42 replies to this topic

[The Lonely Koopa]

http://iwataasks.nin...iiu/console/0/0

Pictures (from iwatask)









I haven't read much of it and so I'm pretty sure we didn't get any specs, Iwata was more than happy to show us the internals.

(updating with more pictures.)

Edited by The Lonely Koopa, 10 October 2012 - 05:55 PM.

[SPG]

thats some sexy hardware

[Press]

Sexy? It's quite simple, really. lol

[Alianjaro]

Sexy? It's quite simple, really. lol

Simple is sexy.

[Mignaga]

I really want a clear Wii U now. That would be awesome.

[cannonshane]

^^^ It will only be a matter of time before some 3rd party starts to make cases.

[Goose]

So anyone with tech knowhow get anything from this??

[milky105p]

So anyone with tech knowhow get anything from this??

sadly this still doesnt give much away other than some design work. We all are still curious about the exact model of gpu or cpu thats in this thing

[xile6]

Wish there was a tear down tho.
And wonder if those 2 fans will be loud.

[Goose]

sadly this still doesnt give much away other than some design work. We all are still curious about the exact model of gpu or cpu thats in this thing

Hmm it seems like the Wii U uses the same GPU and shniz to run Wii games as opposed to the Wii having a Gamecube built inside of it. This could free up a lot of space.

[Mr. Ferret]

Hmm it seems like the Wii U uses the same GPU and shniz to run Wii games as opposed to the Wii having a Gamecube built inside of it. This could free up a lot of space.

This makes me think that the backwards compatibility is actually achieved through emulation, like Xbox360 and PS3.

A bit more evidence that supports this idea is this picture:

"almost all your existing Wii games and accessories will work with Wii U"

[Socalmuscle]

I mentioned a while back that Nintendo would most likely emulate the wii.

Not using broadway (not to mention 3 or 4 of them "taped together") inside to save costs. And that speaks highly of the wii u CPU. And actually, it seems they have a CPU fanatic on nintendos hardware team.

Multi chip module. Pretty sweet. They explain that's part of how they got the wattage down. Also reduces latency and "increases" speed.

Of interest is the mention about wii and wii u having completely dividers t structure in terms of CPU and gpu. And instead of adding wii circuits, they Adjusted the new hardware. Sounds like software emulation with some hardware customization to fill in the gaps... That sounds familiar...

Looking at the mobo layout, you can see the painstaking design going into this thing. Iwata is extremely proud if he is showing the internals off. The CPU and gpu location is perfect as well, maximizing the airflow and distance from the casing. No wonder that's where those gigantic vents are located. Small creatures can fit through those.

Actually pretty shocking that he would reveal the guts so early. And very cool. Nintendo is such a different company. And that's a good thing.

Edited by Socalmuscle, 10 October 2012 - 11:19 PM.

[Stormage09]

