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[AniHawk]

Xenon isn't even going to be powerful enough to play old Xbox games, so I don't see how it even has a chance at topping the Revolution.

Heh.

 

[Kon Tiki]

Why would ATi's GPU budget be the same from Nintendo as Microsoft if the Nintendo chipset is radically underpowered in comparision?

If anything, the same budget would result in an over powered chipset. Artx has more talent for the same dollar.

 

[xexex]

]Nintendo works closely with NEC on fabbing their chipsets. They built a multibillion yen facility together six years ago iirc. Someone can probably find the PR.

so the same facility that fabbed Flippers will also fab Hollywoods, I assume.

 

[xexex]

"Capability"? Nintendo has a long history of forward thinking hardware design. PS2 took cues from N64, Xenon's followed their GameCube philosiphy... let's just slow things down at look at what we know comparing Rev to 360...

-Nintendo's spending the same amount as Microsoft on their GPU, and they're getting it from the more talented ATi team on a later timeline as well.

-Nintendo's also getting their CPU from IBM as well, again at a later timeline then Microsoft's multicore chip.

-Nintendo's upped their R&D budget by 40% this year.

-Iwata's yesterday reiterated "cutting edge graphics and audio are to be expected".

-Allard's been downplaying system spec wars for next generation, claiming we've reached a visual plateau.

...I dunno. It looks more to me that Microsoft's the one with a clear cut shift in direction regarding power hierarchy and hardware design philosophy. They're already starting the damage control in fact, while Nintendo speaks only of doing things in addition to cutting edge techology.

seems so

post from mid 2003
http://groups-beta.google.com/group...do.gamecube/msg/dd8e2b89940a8572?dmode=source

The good news is that the successor to the GC is looking to make good on
everything. Acording to IGN, ATI has been deveopling the grpahics chip for
the GC2 for more than a year. Several games are already being planned with
the GC2 in mind. It is being referred to internally as the GC2 which pretty
much garentess backward compatability (but thankfully Nintendo is very
unlikely to follow Sony's atrocious naming scheme externally), and best of
all, the planned retail price is $299, so we can expect a no compromise
system, and none of this pre-conceieved nonsense in the media and at retail
that "it's cheaper, so it's not as good". Overall, I think we can rest
assured that Iwata's Nintendo is taking care not to make any mistakes this

looking for the actual IGN quotes now.
time around.

ah here it is
http://cube.ign.com/mail/2003-06-26.html

GameCube 2

Dear Matt, What have you found out, if anything, about the successor to GameCube?
Matty

Matt responds: A fine question. Well, I don't have enough to run with a news piece, but after talking to several insider pals around the industry here's what I've been able to come up with:

* The console is being referred to as GameCube 2 internally
* ATI has been in development with a graphics chip for "GCN 2" for more than a year; it's supposedly coming along very nicely
* Several games are already being designed with the system in mind, though no hardware is yet available
* The hardware is expected to ultimately ship at a $299 price point -- directly against Xbox 2 and PS3
* The CPU partner has not been set, though the obvious choice is IBM
* 2005 release is likely as Nintendo wants to beat the competition to the gates

I hate to lend credit to this ongoing rumor, too, but I figure I can't ignore it. At least one industry insider I spoke with brought up the whole Microsoft/Nintendo union; apparently Microsoft -- more than Nintendo -- is interested in some kind of partnership.

There are a few other smaller bits here and there, but I don't feel comfortable posting them yet. Note that while I do trust my sources on this information (they've come through dozens of times in the past), it's still so early on that anything can happen.

 

[Gahiggidy]

What is the possibility of Broadway operating on some unheard of bandwidth? It being an 128-bit processor? (assuming 64-bit is the norm).

 

[xexex]

cool interview about the development process of Gamecube--mostly about Flipper--which was in R&D and under construction from 1998 to 2000.

http://www.n-sider.com/articleview.php?articleid=338

Oct. 29, 2001

IGNCube conducted an interview with ATI's Greg Buchner shortly after the unveiling of the Nintendo GameCube console at the 2001 Nintendo Space World show. ATI is responsible for the GameCube graphics chip called "Flipper".

Q: Can you discuss your position at ATI and how you became involved with Nintendo and the design of the Flipper graphics chip?

Greg Buchner: So, going back in history, in 1997 a lot of people left SGI (Silicon Graphics Inc.), which wasn't doing well, so a bunch of us started ArtX and we aimed at doing graphics in the PC space. In early '98 we started talking to Nintendo about being their provider for the graphics and system logic for what has become GameCube. At ArtX I was vice president of engineering and part of the founding team of ArtX.

