59 replies to this topic

[3Dude]

I will explain some basics. This is rough estimations.
Inside any cpu or digital device is transistors which make all the logic happen, generally the more transistor you can fit into a cpu the more performance it has provided you do it logically. Transistors at any fabrication process are spread out in such that you can only fit so many transistor in an area, this is called transistor density of cpu. The Wii U cpu use a 45nm fabrication process very simular to the way the cpu in the 360 slim is made. The smaller the process the more transistors you can fit into the same area. Current intel cpus are made using a 22nm process. Moore's Law allows has show that performance increases almost linear with the number of transistor you can put in.
The Wii U cpu is 32.76mm^2 as measured by anandtech, the xbox 360 cpu is about 88 mm^2 now using the same process as the Wii U, so transistor density should be about the same. The 360's cpu is 2.7 times the size of the Wii U's, meaning there is probably more than 2x the transistors inside the 360's cpu than the Wii U. This does not mean that the Wii U's cpu is only 50% the performance of the xbox 360 but it gives a good indication that the performance is significantly less. This estimate is probably off by as much as 50% but even then it would put the cpu less powerful than the 360's. So the performance of the Wii U's cpu when doing general processing tasks and doing AI, physics and memory accessing will be slower. I would probably think the Wii U's cpu is only about 80% of the performance as the 360 in gaming. This makes it very hard to port a game without a lot of work, the good thing is the cpu isn't the limiting factor inside the 360 most of the time so it won't show up too much if the developers are porting well.
The GPU inside the Wii U is about 2x as fast as the 360. This will allow Wii U to do games at almost 2x the graphics details. GPGPU can't be easily added to existing game engines. It is very different than coding for just a cpu and gpu, it will take some time to get used to. The 360 also has gpgpu functions. This will not solve all the processing limitations in the long run.
Overall the balance isn't great, Nintindo's console will probably be able to play current gen games but just that. With the next generation of consoles, the Wii U will be like the Wii. I wouldn't be surprised if an Wii U emulator be made by the time the nextbox and ps4 come out for the PC.
These are all my estimates and from my experience as a person with a little cpu design experience. The overall result shouldn't be too far off but can still have a pretty large margine of error as nintendo is keeping all the detail secrete.

THANK YOU. I actually GAVE somebody the cpu size and transistor density information yrsterday hoping they had the knowledge to make a decent argument with it, and they COMPLETELY ignored it, and continued circle jerking baseless hearsay.

Nintendos not keeping TOO many secrets this time. And what little they are was given away a long time ago by partners like ibm.

So, we KNOW Nintendos cpu is transistor starved because of its size right? Physics dictate you can only have so many objects of the same size in a given space. So HOW are devs who are actually MAKING wii u games getting the cpu performamce out of the system that they are? Seriously, look at wonderful 101, that is a LOT. Nano assault is only using one core, and has thousands of simultaneous characters and objects on screen simultaneously. HOW?

Clock speed and even cores is no longer the main impediment to performance, (thanks to amdahl, we cant really do much more no matter HOW many cores we add) ram latency is.

The wii u cpu has embedded ram. But not just any embedded ram, as shown in ibm's original press release, uses ibm's newest embedded ram technology. NO Its not l3, thats something else. Its the l1.

http://www-03.ibm.co...lease/34683.wss

' The all-new, Power-based microprocessor will
pack some of IBM's most advanced technology
into an energy-saving silicon package that will
power Nintendo's brand new entertainment
experience for consumers worldwide. IBM's
unique embedded DRAM, for example'

Anybody can make edram. Only ibm can license this stuff. Its edram thats bussed six ways each cell, meaning each cell performs like six transistor sram (6tsram, remember cubes blazing fast 1tsram back in the day? Yeah, 6tsram. Its the technology that made power 7 possible. Power 7 only has HALF the transistors as i7, yet it doesnt just fompete with i7, it beats it. This edram is the reason why. It allows the transistors to effectively perform as over 2x their number. Power 7 only has 1.2 billion transistors (only, lol) However the unique edram allows it the equivilant performance of a 2.7 billion transistor chip. THATS how Nintendo managed such a small cpu.

Read it from the official power 7 documentation I have attached that details ibm's (then) new unique edram technology.

Attached Files

•  Power7.pdf   9.92MB   1094 downloads

[Bunkei]

I will explain some basics. This is rough estimations.

