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Shin'en Explains Wii U EDRAM Usage


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#1 routerbad

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Posted 18 July 2013 - 11:58 AM

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Manfred Linzner of Shin’en:

‘Wii U eDRAM usage is comparable to the eDRAM in the XBOX360, but on Wii U you have enough eDRAM to use if for 1080p rendering.

In comparison, on XBOX360 you usually had to render in sub 720p resolutions or in mutliple passes.

Even if you don’t use MSAA (MultiSample Anti-Aliasing) youalready need around 16Mb just for a 1080p framebuffer (with double buffering). You simply don’t have that with XBOX360 eDRAM. As far as I know Microsoft corrected that issue and put also 32MB of Fast Ram into their new console.

We use the eDRAM in the Wii U for the actual framebuffers, intermediate framebuffer captures, as a fast scratch memory for some CPU intense work and for other GPU memory writes.

Using eDRAM properly is a simple way to get extra performance without any other optimizations.

In general, development for Wii U CPU+GPU is simple. You don’t need complicated setups or workarounds for things like HDR(High Dynamic Range)or linear RGB (Color Modeling). What we also like is that there are plenty of possibilities for speeding up your rendering and code, but you don’t have to dig deep for them to get proper performance.

For instance, all of our shaders used in ‘Nano Assault Neo’ are not really optimized. We just used the first iteration of them because they were already fast enough. We looked later through the shaders dis-assembly and noticed we can make them 30-40% faster by better pipeline usage or better hints for the shader compiler.

As ‘Nano Assault Neo’ never had a problem running at 60fps (including a 2nd screen rendering at 60fps on the GamePad) we didn’t have to do that kind of optimizations back then. For CPU usage ‘Nano Assault Neo’ only used the main CPU core. The two other cores were almost idle, beside a few percent used for our audio thread.

So all in all ‘Nano Assault Neo’ only used a fraction of the currently available resources on Wii U and looks and plays quite nice. And for the future, don’t forget that in many consoles, early in their life cycle, not all resources were already useable or accessible via the SDK. So we are sure the best is yet to come for Wii U.’

 

 



#2 NintendoReport

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Posted 18 July 2013 - 12:01 PM

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Nice post, and the details provided make good sense! Now.. back to those lazy devs...


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#3 routerbad

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Posted 18 July 2013 - 12:21 PM

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Nice post, and the details provided make good sense! Now.. back to those lazy devs...

Love it, one CPU core, unoptimized shader assenblies, rendering to two screens, at 60fps 1080p, looks and plays better than ports from enormous publishers.



#4 GAMER1984

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Posted 18 July 2013 - 12:31 PM

Love it, one CPU core, unoptimized shader assenblies, rendering to two screens, at 60fps 1080p, looks and plays better than ports from enormous publishers.


I believe Nano was Native 720p... Anyway they have been saying a lot and that's good. But people aren't going to take thewir words serious until they release their next game and it blows ps360 stuff out the water(if that's possible) people then might consider what they are saying to be true. Why haven't we heard this positivity from other devs. They make it seem so easy to understand... Wjy do other devs seem so dumbfounded when it comes to Wii U hardware... There is something fishy going on here.... Someone is lying

#5 Cloud Windfoot Omega

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Posted 18 July 2013 - 12:43 PM

I believe Nano was Native 720p... Anyway they have been saying a lot and that's good. But people aren't going to take thewir words serious until they release their next game and it blows ps360 stuff out the water(if that's possible) people then might consider what they are saying to be true. Why haven't we heard this positivity from other devs. They make it seem so easy to understand... Wjy do other devs seem so dumbfounded when it comes to Wii U hardware... There is something fishy going on here.... Someone is lying

its because they started with 720p in the hopes to make it have better effects rather than a better IQ, they thought that there would be a tradeoff, turns out, they could have easily fit it in with room to spare. But they kept with their target, since   its generally a pain to shift targets.



#6 alan123

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Posted 18 July 2013 - 12:56 PM

the best is yet to come, but from who ?

 

i find it strange that it's so easy when Nintendo themselves have said they have found it hard to get to grips with working in Hi Def !



#7 Cloud Windfoot Omega

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Posted 18 July 2013 - 01:35 PM

the best is yet to come, but from who ?

 

i find it strange that it's so easy when Nintendo themselves have said they have found it hard to get to grips with working in Hi Def !