In April of last year we joined ATI through an acquisition, which ATI aquired as a way to get into the [home console] space and as a way to get another graphics development team working in the integrated graphics PC space. So, through the acquisition I've maintained a similar role for the team at Santa Clara. ATI already had a team at Santa Clara plus the addition of the ArtX team. More recently I'm operating in a more technical role, I'm giving advice on how we build chips.

Q: What is your official title now?

Buchner: I'm vice president of engineering, ATI.

Q: You say you began talking to Nintendo in 1998. So from white paper designs and initial design to final mass production silicon how long was the development process?

Buchner: Well, there was a period of time where we were in the brainstorm period, figuring out what to build, what's the right thing to create. We spent a reasonable amount of time on that, a really big chunk of 1998 was spend doing that, figuring out just what [Flipper] was going to be. In 1999 we pretty much cranked out the gates, cranked out the silicon and produced the first part. In 2000 we got it ready for production, so what you saw at Space World last year was basically what became final silicon.

We've probably tweaked it a bunch since then and even [after the September 14 Japan launch] other versions are being tweaked. It will forever be in a cost production mode, so to say there is final silicon is something that doesn't really happen because these products live for so long. All the tweaking is for costs, everything for the last six months or even more than that has been related to getting the cost down. So over time, you know it's debuting at $199 obviously that's not the end game. We want to keep pushing the price lower and lower. So we'll continue to help NEC and their cost production efforts.

Q: Can you describe how the brainstorming process worked with Nintendo? Did you approach them with ideas, did they come to you? How did the relationship work?

Buchner: It was kind of back and forth. A lot of us worked on the N64 and at that point they certainly didn't have any 3D graphics knowledge in the company. For this round, some of the team that was at SGI that worked on the N64 is now at Nintendo. So the group up in Redmond at NTD, Howard Cheng and Rob Moore's group -- both of which worked at SGI on the N64 -- had some expertise through hiring people on the 3D side of things. They were really the link into the developers, because the whole theme of this product early on was targeting the developers, they are really the customer for us not those that played the games.

So Howard's team was really that bridge into the developers' mind. Everything was really a collaboration between our team and Howard's team -- some of our discussions were friendly and some were "passionate" about what the right thing to do was. At the end of the day there was always the theme of the developers as well as cost. Anything we discussed typically had trade-off with cost. You can go do almost anything, but everything comes at a price. It's about figuring out what's the right thing to do at this point in time, so that was a big part of the collaboration.

Q: You talked about having a vision for the chip and we've heard a lot about it being developer friendly. Was there a specific mantra that the team had? In a few sentences if you could describe what the main goal of the chip was, what would that be?

Buchner: There are so many pieces that factor into the decision. There's looking at the developer, looking at the development process, and making them as efficient as possible so they can make their money. The more money they make the more successful the overall products are going to be and the more successful from a selfish-intent point of view we're going to be from the royalty stream. The lower we can make the cost of the system, the more it will open up for a broader base of consumers that can buy it. So that was a very important thing.

Predicting what the technology is going to allow us to do. So you have to look into a crystal ball and figure out what's going to be fashionable and important, what's going to allow the Miyamoto-sans of the world to develop the best games. So, again, it's kind of taking your best guess at it. These are the kind of things you have to get, put them into a jar and shake them up and they all become very important to deciding what the product is going to be. You could add more and we'd be sitting at the same price point as the PlayStation 2, but I think we're already better than that at the price point we aimed at. I feel like it was the right combination of things. There is only one Miyamoto-san in the world.

Q: When did the decision for the sound chip come in? Was that there from the beginning that it was going to be integrated on the graphics chip?

Buchner: Certainly not from day one, but within the first six months we had already picked that direction. So by the middle of 1998 it was known, and a partner was chosen for that. The performance level of it was probably tweaked a little bit over time. The interface to memory was the thing we changed over time. The idea of the A-RAM was something that evolved probably in 1999. Originally there was something else that was there.

There was another memory out there for something else and we kind of figured out a good way from a cost point of view. Instead of having two memories that were partially used we would have one that was more fully used. It was the better way to go, so there was some structural changes to the system [later on] but from a basic 10,000-ft block diagram you could say middle of 1998 that decision was made.

Q: With the embedded RAM, was that a decision from the very beginning or was that added at a later date?

