted earlier were high-detailed, if you can't read every single letter on every chip, you clearly need glasses or a new monitor.

I'm not saying "bad job, don't do that again". I just tought you might've been unaware of the photos posted earlier. Every news post is worth the attention.

I challenge you to read all the writing on the ARM chip on those pictures. Next I challenge you to read all the writing on the Fujitsu chip from those terrible photo's.
You can't.

now please stop trolling.

You must be suffering from persecution mania and trollophobia. Either that, or you've never seen a troll in action.

What I'M doing is called an argument. I give you my points in this discussion, you assert whether they are valid or not, and make a claim. Then, I assert if your claim is valid. We carry on arguing until a resolution is met or not.

 

[TrolleyDave]

Or I step in and say pack it in.

Any more carrying on the argument and I'll start trashing posts. It's all off topic and irrelevant. Some people might actually be interested in discussing what the what it's actually about.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

I honestly don't care if the only chips inside it were potato chips as long as it does what I expected it to do.

Jeez, people care more about what the innards are called than what they actually produce.

 

[lostdwarf]

Or I step in and say pack it in.

Any more carrying on the argument and I'll start trashing posts. It's all off topic and irrelevant. Some people might actually be interested in discussing what the what it's actually about.

Thank you.
Also I have read reports of Super Street Fight IV is 30 frames per second but that does not change with the 3D slider on or off. Instead it is changeable to 60fps in the options menu on the start screen. With this mode ON, 3D is not activated.
This must be something to do with how the CPU/GPU renders the graphics, The SOC must be limited to 60fps MAX and they split that to One frame per eye in 3D giving 30fps.
I have read reports of this being the case for DOA too so I think we can safely say the max framerate for 3DS is 30fps in 3D.

I must highlight that in 3D at 30fps the graphics look FANTASTIC! and the framerate drop is only virtual as you still get 60fps but split to 30 for each eye.

 

[KingVamp]

I honestly don't care if the only chips inside it were potato chips as long as it does what I expected it to do.

Jeez, people care more about what the innards are called than what they actually produce.

If 3DS run off potato chips, Nintendo is more of a genius than I thought.

Although people could eat them...

People care more about what the innards are called than what they actually produce.

For some people is that a bad thing?

 

[granville]

@Guild

For the mainstream gamers, specs won't matter much except for the techies who like this sort of stuff (i like to learn about what's inside of systems and games sometimes). Games look good, that's all that matters graphics-wise. They can determine what sorts of games you can get though. With a more powerful CPU, you could have things such as realistic AI and physics. Or with a GPU that can handle more geometry, you can theoretically have larger environments.

But homebrewers and programmers will want to know the tech specs. It will give us an idea of what sort of emulators and whatnot we could have on the system.

 

[relminator]

I honestly don't care if the only chips inside it were potato chips as long as it does what I expected it to do.

Jeez, people care more about what the innards are called than what they actually produce.

Classic!

On a side note: Programmable shaders are not just lights and shadows. They are everything in modern GPUs. Vertex shaders and fragment shaders let you treat the GPU almost like software buffers (as opposed to the DS's fixed-function pipeline).

 

[ChrisRX]

I do say that in my post. There are NO photos of this quality online anywhere.
Also I am the first to confirm that NONE OF THE CHIPS on the board are the pica200.

No-one ever said that any of the chips were the pica200, because if you look at the Pica200 website you'd see that the Pica200 is not a chip but an IP. That means that companies don't buy a chip, but they buy the design of it and implement it into their own hardware. This is why there's no chip, because it's not a chip in the first place.