So Valve is working on a new game mode for Team Fortress 2, called “Mannpower Mode”. It is a variation of Capture the Flag and it is currently available in the beta map pool, accessible from the Play Beta Maps checkbox in Play Multiplayer. While it will change significantly over its development period, this beta launch corresponds with their Christmas promotion.
Even though it's like Capture the Flag, there are some significant differences. First, similar to many other franchises, the objective is touch-return. Fans of Unreal Tournament, Halo, and many other franchises will know that this is different in two main ways: a dropped objective will return to base instant when it is touched by a defender, and the attacker's flag must be returned in to capture the opponent's one. Second, random critical hits are disabled.
Third, grappling hooks and power-ups? I am guessing the Valve wants TF2 to be more competitive in with the fast-paced shooter crowd, so they are finding ways to increase mobility and map control within the Team Fortress 2 ruleset. Of course, that is not a criticism about TF2's game design – quite the opposite; it is different, not worse. It is interesting to think about the relatively slow characters of TF2 being used in more of a higher-reward, lower-forgiveness game mode. The updates add mobility and incentives to use it, both rewarding flag returns as well as acquiring power-ups.
Team Fortress 2 is still free-to-play, but rarely free-toupee.
Nintendo Fusion Terminal
Nintendo Fusion Terminal
GPGPU: Custom Radeon HD RX 200 GPU CODENAME LADY (2816 shaders @ 960 MHz, 4.60 TFLOP/s, Fillrates: 60.6 Gpixel/s, 170 Gtexel/s)
CPU: IBM 64-Bit Custom POWER 8-Based IBM 8-Core Processor CODENAME JUMPMAN (2.2 GHz, Shared 6 MB L4 cache)
Co-CPU: IBM PowerPC 750-based 1.24 GHz Tri-Core Co-Processor CODENAME HAMMER
MEMORY: 4 Gigabytes of Unified DDR4 SDRAM CODENAMED KONG, 2 GB DDR3 RAM @ 1600 MHz (12.8 GB/s) On Die CODENAMED BARREL
802.11 b/g/n Wireless
Bluetooth v4.0 BLE
2 USB 3.0
1 Coaxial Cable Input
1 CableCARD Slot
4 Custom Stream-Interface Nodes up to 4 Wii U GamePads
Versions with Disk Drive play Wii U Optical Disk (4 Layers Maximum), FUSION Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD) and Nintendo 3DS Card Slot
1 HDMI 2.0 1080p/4K Port
Dolby TrueHD 5.1 or 7.1 Surround Sound
Inductive Charging Surface for up to 4 FUSION DS or IC-Wii Remote Plus Controllers
Two versions: Disk Slot Version with 60 Gigs of Internal Flash Storage and Diskless Version with 300 Gigs of Internal Flash Storage
Nintendo 64
Processor: 93.75
Nintendo 64
Processor: 93.75 MHz NEC VR4300, based on MIPS R4300i-series 64-bit RISC CPU
L1 cache: 24 KiB (split: 16 KiB instruction, 8 KiB data). No L2 cache.
Busses: 32-bit address and data.
CPU to RCP Bandwidth: 250 MiB/s (non-DMA). CPU can not directly access RAM.
Instruction Set: MIPS R4000 64-bit. Addressable Memory Space: 4 GiB (Virtual 1 TiB).
5-stage scalar pipeline. Integrated FPU. 93 million operations per second.
4.6 million transistors
Manufactured by NEC using 0.35 µm process.
RAM: 4 MiB RDRAM (upgradeable to 8 MiB with 4 MiB Expansion Pak)
Data path: 9-bit width at 500 MHz
Potential Memory Bandwidth: 562.5 MiB/s
~640 ns RAM latency
Graphics: SGI 62.5 MHz 64-bit RCP (Reality Coprocessor) contains two sub-processors:
RSP (Reality Signal Processor) controls 3D graphics and sound functions
MIPS R4000-based 8-bit integer vector processor
Programmable through microcode (µcode). Allows functions to be modified or added.
Transformation, clipping, lighting, triangle setup, and audio decoding (audio could be done on main CPU as well)
Geometry throughput: initially ~100,000 polygons per second with full quality. Some later games go higher with highly optimized microcode.
RDP (Reality Drawing Processor) rasterizer handles all pixel drawing operations in hardware, such as:
Z-buffering (maintains 3D spatial relationships, is Mario in front of the tree or vice-versa?)
Anti-aliasing (smoothes jagged lines and edges)
Texture mapping (placing images over shapes, for example mapping a face image to a sphere creates head)
Bilinear filtering (prevents texture blockiness by blurring when resizing)
Mip-mapping (creates distance textures of varying degress of fidelity)
Trilinear mip-map interpolation (filters mip-maps and textures smoothly without blockiness). Nintendo 64’s filtering is not entirely accurate. Precision was reduced to lower mathematical demands
Perspective-correct texture mapping (keeps textures from “warping” when viewed at different angles)
Environment mapping (best seen with metal Mario in Super Mario 64)
Gouraud shading, Level of Detail (LOD)
Fillrate: ~30 megapixels/sec with Z-buffering enabled
128-bit internal data bus between RSP and RDP. ~1.0 GiB/s bandwidth.