Buchner: That was actually one of the "passionate" arguments, because making that step there's a huge benefit to system performance but there's also the addition of risk and cost. Nothing in life comes for free. It's one of those things [when decided] it changes what we want to do from a technology partnership with NEC, what kind of process we need, from tools, and it brings a new partner, MoSys, into the mix. It limits the choices of silicon providers because there's not many people who can do something like that. In fact very few people can do what NEC has done with this. They've done a phenomenal job.

So that was a decision where we said from a practical point of view, "Do we want to do this?" and just had a very rational discussion on pros and cons. In the end clearly we get a huge benefit. Not only from the embedded DRAM, but from how we structured it. One of the other products out there has embedded DRAM, but arguably they're not getting all the bang for the buck. They've got the cost in the silicon from a process point of view, but as for the performance in memory I don't think they have what we have -- or anything close to it.

Q: Seeing what developers are doing with the chip right now would you say that the team made the right decision.

Buchner: Yes. I think it's worked out well. It took a lot of very hard work to get where we are, but I think it was definitely worth it.

Q: Over half of the chip is embedded RAM, right?

Buchner: On the version that shipped at launch it's on the order of a third. From a transistor point of view it's about half, but because it's a very regular structure it is very, very dense. So that half-transistor results in a much smaller area. So from an area point of view actually a little less than a third.

Q: Is transform performance one of the big fights you had with using eDRAM, which takes up space?

Buchner: That actually wasn't an issue. Those two are very separate discussions. You look at the embedded DRAM and it's going to be for performance on the fill rate side, and that's a cost trade-off. To get that kind of bandwidth with an external device, forget it, you're not going to even come close. So there's a huge benefit we get by having it.

Transform is a separate topic almost: how much do you shoot for, what's important, what are the typical cases with what developers are doing. Not many people send down triangles of the same color and never change anything else. It's these kind of fake benchmarks that are irrelevant. And so they're not streamed to data that is ever showing up in a game, so what's the point in measuring them? So what we went after is what's really happening in a game, what's really happening from a content creation point of view. We optimized around what the data patterns looked like and made a machine that screams for those kind of patterns.

Q: If you had to pick one main feature on the chip that you thought as most important or most impressive what would it be?

Buchner: Hmm, there's a lot of them. [Laughs] From an overall, machine architecture point of view it is a very, very clean architecture. So, again, back to the 10,000-ft level it's a sweet machine, it's just so clean and there aren't a lot of quirky behaviors. There are very few things that I would put in the quirky behavior category. So it's allowed the developers to go focus on making the games. From a raw feature point of view, in the texture area, the texture combining, what we can do with textures, how one texture can manipulate another texture...in the area of textures I think we've greatly extended what people can do and the effects that they can create. So that's something over time I think you're going to see continuing improvements as developers say, "Hey, I've got this incredible toolbox now for assembling things" I don't think that's an area that's been tapped yet. So, I think over time you're going to see better feature effects coming out.

Q: So you think textures will be especially impressive?

Buchner: I think that's one area where we've made a big leap in algorithms or the potential algorithms . Not diminishing any other area, everything about the chip is wonderful. But if you ask me to pick one area, I'll choose [textures].

Q: Can you talk a little bit about the texture processing power? We know you have your secrets, but for instance on the GameCube spec sheet you list eight simultaneous textures as a feature. Can you explain how that works?

Buchner: The magic, I would say, is not in the fact that there are eight of them, but how the eight go together. How the eight can interact with each other, how one texture can modify another texture, or how you blend them together -- so that's the real magic. That fact that you can do one texture and then do a second, well whoop-de-doo. And a third one, or even twenty of them that's really just silicon. How you put them together and the intelligence of putting them together, and how you expose that in an API so developers can properly control it, that's really the magic.

Q: These eight simultaneous textures, how much does it hurt performance to utilize them as you move up in numbers?

Buchner: Look at the applications.

Q: Such as Rogue Squadron II? Yea, we can see that's doing a lot. Any specifics you can talk about?

Buchner: I won't give out any numbers. I'll let Nintendo do that.

Q: When the clock speed changed around last year's E3 you said it was to balance the system out. We were surprised to see you took back the speed of the graphics chip because it is so powerful. What would you say is the difference in power between the former 200 MHz chip and now the 162 MHz chip balanced with this newer, more powerful CPU?

Buchner: Going back to an application point of view, having more of a balance between the two is going to make the game better at the end of the day. Having one piece of the system have much, much more performance than another, well maybe from a benchmark or contrived case point of view you might get something for it, but if you have one weak link in a chain, you still have a weak link. I'm not saying that the CPU was a weak link before, but having more balance there made a lot of sense. And due to some ratio issues there, the ratio leads to having these kinds of fixed multiples. We wanted to get more CPU [power] and to get that number we couldn't find the right multiple there, so we had to actually drop [Flipper's speed] to make them line up.