Inside any cpu or digital device is transistors which make all the logic happen, generally the more transistor you can fit into a cpu the more performance it has provided you do it logically. Transistors at any fabrication process are spread out in such that you can only fit so many transistor in an area, this is called transistor density of cpu. The Wii U cpu use a 45nm fabrication process very simular to the way the cpu in the 360 slim is made. The smaller the process the more transistors you can fit into the same area. Current intel cpus are made using a 22nm process. Moore's Law allows has show that performance increases almost linear with the number of transistor you can put in.

The Wii U cpu is 32.76mm^2 as measured by anandtech, the xbox 360 cpu is about 88 mm^2 now using the same process as the Wii U, so transistor density should be about the same. The 360's cpu is 2.7 times the size of the Wii U's, meaning there is probably more than 2x the transistors inside the 360's cpu than the Wii U. This does not mean that the Wii U's cpu is only 50% the performance of the xbox 360 but it gives a good indication that the performance is significantly less. This estimate is probably off by as much as 50% but even then it would put the cpu less powerful than the 360's. So the performance of the Wii U's cpu when doing general processing tasks and doing AI, physics and memory accessing will be slower. I would probably think the Wii U's cpu is only about 80% of the performance as the 360 in gaming. This makes it very hard to port a game without a lot of work, the good thing is the cpu isn't the limiting factor inside the 360 most of the time so it won't show up too much if the developers are porting well.

The GPU inside the Wii U is about 2x as fast as the 360. This will allow Wii U to do games at almost 2x the graphics details. GPGPU can't be easily added to existing game engines. It is very different than coding for just a cpu and gpu, it will take some time to get used to. The 360 also has gpgpu functions. This will not solve all the processing limitations in the long run.

Overall the balance isn't great, Nintindo's console will probably be able to play current gen games but just that. With the next generation of consoles, the Wii U will be like the Wii. I wouldn't be surprised if an Wii U emulator be made by the time the nextbox and ps4 come out for the PC.

These are all my estimates and from my experience as a person with a little cpu design experience. The overall result shouldn't be too far off but can still have a pretty large margine of error as nintendo is keeping all the detail secrete.

I've never heard of transistor count being a barometer as to the performance of current CPU's; and to my knowledge, no one knows the transistor count of the Wii U's CPU. Aren't you jumping the gun a bit by stating that the X360 has more? Secondly, I was looking at the list of current CPU's and notice that AMD has a few desktop CPU's with way more transistors than Intel's Core i7, but the i7 still mops the floor in most benchmarks.

With that being said, a higher transistor account in itself cannot be reliably used when comparing CPUs, right?

I'm no hardware expert, so my ally is just common sense.

[3Dude]

I've never heard of transistor count being a barometer as to the performance of current CPU's; and to my knowledge, no one knows the transistor count of the Wii U's CPU. Aren't you jumping the gun a bit by stating that the X360 has more? Secondly, I was looking at the list of current CPU's and notice that AMD has a few desktop CPU's with way more transistors than Intel's Core i7, but the i7 still mops the floor in most benchmarks.

With that being said, a higher transistor account in itself cannot be reliably used when comparing CPUs, right?

I'm no hardware expert, so my ally is just common sense.

Transistor count is most DEFINATELY an important peice of the puzzle. Though definately NOT the whole picture. They can definately be squandered by poor architecture or rendered useless by Amdahls law.

In fact, the very post you QUOTED was about one of the ways a processor with half the transistors of i7 can mop the floor with it, so I think you may have misunderstood what you read.

The reason I KNOW the 360 has more transistors than the wii u cpu is that the new revision is made on the same size process (45nm) so the transistors are the same size, yet the wii u cpu takes up much less physical area. You can only fit so many transistors of a certain size in that space.

Its like having a box full of balls, say basketballs. You van only fit five in the box, if you want more balls, you either need a bigger box (physical size of the chip) or smaller balls, (shrinking the nm process).

My post was just adressing one of the INCREDIBLY rare VALID thoughtful and LOGICAL concerns about the wii u cpu, with an officially confirmed solution. The wii u was designed for performance that heavily exceeds other systems with a similar transistor count.

[Bunkei]

Transistor count is most DEFINATELY an important peice of the puzzle. Though definately NOT the whole picture. They can definately be squandered by poor architecture or rendered useless by Amdahls law.