a recap

Changes in Television
- Iwata Asks series began with “The Wii Hardware” session six years ago
- Iwata didn’t think it would go on this long
- Iwata says that overall hardware development must have felt like making a home console and a handheld device at the same time
- Shiota agrees, as he referred to handheld elements while making the GamePad
- Kitano worked on the casing design and thermal design
- He also designed elements such as connectors and cables
- Akagi was in charge of software for the process of developing Wii U
- Wii U development began when they thought the new HD standard should be adopted
- They wanted to make something that everyone could enjoy the same way under the same circumstances in many different households of the greatest number
- Old yellow connector for sending video to the television from a console changed to HDMI
- Takeda: “That’s right. And since it’s a device you have in your living room 24 hours a day, we wanted people to enjoy various things beyond playing games that we couldn’t fully achieve with Wii. We really had to think a lot to provide Wii U at an affordable price while at the same time achieving the solid performance of the game computer.”
- Wanted to maintain the philosophy of improving efficiency while constraining power consumption
Hardware as Stagehand
- Wanted to make the casing smaller from the start
- Takeda told the team to make the console a “stagehand”
- In other words, he wanted it to be unobtrusive
- Iwata noted that those involved with the casing may find it hard to be motivated if they knew that their work was just a “stagehand”
- They reduced the characteristics of the console even more because of the GamePad
- Wii U only has one heat source; Wii has two
- This was a big change
- Heat sink used to dissipate heat
- Wii U has about three times the amount of heat as Wii, so solutions were needed
- They thought about making the fan bigger and raising the number of fan revolutions
- There were heat tests for prototypes
- Air hole placements were optimized
- Vent fan was made more efficient so it could be thinner and air could escape more smoothly
- Over 2,000 heat tests
- One heat test takes an hour
- There were also fan-noise tests
- More fan revolutions cause more noise and changes the heat level
- Wanted to see how efficiently heat could be dissipated
- Better to place the core’s heat source next to the fan
- Heat sink is over the MCM and the fan is right behind it
- Best to have heat dissipation with more air on the heat sink
- Need to dissipate heat while securing a certain amount of airways
- If you don’t do this, it won’t be efficient
- Wii U lets the air to flow efficiently and dissipate heat
- Console has a heat sink shield to suppress the electric waves from the board
Magic
- Debate as to whether Wii U should sit horizontally or vertically
- Design started in April 2009
- Team considered different configurations like horizontal types and square types like the GameCube
- Wii type design was settled on early
- They wanted Wii U to be distinct from Wii, so it mainly features a horizontal design
- Stand can make it stand upright
- Akagi and the whole testing team addressed how the completed MCM could be tested
- Iwata: “To perform the tests perfectly, you have to spend time investigating all sorts of things, but when you do that, inspection equipment expenses and the time spent are reflected in the cost. There’s a contradiction there in that you have to find a way to test thoroughly but also cost-efficiently.”
- Akagi: “Yes. The amount of time we spent testing early on was enormous and not commensurate to the cost. But when defects arose during testing, we had each person in charge analyze the contents of the defect and give feedback to the manufacturer, so we were able to gradually cut down on testing time.”
- Akagi built up know-how about which places should be checked carefully
- Where defects don’t appear and where we have to be careful are clearly visible in test defect ratios
- It’s possible to decrease the number of test patterns for places that are safer while maintain more thorough tests for parts that have a greater amount of problems
- The team had problems of defects appearing in parts for which the number of tests decreased
- Shiota: “In cooperation with the manufacturers, the hardware team and Akagi-san’s software team analyzed defects and provided feedback, in a loop like that, over and over countless times, shortening the amount of time. Having the CPU and GPU together took more time than ever to have it optimized.”
- Sometimes the Wii U encountered a defect after a day had passed
- For these situations, there are aging tests
- These tests are needed, otherwise consumers will see defects that eventually arise
- There are usually a lot of tests that take a long time and are left over toward the end of a product’s development
- As a result, it took a long time to analyze each particular defect
- Nintendo’s partners were positive about cooperating with analysis
- Takeda: “I think that’s the magic of game-console development. We carry out development together with other partner companies, but rather than having IBM employees and AMD employees and Renesas employees, we joined into what might be called “Team Nintendo”. That happened because, it seems like they can talk to their families like their children, grandchildren and spouses about what they have made. In that respect, one of the good points of game-console development is how the participants’ motivation inspired the team as a whole.”
- A lot of CPU/GPU designers have been working with Nintendo since Wii
- Shiota: “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.”
- Semiconductor was made smaller
- Power consumption also fell
- The wisdom and experience allowed for this to happen
A Game Console That Doesn’t Leech Off the TV
- Akagi hopes people will be impressed with the types of software that are possible thanks to the CPU
- The Wii U casing is like Wii’s, but there are a number of differences making things more convenient
- Ex: SYNC button is on the outside
- USB connectors are on the back for Wii, but are in the front as well on Wii U
- Two USB ports on the front and two on the back
- Cover came out forward on Wii, but goes in on Wii U
- The team applied the latest technology to improve performance, decreased power consumption, and made the casing smaller
- Shiota feels there’s a good balance between performance, power, and chip size
- Main memory capacity was increased since Wii U allows for more than just games
- Wii U comes with an HDMI cable as a standard accessory
- Wii U’s basic memory hierarchy is tightly designed
- It makes the foremost feature of this machine’s high efficiency
- Iwata: “That has been our policy since the GameCube. No matter how great the numbers are that you can boast, can you only draw that out under certain conditions, or can you actually draw out its performance consistently when you use it? Insisting on the latter way of thinking has always been at the root of hardware and system development at Nintendo.”
- Shiota thinks the GamePad will increase the amount of conversation between people
- When you touch an object on the GamePad touch screen, it’s reflected on the television
- Iwata: Hardware is indeed a stagehand, but without it, you can’t do anything. When you actually use it, it runs as a matter of course, but in order to achieve something that appears so effortless, you thermal test it thousands of times and revise the test patterns hundreds of times and perform defect analysis. I hope that the people, especially those who bother themselves to read this interview to know that in order to make this hardware at this size, with this performance, while also suppressing power consumption—and all at this price—a lot of people had to work awfully hard. That is my candid wish. We also cleared the challenge of making sure that the Wii U could send images to the Wii U GamePad continuously without latency. I’d like to ask about that in more detail when we discuss the next “Iwata Asks: Wii U GamePad.” Thank you for your time today.