Q: Why is it set to such certain multiples?

Buchner: It's integer multiples of each other. You've got a 3:1 ratio.

Q: Is that because of the whole architecture of the system that you can't do any other multiple variations?

Buchner: It's a very common thing for a CPU interface. So if you look at the PC world it's the same thing, you've got the front-side bus that has, you know, a certain clock rate and there's multiples of that to the CPU. Right now it's kind of in 50 MHz multiples on the Intel side. They had some busses that were 33 MHz or 66 MHz intervals. So you saw these weird steppings, like you saw a processor that was a 733 MHz and then when they went to Pentium III it was suddenly 500, 550, 600, etc. So there are these ratios, and basically what's happening is you're trying to have a bus that's synchronous between two devices and you need to run at a fixed multiple. If you made them asynchronous, then what you introduce is latency. If we had started day one and said we wanted to have a different set of multiples, we probably could have worked with IBM and we might of come up with something different that had finer grain multiples. But as developers got their hands on the system, seeing what they could do with it, we though, you know, here's a nice change to make. At that time, with what was in our toolbox that was a choice we could make.

Q: In the future will any of Flipper's technology be integrated into ATI chips?

Buchner: The team that worked on Flipper has been working on products in the PC space for quite some time now. What you saw at [last year's Space World] was basically the "final silicon," so that team's been off for over a year now doing something in the PC space. So, yes you'll start seeing technologies, ideas, but you're not going to see an exact piece of that chip coming out and being used in the PC space. PC APIs are different, the requirements are different. A lot of the concepts, a lot of the things we created are ATI property, ATI owns the ideas and we're going to exploit those in other areas. So, stay tuned there.

Q: The CPU interface we've heard a lot about. At the recent Embedded Processor Forum they had a shot of Luigi's lit face from Luigi's Mansion when they were talking about the CPU. Saying that the CPU was used for the really up-close lighting. Could you describe the relationship between the CPU and graphics chip and how important it is they work together?

Buchner: What we've done in Flipper is optimize things that are happening a lot. Things that are common to do in a game, common to do in an application that really need to make high-performance you move those into dedicated silicon. You're basically running a program in the dedicated silicon. Things that you occasionally need to do you may not want to go and dedicate a lot of gates to them which adds to the cost, so you want to have a very good general purpose CPU that can run an algorithm. You might have some really cool special effect in lighting for example, that you may not have dedicated gates for but you've got now this powerful CPU. So you go do, those set of triangles you might do some lighting algorithm on there so that might have been what was referred to [at the Emedded Processor Forum].

Q: How directly is the Gekko CPU and Flipper graphics chip linked?

Buchner: Looking at a block diagram, Flipper is the center of the universe. Everything else connects to Flipper. So the CPU plugs directly into Flipper, main memory plugs directly into Flipper, controllers plug into Flipper, flash cards plug into Flipper, the expansion slots for the modem or broadband adapter plug right into Flipper, the digital video out plugs right into Flipper. The only thing that doesn't plug into Flipper is a set of DACs (digital analog converters) for the TV out and the audio. So that communication between Flipper and Gekko is very important.

That's one of the areas where we went in and made some changes to the standard PowerPC bus to improve the performance. It's till very much in the spirit of the standard PowerPC bus, but we added some enhancements. You get in some cases much higher bandwidth than you could normally get. Usually you can take the clock rate times the number of bytes, and that's your not-to-exceed number. Rarely does anything allow you to get that number. What we've done is made it so that in some cases we can get very, very close to peak. What you typically get is within 50-75% of peak for nice data patterns.

Q: So when you say "peak" on the spec sheet, you're getting pretty close to it?

Buchner: In certain cases. There's a pattern you can get which gets you very close to peak. There's another set of things that you're not going to get to peak just because of the way that the protocol is set up. But it's still better than the other two guys that are out there. It's still a very good bus.

Q: How close did you work with IBM and when did that relationship start happening?

Buchner: In the summer of '98 we had what we call the Beauty Contest to look at the processors that are out there that we'd want to use as the basis for GameCube. We looked at a lot of different choices and went through a lot of different things and made many comparisons. And by combinations of raw performance we chose what would be a good basis for building the system. We knew we weren't going to find something that was perfect for what we wanted, so we figured we needed a team that we could trust to go do some changes, could deliver on a schedule, and also deliver on a cost point.

