Topic: what partner should Nintendo get for builting the gc2 Processor?

[JonTD]

Quote
Originally posted by: oohhboy
Nobody has hard numbers, but with the two CPU's there is a large difference. RAM. While Xbox uses off the shelf DDR, Nintedo opted for t1-SRAM.

Ah, yes, but that is a limitation of the system itself, not, inherently, the CPU. There's no reason an x86 CPU shouldn't or couldn't use high-speed RAM. Once again I think it's just me thinking in terms of the CPU and you thinking more about each system as a whole. It was definitely a huge boon to Nintendo that the Gamecube is so well-balanced. Hence why it's unfair to say the CPU inside of the Gamecube in and of itself is better than that of the XBox.

Quote
Note I am running on the assumption that you know what t1-SRAM is.

Of course.

Quote
But would it satistfy all the other conditions Nintendo demanded?

Such as...? I don't really see any hurdle that PowerPC overcomes that x86 doesn't. Remember, IBM had to redesign (slightly) the G3 so it could be coupled with the wide bus of the Gamecube. No reason AMD or Intel could not do the same with their CPUs. The Pentium 4, for example, has already been designed from the start to love a wide bus.

POWER4/5 are the same.

Quote
Funny thing to note is that the PS2 has the largest Busbandwidth/fillrate out of all of them by a long shot, but you may know that the lag time from the RAM pretty much negated that advantage along with the lack of any native graphical effects forcing developers to do almost everything in software. There are many other problems, but the PS2 makes for an intersting example.

Ugh. I know. I seriously think Sony wanted to just look good on paper and did not care (or didn't think) how things would work out in real world situations. I'm not really sure, though, that they completely saw both the XBox and Gamecube coming... nor thought they would turn out to be what they are. (Two fairly powerful systems that are easy to develop for, and, compared to the PS2, far more balanced.)

Quote
I believe you would agree this is not the way to design a system. You would probaly agree that the Xbox uses brute strenght to overcome it's bottlenecks etc, oppose to the GC's design where effeneicy is the main word. This sets up the argument, which is better, being effecient, or just plain strong.

I'd argue for a well-balanced, efficient system any day. The XBox could have done better. I really think Microsoft came to the XBox with a PC-centric mindset. Hopefully (or, I guess, unfortunately if you are Nintendo and Sony) Microsoft will rectify this with the XBox2. Consoles are different, and Microsoft had a bit of a learning curve to follow. If anything, the Gamecube has proven that a well-designed, balanced system is more cost-effective than brute strength while garnering similar real world results.

[manunited4eva22]

I wouldn't mind seeing Nintendo throw a bone out to the DRAM guys. DDR-II is QDR as it is and it takes up a tad less space than the T1-SRAM (both have 1 transistor, though I believe I read that the 1T-SRAM is about 1.2x larger.

Another thing to consider would be the MagRAM, but I haven't seen a lot on it for awhile now. Either of you guys have an idea on it?

[oohhboy]

Quote
Ah, yes, but that is a limitation of the system itself, not, inherently, the CPU. There's no reason an x86 CPU shouldn't or couldn't use high-speed RAM. Once again I think it's just me thinking in terms of the CPU and you thinking more about each system as a whole. It was definitely a huge boon to Nintendo that the Gamecube is so well-balanced. Hence why it's unfair to say the CPU inside of the Gamecube in and of itself is better than that of the XBox.

"If" both CPU's did use the same RAM then it would be true that the Xbox would have had been more powerful and it was unfair of me to compare other wise. my aplogies.

Quote
Such as...? I don't really see any hurdle that PowerPC overcomes that x86 doesn't. Remember, IBM had to redesign (slightly) the G3 so it could be coupled with the wide bus of the Gamecube. No reason AMD or Intel could not do the same with their CPUs. The Pentium 4, for example, has already been designed from the start to love a wide bus.

What prevented them from picking AMD or intel over IBM? This-

Quote
The IBM processor leverages IBM's experience with complex system designs and incorporates enhancements specifically required by Nintendo. These include functions specifically designed to accelerate games processing and more efficient data bandwidth management between the processor and the game system's primary graphics chip.