In fact, the very post you QUOTED was about one of the ways a processor with half the transistors of i7 can mop the floor with it, so I think you may have misunderstood what you read.

The reason I KNOW the 360 has more transistors than the wii u cpu is that the new revision is made on the same size process (45nm) so the transistors are the same size, yet the wii u cpu takes up much less physical area. You can only fit so many transistors of a certain size in that space.

Its like having a box full of balls, say basketballs. You van only fit five in the box, if you want more balls, you either need a bigger box (physical size of the chip) or smaller balls, (shrinking the nm process).

My post was just adressing one of the INCREDIBLY rare VALID thoughtful and LOGICAL concerns about the wii u cpu, with an officially confirmed solution. The wii u was designed for performance that heavily exceeds other systems with a similar transistor count.

Actually I posted my last reply right after you did (sight unseen), and you've done an excellent job explaining the situation to the point that my post is irrelevant.

[3Dude]

Actually I posted my last reply right after you did (sight unseen), and you've done an excellent job explaining the situation to the point that my post is irrelevant.

Ha! I thought you were responding to me.

Yeah, the cpu is no powerhouse, bit its definately not horribly weak either.

Audiokinetic did a performance bench after making optimizations with wwise 2012 v2 in september (4-500% improvements with optimizations), its actually capable, and a lot more optimizations are in its future.

[TomBollandLTD]

EDIT: I did write something, but this topic has taken a turn for the better ^^ so I'll take my correct, but massively low tech explination away..

Edited by TomBollandLTD, 22 November 2012 - 11:20 AM.

[3Dude]

Slow clock speeds doesn't mean a slow and weak CPU arghhhhhh.
The architecture on the Wii U is different to the ps3/360 which means it needs developing for in a different way. Which is why some of the Ports are bad, they were too lazy to alter the code so it was optimised for the wii u.

Pretty sure its the audio emulation thats doing the most damage to the ports performance.

Most reports that talk about performance issues state they dissapear when the games run on the gamepad.

Most people would think fillrate before audio, what with the change in resolution, but thats the one thing we know is a non issue on wii u for a fact.

But the audio, on tv its processed for 5 channels (standard 5.1 surround) on the game pad, its only processed for 2 channels (left and right speaker). Which is likely why we see the performance improve.

And of course, to add insult, not only is the wii u cpu forced to shodily emulate 360 sound code, the wii u cpu isnt designed to even handle audio.

The wii u has a dedicated audio processor. Of course ports, being ports, dont use the sound processor.

[reef7009]

Shall we all just give up on Wii U now then? Il cancel my pre order too

[esrever]

THANK YOU. I actually GAVE somebody the cpu size and transistor density information yrsterday hoping they had the knowledge to make a decent argument with it, and they COMPLETELY ignored it, and continued circle jerking baseless hearsay.

Nintendos not keeping TOO many secrets this time. And what little they are was given away a long time ago by partners like ibm.

So, we KNOW Nintendos cpu is transistor starved because of its size right? Physics dictate you can only have so many objects of the same size in a given space. So HOW are devs who are actually MAKING wii u games getting the cpu performamce out of the system that they are? Seriously, look at wonderful 101, that is a LOT. Nano assault is only using one core, and has thousands of simultaneous characters and objects on screen simultaneously. HOW?

Clock speed and even cores is no longer the main impediment to performance, (thanks to amdahl, we cant really do much more no matter HOW many cores we add) ram latency is.

The wii u cpu has embedded ram. But not just any embedded ram, as shown in ibm's original press release, uses ibm's newest embedded ram technology. NO Its not l3, thats something else. Its the l1.

http://www-03.ibm.co...lease/34683.wss

' The all-new, Power-based microprocessor will
pack some of IBM's most advanced technology
into an energy-saving silicon package that will
power Nintendo's brand new entertainment
experience for consumers worldwide. IBM's
unique embedded DRAM, for example'

Anybody can make edram. Only ibm can license this stuff. Its edram thats bussed six ways each cell, meaning each cell performs like six transistor sram (6tsram, remember cubes blazing fast 1tsram back in the day? Yeah, 6tsram. Its the technology that made power 7 possible. Power 7 only has HALF the transistors as i7, yet it doesnt just fompete with i7, it beats it. This edram is the reason why. It allows the transistors to effectively perform as over 2x their number. Power 7 only has 1.2 billion transistors (only, lol) However the unique edram allows it the equivilant performance of a 2.7 billion transistor chip. THATS how Nintendo managed such a small cpu.