Resolution: 256 × 224 to 640 × 480 pixels flicker-free, interlaced
Color depth: 16.7 million colors (32,768 on-screen)
Sound: 16-bit Stereo. ADPCM-support. Some games used MP3 audio (software-driven).
Channels: 100 PCM (max, 16-24 avg.). Each channel consumes about 1% CPU time.
Sampling: 48.0 kHz (max, 44.1 kHz is CD quality)
Media: 32 to 512-MBit (4 to 64 MiB) cartridges
Dimensions: 10.23 × 7.48 × 2.87 inches (260 × 190 × 73 mm) W×D×H
Weight: 2.4 lbs (1.1 kg)
Controller: 1 analog stick; 2 shoulder buttons; one digital cross pad; six face buttons, ‘start’ button, and one digital trigger.
Now how about the full specs.
Now how about the full specs. on the Apple A8X, and Imagination technologies owns MIPS now, so what about them offering a SMT option on their 64 bit MIPS variants, and also what about the powerVR wizard! The power8 processor in the listed specification of an alleged Nintendo Fusion Terminal as IBM power8(now a licensable IP/ISA reference design from openpower) that’s 64 processor threads, if the custom design is using the full SMT resources of the reference design power8(8 threads per core dynamically allocated up to 8 threads) to go along with the PowerPC 750-based 1.24 GHz Tri-Core Co-Processor(probably for legacy code, etc.).
The specifications for Nintendo Fusion Terminal where posted on another site, but if it’s true, well that’s a lot of CPU cores/threads for ray tracing, etc., provided the PowerVR wizard does not take off and usher in an era of ray tracing on the GPU. The A8X’s execution piplines, as well as reorder buffer, has yet to be discussed, its nice to know what customized variant of the PowerVR the Apple is using, and hopefully the iPad Pro will utilize the PowerVR wizard, and take advantage the built in GPU ray tracing hardware, I seriously want a graphics tablet, but the tablets using Intel’s integrated GPUs do not have the graphics ability of the PowerVR or Nvidia K1 Tablet SKUs.
The big question is the AMD graphics, with the Power8 processor, AMD has the folks with the engineering chops to make a custom variant, with the power8 cores and integrating its GPU IP, hell AMD is working on its own ARMv8 ISA custom core, so power8 is a RISC design, and AMD’s custom APU business probably has something in the works for Nintendo, and if Nintendo wants Power8 cores, and power8 is a licensable technology now, just like ARM, well go for it Nintendo. I could see AMD becoming a leader in providing console SOCs of any make of CPU core IP, from x86, to ARM, or Power8, and its little cousin PowerPC, while AMD provides the graphics.
Seriously look at all of the licensable GPU/CPU technology, just go over to Imagination technologies’ website and read their blog, no one appears to be reporting on what they are doing with their acquired MIPS IP(an SMT option), or what they are offering in the GPU IP market to their licensees. The same under-reporting goes for the Power8 processor, it may have been designed by IBM, but now that the base reference design Power8 core is licensable IP. The licensed power8’s will be the more interesting, and certainly lower cost than the ones bought from IBM, there are a lot of licensees for the power8, and Nintendo is already using the PowerPC, but the Power8 is in a league of its own, that even the Xeon can not match, or any other x86 core can. Just go read the Hot Chips symposium presentation on the power8, that’s some monster of an uber wide order superscalar design, 8 IPC per core, on its execution units(14 execution units total per core) all on up to 8 processor threads per core.
As far as the AMD custom business it is possible that Nintendo licensed the power8 from OpenPower, and hired AMD’s custom design/engineering division to make them a custom console APU, with Power8 cores, and PowerPC cores, with AMD’s graphics, AMD’s SOC integration/engineering services will be a big moneymaker for AMD if this is true, and AMD does have a thriving business providing custom gaming SOCs/APUs.
Its about time for someone to step up and take over reporting about the CPU/SOC/GPU hardware, now the Anand Lal Shimpi is no longer in the reporting business, its nice to see the full specifications of any device, but what about the full specifications of the CPU core/s, and a complete listing of all of the on die execution blocks, like reorder buffers, and execution pipelines, at least Nvidia presents at the Hot Chips symposium, as does IBM, Intel, AMD, and others, but not much from Apple, and Apple really needs to get something in the tablet form factor that can run a Full OS, like OSX, to compete with M$’s surface, and the surface with Intel’s graphics is not there compared to other devices.
That one hell of a super Nintendo, if it’s running all that is listed, especially the power8 CPU.