We narrowed it down to a couple of choices fairly quickly, did a lot of detailed analysis and in the end this was the right choice. Then the business relationship had to work out between IBM and Nintendo at that point. Once that settled then we said, okay, it's a good baseline and part of the business discussion was that IBM was going to have to make some changes. Even though they thought it was a good general purpose CPU, and it is, there's some things that it's missing to do good gaming. So we had them add those things. That was a very close relationship between all three parties, because Howard Cheng was specifying some of the changes, we were specifying some of the changes, working through the changes, and certainly all the bus changes had to be very tightly coupled. So there were daily phone calls for quite a while, frequent meetings, and things like that. It was a good relationship, and we ended up hiring one of the guys from IBM's teams.

Q: The new cartoon look of Zelda is amazing. We saw the cel-shading demonstration at last year's Space World, but it was a relatively quick demonstration. It was great to see that it could be used so easily, but Zelda is so far beyond that. Maybe you could describe what's going on there? We think a lot of people underestimate the technology. From a technological standpoint what would you say it's doing?

Buchner: [Jokingly] Well if it wasn't such a big deal, people would have done it a long time ago. It's not easy. It took a lot of work. There's some extra stuff we did in order to enable that. There's some things we put in the camp of inventions and there's some patents that have been applied for in that area. It's not an easy thing to do, and even though in the end, oh gee, you're creating sort of a 2D surface instead of 3D that should be easier, but it's not. Finding the contours, finding where the edges go is a very difficult problem

Q: Would you say that the other two players on the marketplace could do that kind of thing?

Buchner: If they didn't focus on it, I... Well, it's not something that falls out for free. I don't know what either one of them has done, but haven't seen any evidence from either one of them so I'd say we're probably unique in that regard.

Q: Do you have any favorite games, speaking from a technical standpoint? You know what Flipper can do, do you see any that are pushing it a lot faster than you thought it could be pushed?

Buchner: Tough question because I don't want to single out anyone. Um, I guess overall there's been a couple things that I've seen where you kind of get that chill down your spine and say, this is some really great stuff, impressive stuff. Even knowing the horsepower of what we've provided the developers, just seeing what they've done. The impressive stuff to me, you know I'm going back a year, is where a developer rode away with a development strapped to the back of a motorcycle and five days later you're looking at one of these demos that were shown at Space World last year.

To me that was impressive, because that really showed off how easy this machine is to use. They got really high performance, like the Star Wars demo from last Space World. That was basically done in like five days. That stuff was just amazing. But I think the machine hasn't been fully tapped, it's going to be a while before people do tap into it. There's a lot of focus to getting the first games out, you know the initial launch titles. I think in the second year they'll really get a chance to dig into the machine and start figuring out some things. You know, dig a little deeper in the toolbox and see what's there. I don't think we've seen all that's going to come out of this by any way, shape, or form.

Q: Do you think that because it's proving to be such an easy thing to program for that we'll see the difference in generations? With the N64 you had specific first, second, and third generation titles. You could pick them apart. You could look at a game and see that. Do you think we'll see that kind of separation on GameCube as well?

Buchner: I think you'll see a different kind of separation. I think you'll still see one. On N64 it was difficult to program and so therefore the second year people figured out how to get a little more performance out of it. But here I think even though they are starting higher up the performance curve there's still a rich feature set that I don't know has been fully tapped because people haven't had all these tools in their toolbox before.

So there still developing things with now just high-performance taking some advantage of some of the multi-texture capabilities, but I think a year from now you'll see newer ideas and newer things you can do. So I think you'll start seeing much more on the features side and less and less from the performance side. So you'll see this higher rate of polygon counts and fill rate, but in terms of what you do with that and what effects you get I think you're going to see a lot more. So it's a different level of changes over the years.

Q: Where from here does it go for ATI and Nintendo? We saw your logo on the GameCube, so you must have a great relationship with them. Do you think you'll be working together in the future?

Buchner: I see no reason we won't be. I think from a company-to-company relationship it's a very good relationship and from a person-to-person level it's an excellent relationship. There are a lot of folks on both sides who I think consider themselves friends, not only working together, producing something, but people you can call at home and talk to. Also, we're there if they need anything, they know they can call on us to go do something. You know, we'd move heaven and earth right now to help them with something. So I think it's been a good partnership. A lot of the people have had a good relationship for two generations. A year ago we started talking to factory people, well the same person working with the factory people for the N64 [was helping for GameCube].