Read it from the official power 7 documentation I have attached that details ibm's (then) new unique edram technology.

From what I understand, the embedded ram inside the Wii U cpu is there to make up for the slow memory as well as the lack of a lot of cache. Although IBM's cpus integrating ram onto the cpu allows for more performance, it does not allow so much more performance per transistor as that. We have very little information on what archetecture is inside the Wii U but it should be a powerPC derivative like the 360's. It is very unlikely that the chip can perform better than the 360's due to the die size limitations even with the embedded ram because the ram itself take transistors and RAM can't be stacked as dense as cpu or cache transistors, however much embedded ram is in the chip would therefor have to cost die area as well. It ends up evening out somewhat from the chip design perspective. Embed ram in servers make sense due to the need for a lot of cache and buffers to main memory, its performance increase in a console probably isn't significant.

If the third die is embed ram, then we are probably looking at <4MB of ram there just from the area, it could allow for optimizations but it is not a complete game changer.

I've never heard of transistor count being a barometer as to the performance of current CPU's; and to my knowledge, no one knows the transistor count of the Wii U's CPU. Aren't you jumping the gun a bit by stating that the X360 has more? Secondly, I was looking at the list of current CPU's and notice that AMD has a few desktop CPU's with way more transistors than Intel's Core i7, but the i7 still mops the floor in most benchmarks.

With that being said, a higher transistor account in itself cannot be reliably used when comparing CPUs, right?

I'm no hardware expert, so my ally is just common sense.

It is true that transistor count is the best way to judge performance but it is a very good way to estimate performance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count
you can see that the newer chips have higher transistor count and if you go and check performance, it pretty much scales up just like that. It is a rough estimate but its a good guess.

AMD's cpus have a few flaws in them so it very hard to get at the performance of the transistors, the peak performance of AMD's current CPUs are as much if not more than intel's CPUs with the given transistor budget but given the software constrains and the fact that most software does not optimize for AMD's platforms result in bad showing for the chips. Comparing chips from different companies is also much harder to do as they have different ways of doing things. This is why the 360's cpu is such a good candidate for comparison, it was designed by IBM as well as the Wii U's cpu. This makes it a better comparison than Intel vs AMD.

Higher transistor count alone can't be 100% accurate but it should be able to estimate within a certain range of probability. Task specific optimizations are often there as well to skew performance but this does not change the game completely. For a general processing unit, the transistor budget is one of the most important part of designing the chip to be able to hit performance requirements.

[Zonark]

Its no under powered... AMD makes graphic cards that can boost PC performance in terms of raw power yes its a gpu that doubles up like a CPU. Im for sure that technology is inside the wii u. Take a look at the insides the gpu and CPU are on one chip basically making it process incredibly fast compared to have to go from CPU to mb to bridge to gfx card to gpu thus it will not be under powered by any means

[esrever]

Its no under powered... AMD makes graphic cards that can boost PC performance in terms of raw power yes its a gpu that doubles up like a CPU. Im for sure that technology is inside the wii u. Take a look at the insides the gpu and CPU are on one chip basically making it process incredibly fast compared to have to go from CPU to mb to bridge to gfx card to gpu thus it will not be under powered by any means

This can but done but is very limited, only some things can be done on the gpu portion. Game engines have to be completely redone to use this so I wouldn't count on 3rd party devs to use it much.

[3Dude]

From what I understand, the embedded ram inside the Wii U cpu is there to make up for the slow memory as well as the lack of a lot of cache. Although IBM's cpus integrating ram onto the cpu allows for more performance, it does not allow so much more performance per transistor as that. We have very little information on what archetecture is inside the Wii U but it should be a powerPC derivative like the 360's. It is very unlikely that the chip can perform better than the 360's due to the die size limitations even with the embedded ram because the ram itself take transistors and RAM can't be stacked as dense as cpu or cache transistors, however much embedded ram is in the chip would therefor have to cost die area as well. It ends up evening out somewhat from the chip design perspective. Embed ram in servers make sense due to the need for a lot of cache and buffers to main memory, its performance increase in a console probably isn't significant.
If the third die is embed ram, then we are probably looking at <4MB of ram there just from the area, it could allow for optimizations but it is not a complete game changer.