Ok, well it is off topic, but
Ok, well it is off topic, but I am very intrested in this IF these spec’s are real, ESPECIALY to see a power8 cpu in the wild, HOWEVER this is nintendo, and specs dont matter so much to nintendo, in the past they have mostly decided what kind of games they have wanted and then build the system around those idea, unlike the other guys (sega and atari in the past, MS and Sony now) who have always built a powerful system and then expected the developers to figure out how to utilize it. (legend has it that the super Nintendo was designed so it could play Super Mario World, Super Metroid, Super Castlevania and A link to the past, not the other way around)
HOWEVER, if true, This would be an awesome time to try to be the big top most powerful system for nintendo. The current Gen consoles are nothing special, nothing special x64x86 CPUs with GPUs that are on the low end of the average consumer market. If power8 is the bomb, and we all hope it is ofcource, and if it gets some serious GPU power, if Nintendo goes all out and gets truly ambitious with it’s next system, this could but Nintendo back on top.
HOWEVER there is one problem. It’s Nintendo itself. Nintendo still uses it’s power seal sorta, it decides if a game is worthy of going on it’s system or not, and they tend to be more kid friendly/non gorry than others. Infact IF a port was posible to port far cry 4 to the wii u I doubt nintendo would alow it. Without a change of policy they have no need try to compeet
It’s still more about the
It’s still more about the GPU, for gaming, but if Nintendo wants realistic graphics, that’s going to take ray tracing, and except for the PowerVR wizard(in GPU hardware), and some specialized ray tracing accelerated in software on GPUs, via OpenCL/other APIs, the current way is to utilize the CPU to run the ray tracing algorithms, and the more processor cores/threads the better for ray tracing, especially for ray tracing(to some degree) in real time.
The Power8 core architecture has plenty of processor threads per core, and 8 threads times 8 cores could add a whole bunch of rays to enhance certain scenes. The best way to implement ray tracing would be using the GPU, and more of the GPUs massive parallelism, but that requires adding the circuitry, and eventually with enough process node shrinks, and specialized functional blocks, like the PowerVR wizard has, ray tracing will probably be coming to gaming more over the next few years. The Power8 core design, is one hell of a computational CPU design to be released for open licensing by any company, and with the RISC design more cores, and more parallel core execution resources(like SMT) can be added per core, and the OSs for the Power8s include Linux, and probably BSD, etc. also, But the Wii U OS runs the IBM Power7 based processor ISA, so I could see Nintendo keeping with the hardware/software ecosystem, with the Nintendo OS running on the co-processing core/s, and the power8 running all the game, there will be plenty of extra processing threads on a power8 to run some ray tracing to enhance the lighting, while having plenty of reserve processor threads to run the most demanding game physics, and other gaming code. AMDs experience with creating console APUs, as well as AMDs experience with ARM, as well as x86, and possibly power8 could give AMD a great new design win, AMD does not have to restrict itself to any one ISA, and AMD will eventually become more competitive, because AMD will have the proven experience of being able to work across the major ISAs, of ARM, x86, and Power8, and the Power8 IP/ISA can be worked into a large market segment from servers at the top, to most likely PC, and laptops as well.
That custom console experience that AMD has nurtured, could be the gateway to going fully beyond x86 alone, with AMD’s custom ARMv8 offerings expected in the next 2 years, I actually hope the rumors are true, and AMD gets the Nintendo contract with a power8, and AMD’s graphics, because for sure Nvidia is positioning itself to provide GPUs for power8’s, and Nvidia could very well take a power8 license and make a more powerful than Denver SOC. Nintendo is more closed, but that’s the console/gaming market in general, I just want to see the third party PC/Laptop, and maybe the tablet market benefiting from scores of Power8 based SOCs made by many providers/licensees, the same way the ARM based products are made for the mobile market, the power8 RISC core design has things that the current ARM designs lack, SMT being one, but that CAPI coherent interconnect fabric also licensable through OpenPower will definitely make for some high bandwidth products able to share data/code across multiple CPUs/GPUs/FPGAs/etc.
A power8 based Nintendo console, would for sure be a gaming monster, that will put Nintendo on top of the console performance hill. I would for sure be looking at that, but more in hopes that the Power8 would also be coming to PC/Laptops and low cost workstations, using both AMD and Nvidia GPUs. Intel is not providing low cost solutions with lots of core/threads for me, and if a console could have a power8 with 8 cores, for sure the system builders/OEMs would begin taking notice, and start offering Power8 PC/laptops.
Lol,
Atari 2600
CPU: 1.19
Lol,
Atari 2600
CPU: 1.19 MHz MOS Technology 6507
Audio + Video processor: TIA
Playfield resolution: 40 x 192 pixels (NTSC). Uses a 20-pixel register that is mirrored or copied, left side to right side, to achieve the width of 40 pixels.
Player sprites: 8 x 192 pixels (NTSC). Player, ball, and missile sprites use pixels that are 1/4 the width of playfield pixels (unless stretched).
Ball and missile sprites: 1 x 192 pixels (NTSC).
Maximum resolution: 160 x 192 pixels (NTSC). Max resolution is only somewhat achievable with programming tricks that combine sprite pixels with playfield pixels.
128 colors (NTSC). 128 possible on screen. Max of 4 per line: background, playfield, player0 sprite, and player1 sprite. Palette switching between lines is common. Palette switching mid line is possible but not common due to resource limitations.
