BLAST FROM THE PAST!!!
Portable GameCube Rumors From 2006For several minutes, in fact. Earlier today, IGN's Matt Casamassina posted an article that served to round up several wily Wii rumors, including the usual price ($229) and launch date (2 Nov. or 12 Nov.) suspects. More interesting, however, was the indication given by mysterious sources that IBM was in the process of shrinking and slowing down the Wii's Broadway chip for a "future Nintendo handheld -- presumably one that plays Gamecube discs."
Before the rumor managed to fully set in and plunge the masses into unyielding seizures of delight, the article was promptly pulled from the site and replaced by a decidedly unhelpful update. "At the request of our sources, who do not wish to go to jail this week, we have temporarily removed the Wii rumors piece that was posted earlier." Apparently, the oppressive and joyless Nintendo police were none too pleased with people blabbering about portable Gamecubes to IGN. When the article reappeared, all mention of it had been removed, spirited away to some great rumor recycle bin (send our love to the holographic projector).
People have been saying that Tegra is not in the 3DS but we're all 100% positive that some sort of ARM chip will be in place for DS/i backwards compatibility but I guess we can't rule out that maybe Broadway has found it's way into the 3DS too.
Could Broadway have been merged into a custom ARM chip? what about Hollywood?
Broadway is the Wii CPU(made from GC's Gekko) and Hollywood is the Wii GPU (made from GC's Flipper)
Maybe it's not exactly GC level graphics we should be expecting but roughly around Wii levels, and before the haters jump in to say "But they're the same thing" hardee har har...... I beat you to it, so go away.
You have to remember that the GC chipset was designed with low power consumption and high output in mind. You also have to remember that Iwata revently confessed to burying the ability to process 3D output for left eye/right eye in the GC hardware. The Wii chipset (Broadway/Hollywood) is a beefed up GameCube chipset (Gekko/Flipper), which means it has inherited all prior capabilities including the 3D left/right processing.
Wii has sold around 70 million units WW which means that these chips have got to be dirt cheap by now considering how cheap they were before this generation. Shrinking them down even further (for the last 4 years) would only make them cheaper and more energy efficient. A Wii only uses on average 17 watts and I would imagine that combining the 2 chips into one and die shrinking them both could severely cut that down.
I couldn't find any data on how much power a PSP or a DS uses, but I bet a die shrunk Wii would be somewhere in that ballpark.
Plausible or just crazy talk?