It is true that transistor count is the best way to judge performance but it is a very good way to estimate performance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count
you can see that the newer chips have higher transistor count and if you go and check performance, it pretty much scales up just like that. It is a rough estimate but its a good guess.

AMD's cpus have a few flaws in them so it very hard to get at the performance of the transistors, the peak performance of AMD's current CPUs are as much if not more than intel's CPUs with the given transistor budget but given the software constrains and the fact that most software does not optimize for AMD's platforms result in bad showing for the chips. Comparing chips from different companies is also much harder to do as they have different ways of doing things. This is why the 360's cpu is such a good candidate for comparison, it was designed by IBM as well as the Wii U's cpu. This makes it a better comparison than Intel vs AMD.

Higher transistor count alone can't be 100% accurate but it should be able to estimate within a certain range of probability. Task specific optimizations are often there as well to skew performance but this does not change the game completely. For a general processing unit, the transistor budget is one of the most important part of designing the chip to be able to hit performance requirements.

It doesnt make up for the slow main ram, its called a memory heiarchy, look it up, having faster main ram would be absolutely pointless and a waste of money because no ram in EXISTANCE can hope to match the bandwidth and low latency of edram performing as 6tsram, what the edram DOESNT have, is capacity, which is where the main ram comes in. Its a BUCKET, not performance ram.

And yes, that is EXACTLY what it does for performance, or did you miss the OFFICIAL IBM DOCUMENTATION attached to my post that says it WORD FOR WORD.

[Bunkei]

AMD's cpus have a few flaws in them so it very hard to get at the performance of the transistors, the peak performance of AMD's current CPUs are as much if not more than intel's CPUs with the given transistor budget but given the software constrains and the fact that most software does not optimize for AMD's platforms result in bad showing for the chips. Comparing chips from different companies is also much harder to do as they have different ways of doing things. This is why the 360's cpu is such a good candidate for comparison, it was designed by IBM as well as the Wii U's cpu. This makes it a better comparison than Intel vs AMD.

The part I highlighted is of interest because isn't that the same issue facing the Wii U?

Lastly, it's true that both chipsets are made by IBM, but separated by at least 7 years. It's hard to believe that the Wii U's CPU designed by IBM is outperformed by a 7-year old CPU from the same company. However, it definitely makes sense that software optimized for an older architecture doesn't run very well on a newer architecture that is completely different in design and philosophy. So obviously, software itself can make a huge difference in how the hardware performs as much as the hardware itself (as you mentioned).

Edited by Bunkei, 22 November 2012 - 02:39 PM.

[esrever]

The part I highlighted is of interest because isn't that the same issue facing the Wii U?

Lastly, it's true that both chipsets are made by IBM, but separated by at least 7 years. It's hard to believe that the Wii U's CPU designed by IBM is outperformed by a 7-year old CPU from the same company. However, it definitely makes sense that software optimized for an older architecture doesn't run very well on a newer architecture that is completely different in design and philosophy. So obviously, software itself can make a huge difference in how the hardware performs as much as the hardware itself (as you mentioned).

The issue here is the cpu doesn't actually have very much resource. There are definately optimization gains but not to the point where it would suddenly make the cpu more powerful than that of the 360. Judging by the size of the chip, its very likely that nintendo only paid a little as possible and only have a cheap but sufficience CPU for current games as well as being fully backward compatible. It is most likely based on the Wii CPU because the size is too small for indirect emulation.

It would cost a lot of money for nintendo to pay for a completely new design from IBM like sony paid for the CELL. IBM has completely forgone hardware developement for small systems such as PCs and consoles in the recent years. They only focus on large hot and powerful server chips and such. The power7 chips are 200 watt chips that would never work in a console and would be very hard to scale down well enough. The cpu most likely contains the same power ISA as the Wii but with a more modern instruction decode and caching. Thus it probably isn't something completely modern.

It doesnt make up for the slow main ram, its called a memory heiarchy, look it up, having faster main ram would be absolutely pointless and a waste of money because no ram in EXISTANCE can hope to match the bandwidth and low latency of edram performing as 6tsram, what the edram DOESNT have, is capacity, which is where the main ram comes in. Its a BUCKET, not performance ram.