You know the same two people show up in a room together, and they already know each other so they've already been through one war. It's easy to start off and hit the ground running. I think we've got the best shot of anybody out there to continue working with them. I see no signs of them backing away from us or vice versa. These are fun products to do, so from a pure engineering point of view this is cool sh**. There's not another thing like this in the world and even if you look at the other consoles, the way the companies are and the way they build consoles is very, very different from the way Nintendo approaches it. Nintendo doesn't view themselves as technologists, so they bring in the best technology partners they can to go produce something and they give you the ability to really create almost anything from a clean sheet of paper. To go build the best possible thing you can for where they're focused. And there is a lot of fun to that. So I'm going to do whatever I can to make sure we're in there.

Hollywood development.... 2001~02 to 2005 ?

 

[capslock]

What is the possibility of Broadway operating on some unheard of bandwidth? It being an 128-bit processor? (assuming 64-bit is the norm).

OMFGBBQWTF!!! It's called BROADway for a reason!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Gahiggidy]

Exactly!

 

[xexex]

no, 256-lanes

 

[GDGF]

Xenon isn't even going to be powerful enough to play old Xbox games, so I don't see how it even has a chance at topping the Revolution.

:lol Please, Gah, don't ever leave this forum.

 

[OG_Original Gamer]

cool interview about the development process of Gamecube--mostly about Flipper--which was in R&D and under construction from 1998 to 2000.

http://www.n-sider.com/articleview.php?articleid=338





Hollywood development.... 2001~02 to 2005 ?

For this round, some of the team that was at SGI that worked on the N64 is now at Nintendo. So the group up in Redmond at NTD, Howard Cheng and Rob Moore's group -- both of which worked at SGI on the N64 -- had some expertise through hiring people on the 3D side of things.

And some say Nintendo don't know anything about creating graphic chips. How much you want to bet Hollywood has some features that were advantages on the Flipper when it comes to textures. The texture combining capabilities of the Flipper is unique, and it also gives you an idea why RE4 was possible. The only developer to recognize this early on in the life of the GC was Factor5.

The TEV and "pixel shaders" are basically cute acronyms for what used to be called color combiners. The TEV also incorporates the Texture reading part of the pipeline.

A color combiner is in general implemented as a single logic op, in NVidia's case thats public (register combiner docs) and is of the form
A op1 B op2 C op1 D
where op1 is either Dot Product or multiply, op2 is either add or select.
As you can see by repeating this multiple times with some register manipulation between stages you can do most basic math. Pixel shaders just provide a simple consistent interface to this (and other vendors implementations).

The TEV uses a different basic combine operation which is a little more limited. However since the Texture reads can be interleaved with the combiner operations it allows you to do things that would require multipass render on NV2X.

So as an example
on NV2X I have to write


Texture Read
Texture Read
.
.

Combiner Op
Combiner Op
Combiner Op
Combiner Op
.
.
.

On Flipper I can write

Texture Read
Combiner Op
Combiner Op
Texture Read
Combiner Op
Combiner Op
Texture Read
Combiner Op
Combiner Op
.
.
.

I guess the easiest explanation is that Flipper has simpler units for combining and reading textures, but allows more complex arrangements of the units.
So if one of the texture reads is dependant on a previous combiner Op and you can't squeeze the ops into the texture addressing instructions the NV2X would require multipass to do the same thing.

ERP of Beyond3d.

Hollywood has been in development for a long time, so I expect it to have some things unique to it that won't exsist on other consoles. Same for MS and Sony.

 

[xexex]

even though Hollywood has been in development for a long time, I expect it to be fairly modern as far as feature set. pixel shader 3.0 equivalent at least, as ATI has said in the past. Hollywood should be the first graphic chip for Nintendo built *this* decade. I'm pretty sure DS graphics are 1990s, along with N64's RCP and Cube's Flipper.

 

[Date of Lies]

this sudden spike of nintendo hate makes me think of the old days.

"well, we don't know anything about the next-gen consoles' specs but I think that Revolution will probably be the weakest, even if it releases later than Xenon, it can't be more powerful than it, it's just not Nintendo's focus..."

 

[OG_Original Gamer]

this sudden spike of nintendo hate makes me think of the old days.

"well, we don't know anything about the next-gen consoles' specs but I think that Revolution will probably be the weakest, even if it releases later than Xenon, it can't be more powerful than it, it's just not Nintendo's focus..."

Its wishful thinking, or should I say a dream. We should start getting tech leaks in the middle of April or sooner.