2 channels of 1-bit monaural sound with 4-bit volume control.
RAM (within a MOS Technology RIOT chip): 128 bytes (additional RAM may be included in the game cartridges)
ROM (game cartridges): 4 kb maximum capacity (32 kb+ with bank switching)
Input (controlled by MOS RIOT):
Two screwless DE-9[1] controller ports, for single-button joysticks, paddles, “trakballs”, “driving controllers”, 12-key “keyboard controllers” (0–9, #, and *) and third party controllers with additional functions
Six switches (original version): Power on/off, TV signal (B/W or Color), Difficulty for each player (called A and B), Select, and Reset. Except for the power switch, games could (and did) assign other meanings to the switches. On later models the difficulty switches were miniaturized and moved to the back of the unit.
Output: B/W or Color TV picture and sound signal through RCA connector (NTSC, PAL or SECAM, depending on region; game cartridges are exchangeable between NTSC and PAL/SECAM machines, but this will result in wrong or missing colors and often a rolling picture.)
Controllers[edit]
And you can find game
And you can find game cartridges at most landfills, flea markets, and the occasional garage sale, now supplanted by eBay.
Note: ET cartridges can only be found at one landfill, and perhaps a few garage sales(if the seller is an old lady/or old man in cabana wear who doesn’t know what an Atari is)
Processor: 93.75 MHz NEC
Processor: 93.75 MHz NEC VR4300, based on MIPS R4300i-series 64-bit RISC CPU
L1 cache: 24 KiB (split: 16 KiB instruction, 8 KiB data). No L2 cache.
Busses: 32-bit address and data.
CPU to RCP Bandwidth: 250 MiB/s (non-DMA). CPU can not directly access RAM.
Instruction Set: MIPS R4000 64-bit. Addressable Memory Space: 4 GiB (Virtual 1 TiB).
5-stage scalar pipeline. Integrated FPU. 93 million operations per second.
4.6 million transistors
Manufactured by NEC using 0.35 µm process.
RAM: 4 MiB RDRAM (upgradeable to 8 MiB with 4 MiB Expansion Pak)
Data path: 9-bit width at 500 MHz
Potential Memory Bandwidth: 562.5 MiB/s
~640 ns RAM latency
Graphics: SGI 62.5 MHz 64-bit RCP (Reality Coprocessor) contains two sub-processors:
RSP (Reality Signal Processor) controls 3D graphics and sound functions
MIPS R4000-based 8-bit integer vector processor
Programmable through microcode (µcode). Allows functions to be modified or added.
Transformation, clipping, lighting, triangle setup, and audio decoding (audio could be done on main CPU as well)
Geometry throughput: initially ~100,000 polygons per second with full quality. Some later games go higher with highly optimized microcode.
RDP (Reality Drawing Processor) rasterizer handles all pixel drawing operations in hardware, such as:
Z-buffering (maintains 3D spatial relationships, is Mario in front of the tree or vice-versa?)
Anti-aliasing (smoothes jagged lines and edges)
Texture mapping (placing images over shapes, for example mapping a face image to a sphere creates head)
Bilinear filtering (prevents texture blockiness by blurring when resizing)
Mip-mapping (creates distance textures of varying degress of fidelity)
Trilinear mip-map interpolation (filters mip-maps and textures smoothly without blockiness). Nintendo 64’s filtering is not entirely accurate. Precision was reduced to lower mathematical demands
Perspective-correct texture mapping (keeps textures from “warping” when viewed at different angles)
Environment mapping (best seen with metal Mario in Super Mario 64)
Gouraud shading, Level of Detail (LOD)
Fillrate: ~30 megapixels/sec with Z-buffering enabled
128-bit internal data bus between RSP and RDP. ~1.0 GiB/s bandwidth.
Resolution: 256 × 224 to 640 × 480 pixels flicker-free, interlaced
Color depth: 16.7 million colors (32,768 on-screen)
Sound: 16-bit Stereo. ADPCM-support. Some games used MP3 audio (software-driven).
Channels: 100 PCM (max, 16-24 avg.). Each channel consumes about 1% CPU time.
Sampling: 48.0 kHz (max, 44.1 kHz is CD quality)
Media: 32 to 512-MBit (4 to 64 MiB) cartridges
Dimensions: 10.23 × 7.48 × 2.87 inches (260 × 190 × 73 mm) W×D×H
Weight: 2.4 lbs (1.1 kg)
Controller: 1 analog stick; 2 shoulder buttons; one digital cross pad; six face buttons, ‘start’ button, and one digital trigger.
It’s still more about the GPU, for gaming, but if Nintendo wants realistic graphics, that’s going to take ray tracing, and except for the PowerVR wizard(in GPU hardware), and some specialized ray tracing accelerated in software on GPUs, via OpenCL/other APIs, the current way is to utilize the CPU to run the ray tracing algorithms, and the more processor cores/threads the better for ray tracing, especially for ray tracing(to some degree) in real time.
