With the first console of the eighth generation of gaming available to the public, the mystery behind the Wii U's hardware has finally been revealed. Since Sunday, the console has been selling everywhere in North America and the reactions have been mostly positive except for the few bugs which Nintendo will have to patch. As seen in all console launches, it is understandable that it is not perfect, but while Nintendo is taking care of these problems, find out what is the Wii U hiding under its hood.
The team called Anandtech are the ones who popped the hood and dug into the heart of the console. Even if a console is opened up and examined, it is always hard to know exactly what there is. Consequently, it is hard to know exactly the console's true potential. So, this is the closest we are going to get since Nintendo love to be silent on their product.
No exact specification can be set from this standpoint. However, it can be said that the GPU has come on-chip memory thanks to a previous teardown done by Nintendo themselves. This also means the die size increased as well. To picture it otherwise, take a 104mm2 Redwood core found in the Radeon HD 5670 and add some megs of eDRAM. Naturally, this is close to the 156.21mm2 die size the Wii U's GPU contains. The people at Extreme Tech assume that a 40nm process is being used. This type of GPU is definitely a force to be reckoned with.
Unfortunately, the CPU will not be able to do wonders for the console. The small multi-core Power-based CPU was made based on IBM's 45nm SOI process and it also has on-die eDRAM. The CPU is still a big mystery and it is rumored the Wii U simply took the Wii's Broadway core and multiplies it by three, since the Wii U is backwards compatible with the Wii. Extreme Tech suggest adding a few process node improvements and the Wii U's CPU would be "fairly competent".
Now, even with bad battery power, the Gamepad has pretty wireless capabilities. Although the 6.2-inch touchscreen between your hands can be used for different needs (full gaming, mirrored screen or HUD-style display), the Gamepad functions thanks to a high-speed 802.11n WiFi connection which probably works perfectly up to 7.5m (25 feet) away from the console. Thanks to Anandtech's teardown, the Gamepad also has two WiFi antennae and controllers: one for online network connection and the other solely to ensure the Gamepad works flawlessly. This can be proven via gameplay as no lags or slowdowns occur from the Gamepad.
In terms of power consumption, the Wii U is very efficient as it uses only 31.2 watts in the main menu and 33 watts when New Super Mario Bros. U is popped in. This is probably the work of IBM and AMD making sure to pare down the power needed. Also, as many know already, Nintendo and Opera have not worked together this time. Like many smart devices today, the Wii U uses a WebKit-based browser made by NetFront, the people behind the browser for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita and Nintendo 3DS. The browser on the Wii U has excellent HTML5 support and JavaScript performance.
BreakDown Photos
-Daniel, Jedi Editor
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I cant attach any files? Well, I was going to attach some power 7 documentation...
ReplyDeleteSince its been confirmed IBM's new edram technology was going to be used in the wii u cpu (See original IBM wii u press release)I think can shed some light on the cpu's small size, and thus, the seeming lack of transistors (its the same process, and roughly the same size as an atom, so it probably has similar transistor counts) such a small size can contain.
The Edram on the cpu is special, no, its not a massive l3, thats a different ram technology,assuming it is IBM's 'unique' edram from the press release its actually a 'tiny' l1 and l2 with a huge bandwidth and tiny latency.
Each cell of this edram is bussed six ways, and according to IBM's documentation, this enables the ram to perform as six transistor sram (6tsram). According to IBM's documentation this ram technology is what made power y possible (1/4 the power draw, 1/4 the heat, 1/4 the size as power 6 over twice the performance(talking processor cores))
What this finally boils down to is,this is straight out of the power 7 documentation from IBM- IBM's unique new edram technology enabled power 7, a 1.2 billion transistor package, to effectively perform as a 2.7 billion transistor package.
So... It might not be as bad off as just looking at it would make one think.
Its certainly not going to be a power house, I mean, even if you DID take a 562 square mm Monster 8 core power 7 server package, once you start cutting that juice, its going to scale down (nearly linearly) once you get down to 75 watts its nowhere near the power house it was at 200 yeah? And 75 watts is the power draw of the whole system, and you dont even get all that from the wall say maybe, 60 watts? and the whole system has to use it of course, from the gpu to the usb slots (although... I guess Nintendo didnt power them? wtf?)
Anyways, what Im saying is, this thing just might be competent. Yeah its low clocked 1.6 Ghz? maybe 2.4? (Nintendo multipliers, 800mhz ram yeah? x2 or x3 maybe get the clock speed) Ok so its slow, short pipeline, out of order,good branch prediction small miss penalty, audio burden handled by dsp... It just might be a good enough fit for the gpu to not be the 'horrible slow cpu' Some people are talking about.
Or maybe not. Its Nintendo what are you gonna do? We all know were dying for metroid prime 4 anyways yeah?
You are quite the wiz-kid Mr. Anonymous. Very nice reply. In my opinion i do not think that the Wii U is Next Gen Tech; its merely next gen ideas and usage rather than heavier CPUs and more detailed video cards.
DeleteIm not sure if you were just spitting tech jargon out or you actually know what youre talking about ;)
My information on the ibm's proprietary edram rechnology is word for word from power 7 documentation. I understand the logic behind it, but honestly, its advanced stuff and specifics are a bit over my head yeah? I would need a technical document detailing the edram itself, which ibm is keeping a very tight lid on. I have fairly easy acess to most of their jazz, tech support will give me most any documentation I ask for, with no strings (or nda's for the most part). But I cant touch this stuff, uber verboden. It appears very important to IBM's future plans. If they had this back in 2005, theyd have never lost apple to intel.
DeleteBack to wii u, its definately next gen. Its the system Nintendo released after the wii. Just not necessarily a powerful next gen system.
For a system its size, power draw, and price range, its very powerful and impressively advanced, this is some impressive technology, for decreasing heat, footprint, and power intake while mantaining performance per watt.
Its not going to compete with a system drawing 200 watts from the wall. And we know those are coming, yeah? Though I suspect even those systems arent going to give us quite the jump weve been used to these past thirty years.
Dennard scaling is nearing its physical limit with soi technology, we arent shrinking as fast as we used to, and certainly not for the same price, and there is only so much that can be paralellized, past that Amdahls law assures us adding cores will only help so much...
Where was I? Conclusion I guess. Wii u doesnt look to be a powerful next gen system. Its just not in the cards. Size and power draw, powerful is not happening. But it does look like its probably not going to be as bad off as some think.
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DeleteSo basically what I got from reading your comment a few times.. It's a pretty advanced console and somewhat strong but not a powerful monster?
Deleteseveral forums prove but only a few things that Mr.Anonymous has said. Hmm... can you share some of the doc's that you've acquired? I'd love to talk shop with you.
ReplyDelete