And yes, that is EXACTLY what it does for performance, or did you miss the OFFICIAL IBM DOCUMENTATION attached to my post that says it WORD FOR WORD.

The eDram is a buffer just like the cache, cache would be faster so it would be higher level. The eDram would only be there to buffer main memory so it would be used as thus.

Edited by esrever, 22 November 2012 - 02:52 PM.

[Bunkei]

The issue here is the cpu doesn't actually have very much resource. There are definately optimization gains but not to the point where it would suddenly make the cpu more powerful than that of the 360. Judging by the size of the chip, its very likely that nintendo only paid a little as possible and only have a cheap but sufficience CPU for current games as well as being fully backward compatible. It is most likely based on the Wii CPU because the size is too small for indirect emulation.

It would cost a lot of money for nintendo to pay for a completely new design from IBM like sony paid for the CELL. IBM has completely forgone hardware developement for small systems such as PCs and consoles in the recent years. They only focus on large hot and powerful server chips and such. The power7 chips are 200 watt chips that would never work in a console and would be very hard to scale down well enough. The cpu most likely contains the same power ISA as the Wii but with a more modern instruction decode and caching. Thus it probably isn't something completely modern.


The eDram is a buffer just like the cache, cache would be faster so it would be higher level. The eDram would only be there to buffer main memory so it would be used as thus.

Given how the PS3 performed, I can't blame Nintendo. You've made a lot of assumptions to this point, and now you're saying that since the Wii U is backwardly compatible with the Wii games, the CPU must be based on the same architecture. However according to IBM, the POWER processors include the PowerPC instruction set, which would explain how the Wii U is able to run Wii games.

In fact, IBM has said many times that the Wii U's CPU is a Power-based, not PowerPC.

Edited by Bunkei, 22 November 2012 - 03:03 PM.

[esrever]

Given how the PS3 performed, I can't blame Nintendo. You've made a lot of assumptions to this point, and now you're saying that since the Wii U is backwardly compatible with the Wii games, the CPU must be based on the same architecture. However according to IBM, the POWER processors include the PowerPC instruction set, which would explain how the Wii U is able to run Wii games.

In fact, IBM has said many times that the Wii U's CPU is a Power-based, not PowerPC.

power-based includes powerPC as well as all the other power derivatives. We know its not a power7 based on IBM denying it. I have made a lot of assumptions but given situation its more likely than not. There is really no reason for IBM to develope a custom POWER cpu as the extra bits of the ISA isn't useful here. PowerPC contains all the instructions you'd need in a console, POWER just has a lot of memory management and also security.

[3Dude]

The issue here is the cpu doesn't actually have very much resource. There are definately optimization gains but not to the point where it would suddenly make the cpu more powerful than that of the 360. Judging by the size of the chip, its very likely that nintendo only paid a little as possible and only have a cheap but sufficience CPU for current games as well as being fully backward compatible. It is most likely based on the Wii CPU because the size is too small for indirect emulation.
It would cost a lot of money for nintendo to pay for a completely new design from IBM like sony paid for the CELL. IBM has completely forgone hardware developement for small systems such as PCs and consoles in the recent years. They only focus on large hot and powerful server chips and such. The power7 chips are 200 watt chips that would never work in a console and would be very hard to scale down well enough. The cpu most likely contains the same power ISA as the Wii but with a more modern instruction decode and caching. Thus it probably isn't something completely modern.
The eDram is a buffer just like the cache, cache would be faster so it would be higher level. The eDram would only be there to buffer main memory so it would be used as thus.

You are confusing l1, with l2 (both within the processor core of this design there is no edram die, its all IN the processor core, thats what makes this ibms NEW ram technology READ THE DOCUMENTATION). The l2 buffers main memory so the l1 doesnt get caught waiting for the slow main mem to be available. Again, its called a memory hiearchy.

There is Nothing hot about power 7, its one of the most thermal and power savvy designs ever made (which is a real surprise after the break up of power mac), it has fantastic performance per watt which SCALES LINEARLY, for the love of cheese WILL YOU READ THE DAMN DOCUMENTATION. You dont even have to read past page 1, how lazy can you be?