The Power8 core architecture has plenty of processor threads per core, and 8 threads times 8 cores could add a whole bunch of rays to enhance certain scenes. The best way to implement ray tracing would be using the GPU, and more of the GPUs massive parallelism, but that requires adding the circuitry, and eventually with enough process node shrinks, and specialized functional blocks, like the PowerVR wizard has, ray tracing will probably be coming to gaming more over the next few years. The Power8 core design, is one hell of a computational CPU design to be released for open licensing by any company, and with the RISC design more cores, and more parallel core execution resources(like SMT) can be added per core, and the OSs for the Power8s include Linux, and probably BSD, etc. also, But the Wii U OS runs the IBM Power7 based processor ISA, so I could see Nintendo keeping with the hardware/software ecosystem, with the Nintendo OS running on the co-processing core/s, and the power8 running all the game, there will be plenty of extra processing threads on a power8 to run some ray tracing to enhance the lighting, while having plenty of reserve processor threads to run the most demanding game physics, and other gaming code. AMDs experience with creating console APUs, as well as AMDs experience with ARM, as well as x86, and possibly power8 could give AMD a great new design win, AMD does not have to restrict itself to any one ISA, and AMD will eventually become more competitive, because AMD will have the proven experience of being able to work across the major ISAs, of ARM, x86, and Power8, and the Power8 IP/ISA can be worked into a large market segment from servers at the top, to most likely PC, and laptops as well.
That custom console experience that AMD has nurtured, could be the gateway to going fully beyond x86 alone, with AMD’s custom ARMv8 offerings expected in the next 2 years, I actually hope the rumors are true, and AMD gets the Nintendo contract with a power8, and AMD’s graphics, because for sure Nvidia is positioning itself to provide GPUs for power8’s, and Nvidia could very well take a power8 license and make a more powerful than Denver SOC. Nintendo is more closed, but that’s the console/gaming market in general, I just want to see the third party PC/Laptop, and maybe the tablet market benefiting from scores of Power8 based SOCs made by many providers/licensees, the same way the ARM based products are made for the mobile market, the power8 RISC core design has things that the current ARM designs lack, SMT being one, but that CAPI coherent interconnect fabric also licensable through OpenPower will definitely make for some high bandwidth products able to share data/code across multiple CPUs/GPUs/FPGAs/etc.
A power8 based Nintendo console, would for sure be a gaming monster, that will put Nintendo on top of the console performance hill. I would for sure be looking at that, but more in hopes that the Power8 would also be coming to PC/Laptops and low cost workstations, using both AMD and Nvidia GPUs. Intel is not providing low cost solutions with lots of core/threads for me, and if a console could have a power8 with 8 cores, for sure the system builders/OEMs would begin taking notice, and start offering Power8 PC/laptops.
Now how about the full specs. on the Apple A8X, and Imagination technologies owns MIPS now, so what about them offering a SMT option on their 64 bit MIPS variants, and also what about the powerVR wizard! The power8 processor in the listed specification of an alleged Nintendo Fusion Terminal as IBM power8(now a licensable IP/ISA reference design from openpower) that’s 64 processor threads, if the custom design is using the full SMT resources of the reference design power8(8 threads per core dynamically allocated up to 8 threads) to go along with the PowerPC 750-based 1.24 GHz Tri-Core Co-Processor(probably for legacy code, etc.).
The specifications for Nintendo Fusion Terminal where posted on another site, but if it’s true, well that’s a lot of CPU cores/threads for ray tracing, etc., provided the PowerVR wizard does not take off and usher in an era of ray tracing on the GPU. The A8X’s execution piplines, as well as reorder buffer, has yet to be discussed, its nice to know what customized variant of the PowerVR the Apple is using, and hopefully the iPad Pro will utilize the PowerVR wizard, and take advantage the built in GPU ray tracing hardware, I seriously want a graphics tablet, but the tablets using Intel’s integrated GPUs do not have the graphics ability of the PowerVR or Nvidia K1 Tablet SKUs.
The big question is the AMD graphics, with the Power8 processor, AMD has the folks with the engineering chops to make a custom variant, with the power8 cores and integrating its GPU IP, hell AMD is working on its own ARMv8 ISA custom core, so power8 is a RISC design, and AMD’s custom APU business probably has something in the works for Nintendo, and if Nintendo wants Power8 cores, and power8 is a licensable technology now, just like ARM, well go for it Nintendo. I could see AMD becoming a leader in providing console SOCs of any make of CPU core IP, from x86, to ARM, or Power8, and its little cousin PowerPC, while AMD provides the graphics.
Seriously look at all of the licensable GPU/CPU technology, just go over to Imagination technologies’ website and read their blog, no one appears to be reporting on what they are doing with their acquired MIPS IP(an SMT option), or what they are offering in the GPU IP market to their licensees. The same under-reporting goes for the Power8 processor, it may have been designed by IBM, but now that the base reference design Power8 core is licensable IP. The licensed power8’s will be the more interesting, and certainly lower cost than the ones bought from IBM, there are a lot of licensees for the power8, and Nintendo is already using the PowerPC, but the Power8 is in a league of its own, that even the Xeon can not match, or any other x86 core can. Just go read the Hot Chips symposium presentation on the power8, that’s some monster of an uber wide order superscalar design, 8 IPC per core, on its execution units(14 execution units total per core) all on up to 8 processor threads per core.