Quote
"We are pleased to continue our long-standing affiliation with IBM," said Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo. "With the ability to push to even higher performance and integration levels

I believe it was all about efficenecy all along. Maybe AMD or Intel could not deliver on that note or it was political.  Artical There are more articals, but how relavent they are is up to you. This may provide some more relavent inormation. Another artical Note it mentions the the CPU runs at 405 MHz(now 485MHz). Old artical, but the general facts are still there.

[JonTD]

Quote
Originally posted by: oohhboyI believe it was all about efficenecy all along. Maybe AMD or Intel could not deliver on that note or it was political.

Well, it's really a bit of both. You have to keep in mind that the current state of PowerPC and x86 is a little different than what it was a few years ago. At the time, IBM was really doing some things no one else had quite managed yet... they were the first to move to copper, for instance. The IPC of PowerPC was stomping all over Intel, AMD, and Cyrix as well.

The problem is, however, that PowerPC really hasn't lived up to its promise as a desktop contender. Competition between AMD and Intel fueled fierce competition that pushed their chips ahead of Moore's Law. Later revisions of the Athlon and Pentium III (especially) closed the IPC gap between x86 and PowerPC. Today the last stronghold of PowerPC (heat dissipation) is also being addressed in the x86 world... top of the line PowerPC chips are hotter than ever.

So while the x86 manufacturers have stampeded ahead, PowerPC has stagnated. Motorola, IBM, and Apple had a falling out. Motorola's G4 sat at 500 MHz for over a year as the company hit hard times. Their market shifted away from the desktop to the embedded industry as Apple's marketshare slipped further and further behind. IBM waffled on the PowerPC, trying to figure out what exactly it was... an x86 distributor or a PowerPC manufacturer, finally deciding it was both.

Anyway, to make a long story short, the demand necessary to really push the PowerPC ahead in the type of applications that Nintendo would want were not there for a long time. Only now is this starting to look like its changing, and only because IBM has once again decided to start pushing the PowerPC architecture. I'm really glossing over a lot of events to give a quick summary, so don't think x86 is just stomping all over PowerPC or anything. Basically, the moral of the story is that, since AIM fell apart, IBM has focused on the really high-end (servers) and left the mid-range desktop market (and the low-end desktop market is where Nintendo will be shopping around) mostly to Motorola. Keeping up with Motorola isn't exactly difficult...

Two interesting reads: 1 GHz G3 and PowerPC 970. Here's a roadmap, though I'm not particularly fond of IBM's roadmaps myself.

SOI, RapidIO, SIMD on-chip, etc. are all pretty interesting to follow. SIMD, especially, might have some interesting benefits for Nintendo. It's good to remember that the Gamecube2 is two years away... PowerPC970/POWER5 will be coming down the pipe then and the G3 will be scaled even higher. IBM know how is a cut above the rest.

However, as far as IBM's press releases on the Nintendo deal... seems just like a lot of PR to me. PowerPC isn't the end-all-be-all, and I just don't really think it's applicable anymore to call the PowerPC more "efficient." As I said, it's all about trade-offs. I think what will keep Nintendo with IBM is IBM, not just PowerPC.

[JonTD]

Quote
Originally posted by: manunited4eva22
I wouldn't mind seeing Nintendo throw a bone out to the DRAM guys. DDR-II is QDR as it is and it takes up a tad less space than the T1-SRAM (both have 1 transistor, though I believe I read that the 1T-SRAM is about 1.2x larger.

I haven't kept up... though the data throughput should/could be better for DDR-II, the big question is latency. How does it stack up to 1T-SRAM? I haven't seen hard numbers (has anyone?) benchmarking 1T-SRAM, but it's obviously very fast... though it is NOT true SRAM, it acts somewhat like it. As far as density goes, I'd imagine if Nintendo stuck with MoSys they would incorporate 1T-SRAM-Q. It's quad density (don't confuse that with quad data rate) and incorporates a lot of other improvements to 1T-SRAM that have come along the way. You can read a brief white paper on it here.

So the size of DDR-II may not be such a boon. It's pretty annoying that MoSys doesn't talk about how high 1T-SRAM clocks, though. Or maybe they have and I missed it. It's a low key player in the memory world.

Quote
Another thing to consider would be the MagRAM, but I haven't seen a lot on it for awhile now. Either of you guys have an idea on it?