Power 7 was designed as a high performance low power low thermal envelope processor. They fit 8 cores in the same power thermal and socket size as the dual core (that means 2) power 6. Its 1/4 as hot, (talking per core), takes 1/4 the power, clocked over a Ghz slower, and delivers over twice the performance.

The way they accomplished this was with a new edram technology, as stated by ibm, in the official ibm documentation i posted,That you are refusing to read, the same ram technology ibm confirmed when they announced they were making quote 'an all new' cpu for wii u, said press release also previously linked to by me. This is why ibm watson said it shared the same technology. The edram technology is what made power 7 possible at such a small size per processor, low thermal envelope per processor, and at a lower clock speed than power 6.

Power 7 chips are NOT 200 watt monsters. You are talking about the power 7 server PACKAGE, which contains 8 power 7 processors two MASSIVE memory controllers, 32Mb l3 cache, and a HUGE i/o strip. Its in the documentation. IF YOU WOULD READ IT. Also in the documentation are smaller p7 packages for custom customers, including a half socket 1 or up to 4 core reduced pin package.... as stated in the documentation. Its a very adaptable processor, ibm will get a lot of mileage put of it and its dirivitives

Power 7, or processors based on its technology dont have to be large, hot, or even powerful. It simply gets fantastic performance per watt. If you only give a few watts, it outperforms processors in that power range because it gets better performance per watt.

Seriously, read the documentation.

[Bunkei]

You are confusing l1, with l2 (both within the processor core of this design there is no edram die, its all IN the processor core, thats what makes this ibms NEW ram technology READ THE DOCUMENTATION). The l2 buffers main memory so the l1 doesnt get caught waiting for the slow main mem to be available. Again, its called a memory hiearchy.

There is Nothing hot about power 7, its one of the most thermal and power savvy designs ever made (which is a real surprise after the break up of power mac), it has fantastic performance per watt which SCALES LINEARLY, for the love of cheese WILL YOU READ THE DAMN DOCUMENTATION. You dont even have to read past page 1, how lazy can you be?


Power 7 was designed as a high performance low power low thermal envelope processor. They fit 8 cores in the same power thermal and socket size as the dual core (that means 2) power 6. Its 1/4 as hot, (talking per core), takes 1/4 the power, clocked over a Ghz slower, and delivers over twice the performance.

The way they accomplished this was with a new edram technology, as stated by ibm, in the official ibm documentation i posted,That you are refusing to read, the same ram technology ibm confirmed when they announced they were making quote 'an all new' cpu for wii u, said press release also previously linked to by me. This is why ibm watson said it shared the same technology. The edram technology is what made power 7 possible at such a small size per processor, low thermal envelope per processor, and at a lower clock speed than power 6.

Power 7 chips are NOT 200 watt monsters. You are talking about the power 7 server PACKAGE, which contains 8 power 7 processors two MASSIVE memory controllers, 32Mb l3 cache, and a HUGE i/o strip. Its in the documentation. IF YOU WOULD READ IT. Also in the documentation are smaller p7 packages for custom customers, including a half socket 1 or up to 4 core reduced pin package.... as stated in the documentation. Its a very adaptable processor, ibm will get a lot of mileage put of it and its dirivitives

Power 7, or processors based on its technology dont have to be large, hot, or even powerful. It simply gets fantastic performance per watt. If you only give a few watts, it outperforms processors in that power range because it gets better performance per watt.

Seriously, read the documentation.

Thanks for the explanation (again). Now even though I probably won't understand what's being said, is there a link to the documentation you mention that can serve a resource?

There's more misinformation being spread about the Wii U's hardware than not. It's great to have someone who understands why Nintendo went the unconventional route with the Wii U and the potential advantages.

Edited by Bunkei, 22 November 2012 - 06:37 PM.

[Noonabites]

It isn't gossip when it comes directly from multiple directors' mouths.

The thing is most statements have been proven to be at the beginning stages of the Wii U development, have been proven false or have been retracted. Also, I was talking about this statement specifically, which isn't a personal opinion, but rather him just stating what the others are talking about. This is gossip.

[esrever]

You are confusing l1, with l2 (both within the processor core of this design there is no edram die, its all IN the processor core, thats what makes this ibms NEW ram technology READ THE DOCUMENTATION). The l2 buffers main memory so the l1 doesnt get caught waiting for the slow main mem to be available. Again, its called a memory hiearchy.