As far as the AMD custom business it is possible that Nintendo licensed the power8 from OpenPower, and hired AMD’s custom design/engineering division to make them a custom console APU, with Power8 cores, and PowerPC cores, with AMD’s graphics, AMD’s SOC integration/engineering services will be a big moneymaker for AMD if this is true, and AMD does have a thriving business providing custom gaming SOCs/APUs.
Its about time for someone to step up and take over reporting about the CPU/SOC/GPU hardware, now the Anand Lal Shimpi is no longer in the reporting business, its nice to see the full specifications of any device, but what about the full specifications of the CPU core/s, and a complete listing of all of the on die execution blocks, like reorder buffers, and execution pipelines, at least Nvidia presents at the Hot Chips symposium, as does IBM, Intel, AMD, and others, but not much from Apple, and Apple really needs to get something in the tablet form factor that can run a Full OS, like OSX, to compete with M$’s surface, and the surface with Intel’s graphics is not there compared to other devices.
That one hell of a super Nintendo, if it’s running all that is listed, especially the power8 CPU.
Now how about the full specs. on the Apple A8X, and Imagination technologies owns MIPS now, so what about them offering a SMT option on their 64 bit MIPS variants, and also what about the powerVR wizard! The power8 processor in the listed specification of an alleged Nintendo Fusion Terminal as IBM power8(now a licensable IP/ISA reference design from openpower) that’s 64 processor threads, if the custom design is using the full SMT resources of the reference design power8(8 threads per core dynamically allocated up to 8 threads) to go along with the PowerPC 750-based 1.24 GHz Tri-Core Co-Processor(probably for legacy code, etc.).
The specifications for Nintendo Fusion Terminal where posted on another site, but if it’s true, well that’s a lot of CPU cores/threads for ray tracing, etc., provided the PowerVR wizard does not take off and usher in an era of ray tracing on the GPU. The A8X’s execution piplines, as well as reorder buffer, has yet to be discussed, its nice to know what customized variant of the PowerVR the Apple is using, and hopefully the iPad Pro will utilize the PowerVR wizard, and take advantage the built in GPU ray tracing hardware, I seriously want a graphics tablet, but the tablets using Intel’s integrated GPUs do not have the graphics ability of the PowerVR or Nvidia K1 Tablet SKUs.
The big question is the AMD graphics, with the Power8 processor, AMD has the folks with the engineering chops to make a custom variant, with the power8 cores and integrating its GPU IP, hell AMD is working on its own ARMv8 ISA custom core, so power8 is a RISC design, and AMD’s custom APU business probably has something in the works for Nintendo, and if Nintendo wants Power8 cores, and power8 is a licensable technology now, just like ARM, well go for it Nintendo. I could see AMD becoming a leader in providing console SOCs of any make of CPU core IP, from x86, to ARM, or Power8, and its little cousin PowerPC, while AMD provides the graphics.
Seriously look at all of the licensable GPU/CPU technology, just go over to Imagination technologies’ website and read their blog, no one appears to be reporting on what they are doing with their acquired MIPS IP(an SMT option), or what they are offering in the GPU IP market to their licensees. The same under-reporting goes for the Power8 processor, it may have been designed by IBM, but now that the base reference design Power8 core is licensable IP. The licensed power8’s will be the more interesting, and certainly lower cost than the ones bought from IBM, there are a lot of licensees for the power8, and Nintendo is already using the PowerPC, but the Power8 is in a league of its own, that even the Xeon can not match, or any other x86 core can. Just go read the Hot Chips symposium presentation on the power8, that’s some monster of an uber wide order superscalar design, 8 IPC per core, on its execution units(14 execution units total per core) all on up to 8 processor threads per core.
As far as the AMD custom business it is possible that Nintendo licensed the power8 from OpenPower, and hired AMD’s custom design/engineering division to make them a custom console APU, with Power8 cores, and PowerPC cores, with AMD’s graphics, AMD’s SOC integration/engineering services will be a big moneymaker for AMD if this is true, and AMD does have a thriving business providing custom gaming SOCs/APUs.
Its about time for someone to step up and take over reporting about the CPU/SOC/GPU hardware, now the Anand Lal Shimpi is no longer in the reporting business, its nice to see the full specifications of any device, but what about the full specifications of the CPU core/s, and a complete listing of all of the on die execution blocks, like reorder buffers, and execution pipelines, at least Nvidia presents at the Hot Chips symposium, as does IBM, Intel, AMD, and others, but not much from Apple, and Apple really needs to get something in the tablet form factor that can run a Full OS, like OSX, to compete with M$’s surface, and the surface with Intel’s graphics is not there compared to other devices.
That one hell of a super Nintendo, if it’s running all that is listed, especially the power8 CPU.
