68 replies to this topic

[Ravyu]

IBMWatson Confirms tht the Wii U will be using a Power 7. This tweet is more than a year old, but I only heard about when someone here posted the tweet link-

twitter.com/IBMWatson/status/78473693843562498

So... HOW THE HELL IS THE TEKKEN DUDE SAYING THIS IS WEAK?

Oh and thanks to whoever ( I forgot the username) who posted the tweet link, I thought no one posted to it so might as well try myself

[Foot]

IBMWatson Confirmstht the Wii U will be using a Power 7. This tweet is more than a year old, but I only heard about when someone here posted the tweet link-

twitter.com/IBMWatson/status/78473693843562498

So... HOW THE HELL IS THE TEKKEN DUDE SAYING THIS IS WEAK?

Oh and thanks to whoever ( I forgot the username) who posted the tweet link, I thought no one posted to it so might as well try myself

If its Power7, than we've got a VERY POWERFUL CPU in our hands!

Oh, and the Tekken Producer said that it was clocked Slightly under thew PS3 and Xbox 360. Reason being so is because the Power archetecture is designed for Servers. And while Power Servers tend to Have Clock Speeds EXTREMELY FASTER than other companies however Nintendo has to keep it lower to avoid producing a $20,000 Machine!

Lastly, i can see that ur new, Welcome to the Forums!

[Alianjaro]

IBMWatson Confirmstht the Wii U will be using a Power 7. This tweet is more than a year old, but I only heard about when someone here posted the tweet link-

twitter.com/IBMWatson/status/78473693843562498

So... HOW THE HELL IS THE TEKKEN DUDE SAYING THIS IS WEAK?

Oh and thanks to whoever ( I forgot the username) who posted the tweet link, I thought no one posted to it so might as well try myself

The Tekken guy wanted to sue the journalists that published these news because he said they took his words out of context. He actually almost said the opposit. If you read his article, you'd see that they took his words and mixed them up. Anyway he has an old devkit so...

[Tricky Sonic]

Yeah, once again people can say what they want about the power....but seriously a lot of the dev's giving opinions were working on early dev kits and the games didn't have any final polish on them. We will find out how powerful the Wii U is after launch and people start being able to fully utilize the power. I think thats always the problem with release titles...usually they are started up to a year or so before launch and they don't even have final dev kits, then they just have to polish the games up with the final kits. You get dev's working on games starting around now with final kits out..they will be able to push it more.

[Foot]

The Tekken guy wanted to sue the journalists that published these news because he said they took his words out of context. He actually almost said the opposit. If you read his article, you'd see that they took his words and mixed them up. Anyway he has an old devkit so...

i didnt hear about this?

[3Dude]

Yeah, the tekken dude never said it was weak, that was sensationalism made up by the media.

He rebuked them on his twitter feed, saying they put in words he did not say, took it out of context, and twisted it to fit their agenda.

All he said was it was clocked slightly lower, and proceeded to explain in laymens terms the difference between programming for an in order cpu, and an out of order cpu.

[uh20]

we all kinda already knew this, you could probably find an article about it months before

[Keviin]

This was confirmed last year already I believe, but yes, it's awesome.

[Desert Punk]

Looking at the Power 7 wiki page it says it has 4 megabytes of cache per core but wii u is claimed to have 3 megabytes of cache memory with 2 megabytes for one core and 1/2 megabyte for the other 2. Surely either a cutdown specification or its using a different cpu architecture. I'd like to think it was a Power 7 single core as the main cpu core with less cache and with 2 side cpus that match speeded up wii cpu's. I wonder if the Power 7 is 4x as powerful by mhz as the wii cpu if so this would make sense allowing for the primary cpu having 4x as much cache. Its an idea anyway.

[-JJ-]

how cool lol!

[3Dude]

Looking at the Power 7 wiki page it says it has 4 megabytes of cache per core but wii u is claimed to have 3 megabytes of cache memory with 2 megabytes for one core and 1/2 megabyte for the other 2. Surely either a cutdown specification or its using a different cpu architecture. I'd like to think it was a Power 7 single core as the main cpu core with less cache and with 2 side cpus that match speeded up wii cpu's. I wonder if the Power 7 is 4x as powerful by mhz as the wii cpu if so this would make sense allowing for the primary cpu having 4x as much cache. Its an idea anyway.