 

[Shaheed79]

Like I said. The chips in Rev will be plenty powerful compared to its competition. What I'm more concerned about is what amount of RAM and storage medium they plan to use. They need to AT LEAST match the storage capacity and RAM of the 360 if Nintendo wishes to be taken seriously by Western 3rd parties next gen. The also need to go out of their way to make sure companies like ID, Epic, Blizzard, 3DR ect. have Rev dev kits early on instead of treating them like an Artoon.

EDIT: Also, anyone else see the HUGE irony of how 3-4 years ago MS talked about features of the original XBOX like the built in hardrive and Superior Power being their philsophy of how to push the industry foward and what made Xbox better than its competition? I can dig up interviews from MS PR reps who trashed both the PS2 and Cube for not having an intergrated HD and how it was vital for the innovation of never before seen game applications. The X-heads ate it up back then too and now that MS has flip-flopped on their integrated Hardrive stance they seem to have forgotten how much of an emphasis MS use to put on its inclusion in the first place.

 

[Cold-Steel]

Like I said. The chips in Rev will be plenty powerful compared to its competition. What I'm more concerned about is what amount of RAM and storage medium they plan to use. They need to AT LEAST match the storage capacity and RAM of the 360 if Nintendo wishes to be taken seriously by Western 3rd parties next gen. The also need to go out of their way to make sure companies like ID, Epic, Blizzard, 3DR ect. have Rev dev kits early on instead of treating them like an Artoon.

-Storage Capacity
-Developer Kits Early and Finalized
-RAM to match the competition

I think we're all eager to hear this. I expect out of the gates that Nintendo should have at least a 9GB disc storage medium.

 

[Shaheed79]

-Storage Capacity
-Developer Kits Early and Finalized
-RAM to match the competition

I think we're all eager to hear this. I expect out of the gates that Nintendo should have at least a 9GB disc storage medium.

Lets hope so. Those are the 3 issues that will make or break the Revolution in the West next generation. So far they're saying all the right things being very un-Nintendo like (BC, WiFi, HD) and I'm just preparing myself for them to do something very stupidly Nintendo-like for example sticking with a low capacity minidisk for Revolution. I also think they should make the Revolution FINALLY play DVD's because its exclusion from Gamecube hurt them more than they are willing to admit trying to keep the Cube "Cost Efficient". Don't give the competition ANY reason to call the Revolution underdeveloped Nintendo. "Pure Games Machine" is a thing of the past. Welcom to the Multimedia future.

 

[OG_Original Gamer]

Like I said. The chips in Rev will be plenty powerful compared to its competition. What I'm more concerned about is what amount of RAM and storage medium they plan to use. They need to AT LEAST match the storage capacity and RAM of the 360 if Nintendo wishes to be taken seriously by Western 3rd parties next gen. The also need to go out of their way to make sure companies like ID, Epic, Blizzard, 3DR ect. have Rev dev kits early on instead of treating them like an Artoon.

EDIT: Also, anyone else see the HUGE irony of how 3-4 years ago MS talked about features of the original XBOX like the built in hardrive and Superior Power being their philsophy of how to push the industry foward and what made Xbox better than its competition? I can dig up interviews from MS PR reps who trashed both the PS2 and Cube for not having an intergrated HD and how it was vital for the innovation of never before seen game applications. The X-heads ate it up back then too and now that MS has flip-flopped on their integrated Hardrive stance they seem to have forgotten how much of an emphasis MS use to put on its inclusion in the first place.

Yeah, I agree. Matching MS and Sony in the amount of RAM, is very important when it comes to ports as just as much as it is titles developed from the ground up on the console. The less technicalities the better, I don't want a half assed looking port.

 

[OG_Original Gamer]

Lets hope so. Those are the 3 issues that will make or break the Revolution in the West next generation. So far they're saying all the right things being very un-Nintendo like (BC, WiFi, HD) and I'm just preparing myself for them to do something very stupidly Nintendo-like for example sticking with a low capacity minidisk for Revolution. I also think they should make the Revolution FINALLY play DVD's because its exclusion from Gamecube hurt them more than they are willing to admit trying to keep the Cube "Cost Efficient". Don't give the competition ANY reason to call the Revolution underdeveloped Nintendo. "Pure Games Machine" is a thing of the past. Welcom to the Multimedia future.

Let this be a note to Reggie, since he say's he reads the forums. This forum is probably the most popular multiplatform forum on the net.

 

[Papi]

OMFGBBQWTF!!! It's called BROADway for a reason!!!!!!!!!!!

And HOLLYWOOD. OMG! Wood in hoes!

 

[DDayton]

Bah. I hope Nintendo doesn't release a $300 system -- they've had a good track record as far as console prices go, never exceeding $200. Unlike certain other companies I could mention.