Now how about the full specs. on the Apple A8X, and Imagination technologies owns MIPS now, so what about them offering a SMT option on their 64 bit MIPS variants, and also what about the powerVR wizard! The power8 processor in the listed specification of an alleged Nintendo Fusion Terminal as IBM power8(now a licensable IP/ISA reference design from openpower) that’s 64 processor threads, if the custom design is using the full SMT resources of the reference design power8(8 threads per core dynamically allocated up to 8 threads) to go along with the PowerPC 750-based 1.24 GHz Tri-Core Co-Processor(probably for legacy code, etc.).
The specifications for Nintendo Fusion Terminal where posted on another site, but if it’s true, well that’s a lot of CPU cores/threads for ray tracing, etc., provided the PowerVR wizard does not take off and usher in an era of ray tracing on the GPU. The A8X’s execution piplines, as well as reorder buffer, has yet to be discussed, its nice to know what customized variant of the PowerVR the Apple is using, and hopefully the iPad Pro will utilize the PowerVR wizard, and take advantage the built in GPU ray tracing hardware, I seriously want a graphics tablet, but the tablets using Intel’s integrated GPUs do not have the graphics ability of the PowerVR or Nvidia K1 Tablet SKUs.
The big question is the AMD graphics, with the Power8 processor, AMD has the folks with the engineering chops to make a custom variant, with the power8 cores and integrating its GPU IP, hell AMD is working on its own ARMv8 ISA custom core, so power8 is a RISC design, and AMD’s custom APU business probably has something in the works for Nintendo, and if Nintendo wants Power8 cores, and power8 is a licensable technology now, just like ARM, well go for it Nintendo. I could see AMD becoming a leader in providing console SOCs of any make of CPU core IP, from x86, to ARM, or Power8, and its little cousin PowerPC, while AMD provides the graphics.
Seriously look at all of the licensable GPU/CPU technology, just go over to Imagination technologies’ website and read their blog, no one appears to be reporting on what they are doing with their acquired MIPS IP(an SMT option), or what they are offering in the GPU IP market to their licensees. The same under-reporting goes for the Power8 processor, it may have been designed by IBM, but now that the base reference design Power8 core is licensable IP. The licensed power8’s will be the more interesting, and certainly lower cost than the ones bought from IBM, there are a lot of licensees for the power8, and Nintendo is already using the PowerPC, but the Power8 is in a league of its own, that even the Xeon can not match, or any other x86 core can. Just go read the Hot Chips symposium presentation on the power8, that’s some monster of an uber wide order superscalar design, 8 IPC per core, on its execution units(14 execution units total per core) all on up to 8 processor threads per core.
As far as the AMD custom business it is possible that Nintendo licensed the power8 from OpenPower, and hired AMD’s custom design/engineering division to make them a custom console APU, with Power8 cores, and PowerPC cores, with AMD’s graphics, AMD’s SOC integration/engineering services will be a big moneymaker for AMD if this is true, and AMD does have a thriving business providing custom gaming SOCs/APUs.
Its about time for someone to step up and take over reporting about the CPU/SOC/GPU hardware, now the Anand Lal Shimpi is no longer in the reporting business, its nice to see the full specifications of any device, but what about the full specifications of the CPU core/s, and a complete listing of all of the on die execution blocks, like reorder buffers, and execution pipelines, at least Nvidia presents at the Hot Chips symposium, as does IBM, Intel, AMD, and others, but not much from Apple, and Apple really needs to get something in the tablet form factor that can run a Full OS, like OSX, to compete with M$’s surface, and the surface with Intel’s graphics is not there compared to other devices.
That one hell of a super Nintendo, if it’s running all that is listed, especially the power8 CPU.
Now how about the full specs. on the Apple A8X, and Imagination technologies owns MIPS now, so what about them offering a SMT option on their 64 bit MIPS variants, and also what about the powerVR wizard! The power8 processor in the listed specification of an alleged Nintendo Fusion Terminal as IBM power8(now a licensable IP/ISA reference design from openpower) that’s 64 processor threads, if the custom design is using the full SMT resources of the reference design power8(8 threads per core dynamically allocated up to 8 threads) to go along with the PowerPC 750-based 1.24 GHz Tri-Core Co-Processor(probably for legacy code, etc.).
The specifications for Nintendo Fusion Terminal where posted on another site, but if it’s true, well that’s a lot of CPU cores/threads for ray tracing, etc., provided the PowerVR wizard does not take off and usher in an era of ray tracing on the GPU. The A8X’s execution piplines, as well as reorder buffer, has yet to be discussed, its nice to know what customized variant of the PowerVR the Apple is using, and hopefully the iPad Pro will utilize the PowerVR wizard, and take advantage the built in GPU ray tracing hardware, I seriously want a graphics tablet, but the tablets using Intel’s integrated GPUs do not have the graphics ability of the PowerVR or Nvidia K1 Tablet SKUs.