It's interesting, but it's really up in the air if it will be ready in time. It won't hit production until 2004, so it's possible... production samples should be available soon. With Nintendo's relationship with IBM... MRAM could be a real possibility. It's just that the word on MRAM has been quiet for a while. Information here and here. Does anyone have anything more recent? The big silence on it could either make it a sleeper surprise or just mean that production is much more difficult than anticipated.  

[oohhboy]

Quote
Another thing to consider would be the MagRAM, but I haven't seen a lot on it for awhile now. Either of you guys have an idea on it?

volatile

Based on what JonTD has provided (Since I don't generally read white papers for fun), MRAM has one flaw. Capacity. 32MB is not that much and in the next generation memory requirements would be much greater than what MRAM can offer without having muliple units increaing cost. Also volitability and power comsuption would be a non-issue in a console. Based on previous generations along the Nintendo line of machines, memory requirements would jump by 10 to 16 times of what is found today or about 400 to 640 MB, whether that is affordable in 2 years time is unknown. Even if the amount of RAM contained only increased by 3,4 or 5 times of today, MRAM would have trouble filling it. Of course, 400 to 640 MB of RAM is some what over kill. some where around 256MB would probaly work out with todays current displays as we come to the limit of what the human eye can see on them.

MRAM though would work wounders for the next Gameboy. But FeRAM would prove the logical choice for cost, size, capacity and latency(this being a non-issue).

[rodtod]

oohhboy, one of memory's main uses is as a temporary hard drive, so to speak. If Nintendo isn't going to use a hard drive in their next console, then they should plan to include a whole bunch of meg's of memory.

[JonTD]

Quote
Originally posted by: rodtod (emphasis mine)
oohhboy, one of memory's main uses is as a temporary hard drive, so to speak. If Nintendo isn't going to use a hard drive in their next console, then they should plan to include a whole bunch of meg's of memory.

No it's not. If you'd like to clarify...?

If anything, it's the other way around.

[manunited4eva22]

If you are referring to virtual memory, it is worthless for real time use.  

[JonTD]

Quote
Originally posted by: manunited4eva22
If you are referring to virtual memory, it is worthless for real time use.

No, it is not. And it wouldn't be virtual memory, per se. Accessing data from the hard drive is much, much faster than reading data from optical media. There are lots of things developers can utilize a hard drive for in their games. I wouldn't be at all surprised if game developers are already utilizing some of the things I'm thinking about in my head on the XBox. (Matter-of-fact, I'd be surprised if they didn't.)

At any rate, I (I'm assuming your comment is directed at me) am NOT talking about virtual memory. I'm just stating that a hard drive is not memory, memory is not a hard drive, and they're not the same in any sense of the word. (Except, of course, for virtual memory systems.) Games use memory to hold data before it is processed by the CPU or GPU. Once that data is used and no longer necessary, you want to flush it from memory as soon as possible to free up space.

A hard drive's use stems from the fact that it does not require constant power to maintain data. You cut the power and its still there. When you run a program it is loaded from the hard drive into memory. When parts of memory go unused, it is cached out to the hard drive. When a program is closed (and to close it, you would have to reload the program back into memory from the hard drive if it were cached out) some memory is then freed up for other processes. Some of the data remains in memory for a while... in case you reload the program... depending on which operating system you use. (You can test this on MacOS X. Load a program after a cold shut down and reboot. Count the bounces and then start the application again (just hope it doesn't load in one to start for this test ). Chances are you will notice the much slower run time. You can do the same with Windows... cold start, load something from quick launch, remove it from quick launch, restart, load the application again.)

I can't see how on current consoles this behavior can be replicated in any sense with any form of RAM. Which is why I disagree with the statement, "one of memory's main uses is as a temporary hard drive, so to speak." However, rodtod did say "so to speak" which is why I'm asking for a more thorough explanation... I don't currently follow his reasoning, but I'm willing to listen to what he is saying in order to clear up any misunderstandings.  

[rodtod]

JonTD, I won't bother going through a compare/contrast discussion regarding a system's memory and its hard drive. but when it comes to videogame consoles, with the exception of the Xbox, all consoles rely on memory to save data.

crap, I meant memory cards btw.