That information is erroneous (or misinterpereted) according to my documentation.

It sounds like they confused the l3 local cache, which actually combines to make the l3 cache shared by all cores (its connected to every core in a strip that goes through the middle of the chip) that's up to 4MB for every section the length of the core confused with the l1/l2 cache that's in each core.

Configuration: IBM Power 730 Express server: POWER7 cpu, 3.55 GHz, 2 sockets (8 cores per socket, 16-cores total, 64-threads total), one Memory Controller per socket, 64 GB RDIMM DDR3 (Registered DDR3-1066 CL7).
567 mm2, 45nm, 11 layers, Cu, SOI, eDRAM, 1.2 B transistors


L1 Data cache = 32 KB, 128 B/line, 8-WAY, store-through, EA index, 2 reads + 1 write every cycle


L1 Instruction cache = 32 KB, 128 B/line, 4-WAY

L2 cache = 256 KB per core, 128 B/line, 8-WAY, Store-In

L3 local cache (Fast-L3 Region cache) = up to 4 MB (eDRAM), 128 B/line, Policy: Partial Victim

L3 cache = 32 MB per chip (eDRAM) consist of LOCAL-L3 from another cores, 128 B/line, (maybe sends 2 lines for read request). Policy: Adaptive victim

Now, I'm NOT saying THIS power 7 configuration is going into wii u. That's silly.

But even on this big boy, you can see the real l-1-2-3 caches.... You ain't getting 4big ones per core in the sense of it being IN the core like the l1/2 cache.

cdn.arstechnica.net/power7_ars.jpg

You can literally see the l3 memory just outside the core, adjacent to the l2 cache.

Yeah, just looked up wiki, and the wording is a little misleading, making it seem like the l3 is INSIDE each core, which isn't the case.

Seems to me like somewhere down the line some folks are getting their caches mixed up.

Just found your sourcing man.

wiiudaily.com/wii-u-system-specs/

this looks like doo doo. Power pc is a major red flag off the get go, and then these caches are incredibly suspicious, am I to seriously believe there is only one cache per chip and no l3 connected to I/o and memory controllers linking all the cores?

pretty stinky.

Edited by 3Dude, 21 August 2012 - 02:02 PM.

[MorbidGod]

The Wii U has, as i have said all this time, a custom Power cpu based off POWER7. They obviously have geared the processor for games and video processing, rather then being geared towards being in servers. But having that is really good for streaming, whicg is probably why Nintendo and IBM choose IBM POWER7 to base it off of.

[Robotic Sunshine Commander]

The Wii U has, as i have said all this time, a custom Power cpu based off POWER7. They obviously have geared the processor for games and video processing, rather then being geared towards being in servers. But having that is really good for streaming, whicg is probably why Nintendo and IBM choose IBM POWER7 to base it off of.

im pretty sure a dev themselves said the processor is made for streaming two device screens

[3Dude]

The Wii U has, as i have said all this time, a custom Power cpu based off POWER7. They obviously have geared the processor for games and video processing, rather then being geared towards being in servers. But having that is really good for streaming, whicg is probably why Nintendo and IBM choose IBM POWER7 to base it off of.

Nintendo chose power 7 because ibm's mission statement was to increase performance while lowering clock speed, lowering power draw, cost, and maintaining the same thermal envelope as previous gen power chips.

And one of the major changes they made, that the entire architecture relies on, was shrinking l1 and l2 cache sizes, (p7 l1 is half of p6 l1 at 32 kb, and p7 l2 cache size is an eigth of p6's at 256 kb vs 2MB) while lowering latency, which shot memory bandwidth through the roof (I'm always trying to tell people, ram performance just isn't about capacity.)

Which just make these goofy 'leaks' where people claim its power 7 based, but have these gigantic clunky power 7 core philosophy breaking l2 cache sizes of .5MB and 2MB.

Nintendo wants a custom p7 sure. But not a crappified one. IBM doubled and quadroupled gb/s throughput, with a fraction of the memory, (and thus a fraction of the price for that memory), at a ghz lower clockspeed.

That's cheaper faster stronger. Nintendo WONT be making a custom chip that gets rid of that.

Edited by 3Dude, 21 August 2012 - 09:30 PM.

[Soul]

This is stone age news. I can't believe this thread isn't locked. You had me jumping for joy until you said this news is a year old.