The big question is the AMD graphics, with the Power8 processor, AMD has the folks with the engineering chops to make a custom variant, with the power8 cores and integrating its GPU IP, hell AMD is working on its own ARMv8 ISA custom core, so power8 is a RISC design, and AMD’s custom APU business probably has something in the works for Nintendo, and if Nintendo wants Power8 cores, and power8 is a licensable technology now, just like ARM, well go for it Nintendo. I could see AMD becoming a leader in providing console SOCs of any make of CPU core IP, from x86, to ARM, or Power8, and its little cousin PowerPC, while AMD provides the graphics.
Seriously look at all of the licensable GPU/CPU technology, just go over to Imagination technologies’ website and read their blog, no one appears to be reporting on what they are doing with their acquired MIPS IP(an SMT option), or what they are offering in the GPU IP market to their licensees. The same under-reporting goes for the Power8 processor, it may have been designed by IBM, but now that the base reference design Power8 core is licensable IP. The licensed power8’s will be the more interesting, and certainly lower cost than the ones bought from IBM, there are a lot of licensees for the power8, and Nintendo is already using the PowerPC, but the Power8 is in a league of its own, that even the Xeon can not match, or any other x86 core can. Just go read the Hot Chips symposium presentation on the power8, that’s some monster of an uber wide order superscalar design, 8 IPC per core, on its execution units(14 execution units total per core) all on up to 8 processor threads per core.
As far as the AMD custom business it is possible that Nintendo licensed the power8 from OpenPower, and hired AMD’s custom design/engineering division to make them a custom console APU, with Power8 cores, and PowerPC cores, with AMD’s graphics, AMD’s SOC integration/engineering services will be a big moneymaker for AMD if this is true, and AMD does have a thriving business providing custom gaming SOCs/APUs.
Its about time for someone to step up and take over reporting about the CPU/SOC/GPU hardware, now the Anand Lal Shimpi is no longer in the reporting business, its nice to see the full specifications of any device, but what about the full specifications of the CPU core/s, and a complete listing of all of the on die execution blocks, like reorder buffers, and execution pipelines, at least Nvidia presents at the Hot Chips symposium, as does IBM, Intel, AMD, and others, but not much from Apple, and Apple really needs to get something in the tablet form factor that can run a Full OS, like OSX, to compete with M$’s surface, and the surface with Intel’s graphics is not there compared to other devices.
That one hell of a super Nintendo, if it’s running all that is listed, especially the power8 CPU.
WOW that’s on hell of a
WOW that’s on hell of a Re-re-post…, you must be really mad that your feeble brain can not comprehend any discussion of possible SOCs/APUs for a gaming console, enjoy yourself but there will be plenty of competition, starting in 2015, and those RISC based processors can really pack in lots of SMT, and extra execution units, just look at what 8, or 12 cores can do with 8 processor threads per core, gaming is going to get even more interesting, when the power8 licensees begin to produce many varied SKUs for all types of computing systems! It’s Licensed IP’s time to shine, and AMD did start out as a licensee for the x86 16/32 bit ISA, so AMD gets its graphics into ARM, and power8 based devices, it’s all good, and with competition, that innovation that you fear most, will continue to happen, least the big monolithic chip monopoly continue to milk small incremental gains in performance at too high a price! Just look at what ARM licensing did for the mobile market, lots of competition is driving lots of CPU/SOC processing power improvements in the mobile sector, and the graphics is much better also.
SuperNintendo this, 2015, and beyond will belong to those who license CPU ISAs, and other IP to build computing systems, and MIPS, Power/Power8, and ARM are all licensable IP, x86 only has a small number of fixed licensees, but that does not matter anymore!
im pretty sure its not what
im pretty sure its not what you post……. ITS – JUST – YOU.
kinda strange you still don’t understand this yet. 🙂
Kind of strange but the big
Kind of strange but the big monolithic chip monopoly employees lots of Terfers, and does not like folks to know that any computing can be done on many different products offered via the fair marketplace. The old line manufactures are being kept out of the new marketplace, and any mention of a competing product just has to be put down by your sponsored attacks, its all about the “mind share” and keeping of the market share, why else would a stagnant old CPU monopoly would spend billions in bribes to get its products into the new marketplace, instead of spending the money on innovating the microarchitecture, and the graphics, oh that chip monopoly will spend for its process node lead, but what about a newer more efficient microarchitecture, or better graphics in its “Mobile” SOC products. I do hope that the Nintendo console gives a more powerful Licensable RISC design, a win, and that the economy of scale, across an entire industry, comes into play for the, now open for third party licensing, Power microarchitecture, and the future licensees make all sorts of SKUs from the server to the PC/Laptop, and on down the line. The old line CPU companies will have to change, as the IP licensing model takes full control of the market, and no one entity has a stranglehold on the CPU/SOC supply chain. And even for high end gaming there may be more than one or two added competitors in the marketplace.
It’s just the hand that feeds YOU!
yea thats it, everyone here
yea thats it, everyone here works for intel and are paid to be annoyed by you.
by gosh golly, that means YOU are the only real person here!! :-O
so who are you really talking to then? drones? air?
Folks, let’s keep this civil.
Folks, let's keep this civil.