There is Nothing hot about power 7, its one of the most thermal and power savvy designs ever made (which is a real surprise after the break up of power mac), it has fantastic performance per watt which SCALES LINEARLY, for the love of cheese WILL YOU READ THE DAMN DOCUMENTATION. You dont even have to read past page 1, how lazy can you be?


Power 7 was designed as a high performance low power low thermal envelope processor. They fit 8 cores in the same power thermal and socket size as the dual core (that means 2) power 6. Its 1/4 as hot, (talking per core), takes 1/4 the power, clocked over a Ghz slower, and delivers over twice the performance.

The way they accomplished this was with a new edram technology, as stated by ibm, in the official ibm documentation i posted,That you are refusing to read, the same ram technology ibm confirmed when they announced they were making quote 'an all new' cpu for wii u, said press release also previously linked to by me. This is why ibm watson said it shared the same technology. The edram technology is what made power 7 possible at such a small size per processor, low thermal envelope per processor, and at a lower clock speed than power 6.

Power 7 chips are NOT 200 watt monsters. You are talking about the power 7 server PACKAGE, which contains 8 power 7 processors two MASSIVE memory controllers, 32Mb l3 cache, and a HUGE i/o strip. Its in the documentation. IF YOU WOULD READ IT. Also in the documentation are smaller p7 packages for custom customers, including a half socket 1 or up to 4 core reduced pin package.... as stated in the documentation. Its a very adaptable processor, ibm will get a lot of mileage put of it and its dirivitives

Power 7, or processors based on its technology dont have to be large, hot, or even powerful. It simply gets fantastic performance per watt. If you only give a few watts, it outperforms processors in that power range because it gets better performance per watt.

Seriously, read the documentation.

IBM denied the watson comment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POWER7

• 45 nm SOI process, 567 mm²
• 1.2 billion transistors
• 3.0 – 4.25 GHz clock speed
• max 4 chips per quad-chip module
  
• 4, 6 or 8 cores per chip
  
• 4 SMT threads per core (available in AIX 6.1 TL05 (releases in April 2010) and above)
• 12 execution units per core:
  
• 2 fixed-point units
• 2 load/store units
• 4 double-precision floating-point units
• 1 vector unit supporting VSX
• 1 decimal floating-point unit
• 1 branch unit
• 1 condition register unit

[*]32+32 kB L1 instruction and data cache (per core)^[13]
[*]256 kB L2 Cache (per core)
[*]4 MB L3 cache per core with maximum up to 32MB supported. The cache is implemented in eDRAM, which does not require as many transistors per cell as a standard SRAM^[5] so it allows for a larger cache while using the same area as SRAM
[/list][/list]Any reason why the power7 chip is 17x the size of the Wii U's cpu?

Please understand that the edram is an L3 which buffers main memory in the power7. The L2 buffers the L3. With the size of the Wii U's cpu, there would be very little L2 if any at all. Please do some basic research.

The documentations you linked didn't really say anything.

Thanks for the explanation (again). Now even though I probably won't understand what's being said, is there a link to the documentation you mention that can serve a resource?

There's more misinformation being spread about the Wii U's hardware than not. It's great to have someone who understands why Nintendo went the unconventional route with the Wii U and the potential advantages.

for now, all we know is the chip is about 1/3 the size of the 360's cpu using the same manufacturing process. No other documentations have been release. Everything else is either rumor or marketing hype as far as Im concerned. "The same processor technology found in watson" can be just about anything. Could mean that both use electricity for all the good it says. There is definately some eDRAM(not sure how much), which is just a type of memory very close to the cpu core, it ussually used to buffer main memory from CPU cache or in special fixed logic fuctions(very unlikely for a cpu to have this). eDRAM allows for more cache space and is faster than SRAM when used in large quantities. This makes for a faster and larger L3 in designs such as the power7.

The main advantage of the Wii U is the gpu and the large memory bank compared to the current consoles. The gpu is expected to have about 2x the shader performance of the 360 as well as more modern shaders. There is most likely 32Mb of eDRAM on the gpu compared to the 10Mb in the 360, this is just rumour but its very likely as it allows for 4 frame of 1080p renders or 8 frames of 720p, this kind of buffer allows fast read and writes and touchups, won't be able to store textures. This allows for basic antialising to be much less demanding. The 1GB of usable system memory will allow decent textures and also less loading times.