[thehappening]

small blob 3xcore POERPC 400 BROADWAYFIED LARGE BLOB system center GPGPU 32mbedram DSP LIKELY ARM CO CPU AND MEMORY CONTROLLERS just like wii but now on one die and obviously wiiu spec

main ram sits on motherboard so its a system on die / chip deal with 3mb catch and 32mb gpu edram 2gb ram out side on board just as i thought it would LOOK AT THOSE TINY YET POWERFUL POWERPC 400 CORES the most powerful 32bit risc cores on the planet FACT

^^^ It will only be a matter of time before some 3rd party starts to make cases.

there has never in human history been a GINGER cool guy ad to that the actor used is one of my pet hate celebs UGLY ginger who cannot ACT lol


the sound engine runs wii and wiiu the gpu runs wii and wiiu and the powerpc cpu runs broadway cpu and the 32mb edram and large catch to cpu mimicks the 1t sram of wii GREAT DESIGN YET AGAIN FROM NINTENDO

Edited by thehappening, 11 October 2012 - 01:37 AM.

[BanjoKazooie]

small blob 3xcore POERPC 400 BROADWAYFIED LARGE BLOB system center GPGPU 32mbedram DSP LIKELY ARM CO CPU AND MEMORY CONTROLLERS just like wii but now on one die and obviously wiiu spec

main ram sits on motherboard so its a system on die / chip deal with 3mb catch and 32mb gpu edram 2gb ram out side on board just as i thought it would LOOK AT THOSE TINY YET POWERFUL POWERPC 400 CORES the most powerful 32bit risc cores on the planet FACT



there has never in human history been a GINGER cool guy ad to that the actor used is one of my pet hate celebs UGLY ginger who cannot ACT lol


the sound engine runs wii and wiiu the gpu runs wii and wiiu and the powerpc cpu runs broadway cpu and the 32mb edram and large catch to cpu mimicks the 1t sram of wii GREAT DESIGN YET AGAIN FROM NINTENDO

do we have anyone who speaks happening here??? Anyways I got nothing out of this article other than the Wii u would look freaking awesome with a clear shell!!

[Stormage09]

small blob 3xcore POERPC 400 BROADWAYFIED LARGE BLOB system center GPGPU 32mbedram DSP LIKELY ARM CO CPU AND MEMORY CONTROLLERS just like wii but now on one die and obviously wiiu spec

main ram sits on motherboard so its a system on die / chip deal with 3mb catch and 32mb gpu edram 2gb ram out side on board just as i thought it would LOOK AT THOSE TINY YET POWERFUL POWERPC 400 CORES the most powerful 32bit risc cores on the planet FACT



there has never in human history been a GINGER cool guy ad to that the actor used is one of my pet hate celebs UGLY ginger who cannot ACT lol


the sound engine runs wii and wiiu the gpu runs wii and wiiu and the powerpc cpu runs broadway cpu and the 32mb edram and large catch to cpu mimicks the 1t sram of wii GREAT DESIGN YET AGAIN FROM NINTENDO

i dont understand a s.h.i.t about whats this dude saying, is he talking s.h.i.t or a good thing? lol

Edited by Stormage09, 11 October 2012 - 02:18 AM.

[Nollog]

This makes me think that the backwards compatibility is actually achieved through emulation, like Xbox360 and PS3.

A bit more evidence that supports this idea is this picture:

"almost all your existing Wii games and accessories will work with Wii U"

Indeed it is. (or virtualisation.)
This was all but confirmed when Nintendo announced they weren't using the same ram as in the wii.

i dont understand a s.h.i.t about whats this dude saying, is he talking s.h.i.t or a good thing? lol

Looks like a little of both to me.
(I think) She's saying how they probably intent to virtualise Wii software.



that's a big heatsink.

Edited by Nollog, 11 October 2012 - 03:33 AM.

[The Lonely Koopa]

Indeed it is. (or virtualisation.)
This was all but confirmed when Nintendo announced they weren't using the same ram as in the wii.



Looks like a little of both to me.
(I think) She's saying how they probably intent to virtualise Wii software.



that's a big heatsink.

for the size of the board it is quite big .

[Stormage09]

remember is bigger than the wii, it looks so small in these pictures but actually its bigger, also the main objective for nintendo was to make a small and low power consumption console and then making it the max powerful posible while respecting the size and power thing

Edited by Stormage09, 11 October 2012 - 04:39 AM.

[3Dude]

remember is bigger than the wii, it looks so small in these pictures but actually its bigger, also the main objective for nintendo was to make a small and low power consumption console and then making it the max powerful posible while respecting the size and power thing

Hes speaking nonsense. The cpu footprint is too large to be three cores of the ppc476fp series on a 45nm process. Also, the lsi is stated in the interview to be bare on the mcm substrate, something that cant be done to the 476fp hes touting without breaking the design, it was never designed to be modular.

It appears to be 3 cpu cores in a line, with l1&2 caches (and possibly l3 need an xray) with the rest of the cpu components removed from the cpu and put bare on the substrate of the mcm between the components.

Edited by 3Dude, 11 October 2012 - 05:08 AM.