They are not having trouble anymore, Miyamoto himself said they are over the  curve of learning the libraries.



#8 Socalmuscle

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Posted 18 July 2013 - 01:45 PM

the best is yet to come, but from who ?

 

i find it strange that it's so easy when Nintendo themselves have said they have found it hard to get to grips with working in Hi Def !

 

NAN has a very small scope in terms of the textures, models, audio, various gameplay mechanics, etc.

 

It takes more human resources as far as asset creation. Not coding.

 

Modeling and texturing specifically.  Figure textures on the order of 4x+ what they were used to, and models exponentially higher.

 

the NAN guys have some nice models and textures working, but its a tiny scale in comparison to MK8, etc.



#9 alan123

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Posted 18 July 2013 - 02:19 PM

They are not having trouble anymore, Miyamoto himself said they are over the  curve of learning the libraries.

they shouldn't have had trouble in the first place, all this does is sand out a very bad message.



#10 Cloud Windfoot Omega

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Posted 18 July 2013 - 03:42 PM

they shouldn't have had trouble in the first place, all this does is sand out a very bad message.

Everyone had trouble with it in the first place, the effects of it pushed some suffering publishers over the edge along with piracy issues  and others.

 

EDIT: seems i can say even my team had its  issues with it, but we are over it while still maintaining our structure,  but we still had the same problem with delaying games, except  Nintendo  amazingly got away with only a little delay compared to us.


Edited by Cloud Windfoot Omega, 18 July 2013 - 03:43 PM.


#11 RETROBLAST

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Posted 18 July 2013 - 04:01 PM

I'm glad to see this and look foward to the future ... not a single game released has tapped into the full power of the Wii U and I expect it will be years until they squeeze all its juice out.


Edited by RETROBLAST, 18 July 2013 - 04:02 PM.

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#12 Tim

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Posted 18 July 2013 - 04:09 PM

I'm glad to see this and look foward to the future ... not a single game released has tapped into the full power of the Wii U and I expect it will be years until they squeeze all its juice out.

 

That's one way to put it...


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#13 RETROBLAST

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Posted 18 July 2013 - 04:31 PM

1st the devs need to learn how to get the system to do what it can do, the next phase is getting the system to do what it cant do or is not supposed to do by tricking it. This is the point you see the most amazing games on a system, unfortunately, it is also the time a system is winding down...and a new one , the next generation one is on its way.


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#14 GAMER1984

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Posted 18 July 2013 - 05:51 PM

Yeah I guess Capcom couldn't use that Edram to make strider run on Wii U. Another bites the dust... It is what it is

#15 MorbidGod

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Posted 18 July 2013 - 09:23 PM

Come on .. Someone make a big epic game using Wii U's power... Oh wait, they are.

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I am, on topic, glad to hear this. Puts to shame anyone who said the Wii U is weaker than the 360.
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#16 DexterousGecko

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Posted 18 July 2013 - 09:48 PM

Was the gamecube more powerful than the ps2? I can't remember...



#17 Cloud Windfoot Omega

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Posted 18 July 2013 - 09:58 PM

Was the gamecube more powerful than the ps2? I can't remember...

the PS2 was;

 

cpu 299mhz

 

ram had 32 megs and  4 megs  eDram

 

Gpu was 148mhz

 

 

 

 

 

gamecube was;

 

cpu 499hmz

 

ram 43 megs made up of  many parts

 

gpu 162mhz

 

 

 

 

 

 

so big difference


Edited by Cloud Windfoot Omega, 18 July 2013 - 09:58 PM.


#18 BrosBeforeGardenTools

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Posted 18 July 2013 - 11:09 PM

Was the gamecube more powerful than the ps2? I can't remember...


Typically, the answer is yes.

#19 alan123

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Posted 19 July 2013 - 05:47 AM

1st the devs need to learn how to get the system to do what it can do, the next phase is getting the system to do what it cant do or is not supposed to do by tricking it. This is the point you see the most amazing games on a system, unfortunately, it is also the time a system is winding down...and a new one , the next generation one is on its way.

the same can be said for the x1 & ps4.

#20 GAMER1984

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Posted 19 July 2013 - 06:57 AM

On a related note Nintendo seriously needs to try and Buy these guys. I know they are like an offical unoffical nintendo devs but Nintendo needs to make it offical. At least give them a franchise that they are stuck with(F-Zero) and let them give the fans something new.




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