interesting, plus the article uses good bases, specially the part of NEC that made the 360 edram and so it also made the wii u edram, the maly, so onin difference its that wii u has 8 macros isntead of 4 like 360 had and also that the wii u gpu has full access to the edram bandwidth cause both are in the same silicon die, while in the 360 case only the ROPS were in the same die with the edram so only those had full access to the 256GB/s, while the gpu had to communictae via an external bus of 32GB/s to the edram+rops
since this article from bob paterson
http://siliconvalley...or Xbox 360.pdf
says that there are 4 macros of 2.5MB each with 500mhz speed and 1024bits each macro, then if we do the math we indeed get the 256GB/s we already knew it had
4macros*500mhz*1024bits/(8bits*1000)=256GB/s
as we can see in the wii u photo from chipworks we have 8 macros, so
8macros*550mhz*1024bits/(8bits*1000)=563.2GB/s
we must take into account that we are supposing the least of bus width per macro based on an old design of more than 7 years ago, so obviously nintendo had access to a more refined technology, maybe something like 2048bits per macro, that would give something near the terabyte of bandwidth, and since sony already said that was aming for more of a terabyte of bandwidth with edram dont see why is not believable. I mean, already Renesas said that wii u edram was using the best technology from NEC at the point that producing and making it elsewhere would be difficult, we also have shinen comments that wii u edram provides a huge bandwidth. But as for now 563.2GB/s sounds ok, could have more but we need more info
of course that in order to produce good graphics the edram must be used for tesselation+dislacements, if not then there is very few improvemnt in the polygons department
Even if its not 1 terabyte of bandwidth and ends up between 563.2GB/s(minium accounting the old tech from xbox 360 edram from nec 7 years before the launch of wiiu) and 1 terabyte the nadwidth would be enough and sounds about right and surely the system can hamdle it, there is no doubt about that, well, at least not for those who have investigated a bit about the gpu internals a bit
just hope the number ends up somhwere near the terabyte, lioke 800GB/s or something, but 563.2GB/s seems enough for the wii u to accomplish good graphics
dont see why people dont beleive it, come on even the agmecube which was a hardware of 2000-2001 had almost 20GB/s of bandwidth with the embedded memory, and that was for just 3MB, wii u is being produced by the same company who produced both the gamecube embedded memory and the xbox 360 edram and has passed like a decade since then
peopel forget so soon
This... isnt even close.
This reeks of eyeofcores garbage over on beyond3d before he was banned, which he went so far as to change the wikipedia page for.... so he could quote himself for 'evidence'.
While the wii u easily COULD have this badnwidth with that 32Mb of ram divided into 4Mb macros, IF the edram was bussed at 1024 per block. It would be massive overkill. There would be very little point in having such a massive excess in memory bandwidth, the processors just dont have what it takes to fill that highway. It would be a better use of money to make the memory faster instead of wider at that point.
And thats not a slight against the wii u either, thats more bandwidth than either the ps4 or xbone could make use of as well.
there is no overkill, even gpus like hd4000 series can handle terabytes/s of bandwidth, from low to high end
gamecube already had 18GB/s of bandwidth with its 3MB of embedded memory made by the same NEC company we are talking about(now fused with renesas). its been more than a decade since then, gamecube was a technology of 2000-2001, obviously technology has matured since then and now we have 32MB not 3MB, hell, even with 32MB of the old tech from nec on gamecube i can get about 200GB/s, why a technology 10 years later or so and at 40nm and not 180nm would perform less than that?
renesas already said that wii u edram was being made with the best technologies from that plan from NEC and also shinen said that wii u edram has plenty of high bandwidth
Edited by megafenix, 26 February 2014 - 10:35 PM.