[3Dude]

This is stone age news. I can't believe this thread isn't locked. You had me jumping for joy until you said this news is a year old.

Wait the only reason you aren't happy wii u has a power 7 cpu is because you juat found out the news is a year old?

Okay.

[thehappening]

non of those links proves anything about a power7 cpu in any way shape or form outside your own wishful thinking the only cpu news we have is IBM STATED POWER 7 TECH they were refering to the IBM EDRAM

the only other rumor news info we have is the vgleaks FULL SPEC - CLOCKSPEEDS and the tekken guy NEVER EVER STATED SAID OR OTHER THE WORD WEAKso thios tread like so many others is pathetic chinesse wispers and fanboy wishful thinking

IT IS 3 SINGLE THREAD OUT OF ORDER CORES WITH 3MB LEVEL 2 CATCH 512K PER CORE X2 AND 1 CORE WITH 2MB it has out of order execution and graphics burst pipes = POWERPC 400 SERIES IMPROVED WITH BROADWAYS GAMECENTRIC NINTENDO SPEC

• PowerPC architecture.
• Three cores (fully coherent).
• 3MB aggregate L2 Cache size.
• core 0: 512 KB
• core 1: 2048 KB
• core 2: 512 KB
• Write gatherer per core.
• Locked (L1d) cache DMA per core.

as i lie in my bed bruce willis walks in i turn my head and wisper """"I SEE POWERPC BROADSWAY FAMILY X 3 CORES """"""!!!!!

[Socalmuscle]

non of those links proves anything about a power7 cpu in any way shape or form outside your own wishful thinking the only cpu news we have is IBM STATED POWER 7 TECH they were refering to the IBM EDRAM

the only other rumor news info we have is the vgleaks FULL SPEC - CLOCKSPEEDS and the tekken guy NEVER EVER STATED SAID OR OTHER THE WORD WEAKso thios tread like so many others is pathetic chinesse wispers and fanboy wishful thinking

IT IS 3 SINGLE THREAD OUT OF ORDER CORES WITH 3MB LEVEL 2 CATCH 512K PER CORE X2 AND 1 CORE WITH 2MB it has out of order execution and graphics burst pipes = POWERPC 400 SERIES IMPROVED WITH BROADWAYS GAMECENTRIC NINTENDO SPEC

• PowerPC architecture.
• Three cores (fully coherent).
• 3MB aggregate L2 Cache size.
• core 0: 512 KB
• core 1: 2048 KB
• core 2: 512 KB
• Write gatherer per core.
• Locked (L1d) cache DMA per core.

as i lie in my bed bruce willis walks in i turn my head and wisper """"I SEE POWERPC BROADSWAY FAMILY X 3 CORES """"""!!!!!

Nope.

[Robotic Sunshine Commander]

the gpu and cpu share different tasks in the wii u then they do in the xbox and ps. thats why he is still trying to figure it out.

[3Dude]

non of those links proves anything about a power7 cpu in any way shape or form outside your own wishful thinking the only cpu news we have is IBM STATED POWER 7 TECH they were refering to the IBM EDRAM

the only other rumor news info we have is the vgleaks FULL SPEC - CLOCKSPEEDS and the tekken guy NEVER EVER STATED SAID OR OTHER THE WORD WEAKso thios tread like so many others is pathetic chinesse wispers and fanboy wishful thinking

IT IS 3 SINGLE THREAD OUT OF ORDER CORES WITH 3MB LEVEL 2 CATCH 512K PER CORE X2 AND 1 CORE WITH 2MB it has out of order execution and graphics burst pipes = POWERPC 400 SERIES IMPROVED WITH BROADWAYS GAMECENTRIC NINTENDO SPEC

• PowerPC architecture.
• Three cores (fully coherent).
• 3MB aggregate L2 Cache size.
• core 0: 512 KB
• core 1: 2048 KB
• core 2: 512 KB
• Write gatherer per core.
• Locked (L1d) cache DMA per core.

as i lie in my bed bruce willis walks in i turn my head and wisper """"I SEE POWERPC BROADSWAY FAMILY X 3 CORES """"""!!!!!

No guy, I'm pretty sure the official ibm watson twitter feed saying its the exact same power 7 chips means something.

And I'm pretty sure nintendo doesn't want to use an architecture line that crashed and burned in 2006.