 

[xexex]

Bah. I hope Nintendo doesn't release a $300 system -- they've had a good track record as far as console prices go, never exceeding $200. Unlike certain other companies I could mention.

no no no, I hope Revolution is a rock solid $300 system. that's been the reported game-plan for years now. ever since after the Gamecube launched. Nintendo is spending more on R&D and expected to pay for a higher-end chipset than what they paid for Gamecube's. a $300 system will help Nintendo image--they won't be percieved as having a cheap kids system.

the $200 Nintendo systems only really worked well twice. NES and SNES.

 

[DDayton]

no no no, I hope Revolution is a rock solid $300 system. that's been the reported game-plan for years now. ever since after the Gamecube launched. Nintendo is spending more on R&D and expected to pay for a higher-end chipset than what they paid for Gamecube's. a $300 system will help Nintendo image--they won't be percieved as having a cheap kids system.

the $200 Nintendo systems only really worked well twice. NES and SNES.

Maybe I'm naive, but I really don't think that the problem with the N64 or GameCube was that they launched for less than their competitors...

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

Bah. I hope Nintendo doesn't release a $300 system -- they've had a good track record as far as console prices go, never exceeding $200. Unlike certain other companies I could mention.

I enjoyed it being a more affordable choice, too, but it clearly didn't work out for them as well as planned. They could still end up cheaper later with price drops, though, if Sony is as slow about it as they were with PS2. If we imagined GameCube as launching at $299 and pushed back the other price points by a year each, it could still have been $99 for half a year by this point.

EDIT:

Maybe I'm naive, but I really don't think that the problem with the N64 or GameCube was that they launched for less than their competitors...

They hoped to reach a larger market of people who would be willing to pay that much, and maybe they did... but clearly the people willing to pay more was large enough. In the end it just gave Xbox the chance to take the graphics whore market segment that N64 enjoyed. Give GCN 8 more MB of 1T-SRAM, the slightly-faster Flipper as originally planned, the ability to play movies, and who knows where things would be today.

As well, consider launch. Unless a system is a horrible flop, it can be pretty well assured of selling out. At that time, is there a need to appeal to a lower price point than the competitors are? They'd just be losing out on hundreds of millions in revenue for the sake of a meaningless temporary $100 price advantage that will drop to a $50 price advantage whenever everyone drops.

 

[Shaheed79]

Let this be a note to Reggie, since he say's he reads the forums. This forum is probably the most popular multiplatform forum on the net.

Im glad others like you agree with my reasoning it shows that I may not just be talking out of my ass. If I could I would email this topic directly to Reggie and Iwata cause I'm still a believer that Nintendo can be as clueless as ever if they want to be.

no no no, I hope Revolution is a rock solid $300 system. that's been the reported game-plan for years now. ever since after the Gamecube launched. Nintendo is spending more on R&D and expected to pay for a higher-end chipset than what they paid for Gamecube's. a $300 system will help Nintendo image--they won't be percieved as having a cheap kids system.

the $200 Nintendo systems only really worked well twice. NES and SNES.

I couldn't of said it better myself. Pure gaming platforms are DEAD Nintendo! You fed us that "Games only Console" BS with Gameucbe and look where it got you. If the only reason they went with a propriety mini-disk was to eventually make the Gameboy Next a portable Gamecube player then I can forgive it. Otherwise the shorter loading times and "Slowing Down" pirating wasn't worth the lack of a multimedia function. In fact the Cube could played regular sized and mini-DVD's if they designed it that way. If Rev doesn't supportDVD playback Nintendo is kicking themselves in the Nuts harder than ever before.

 

[Ghost]

Theres no way Revolution will be the weakest console, coming out a year after Xenon, it's hard to see it topping cell, just because of the amount of money that's been sunk into that, but it'll probably be more focused than PS3.

Nintendos problem will be, as it has been this gen, getting people to take advantage of their hardware. They can have all the power in the world but it means nothing if all they are getting is Xenon ports from third parties.

 

[pestul]

Theres no way Revolution will be the weakest console, coming out a year after Xenon, it's hard to see it topping cell, just because of the amount of money that's been sunk into that, but it'll probably be more focused than PS3.

Nintendos problem will be, as it has been this gen, getting people to take advantage of their hardware. They can have all the power in the world but it means nothing if all they are getting is Xenon ports from third parties.

Will people ever learn to read before posting?

 

[CrimsonSkies]

After E3 I expect PS3 just edging Xenon which just edges out Revolution on paper for technical capability in terms of raw horsepower. I really liked the things I saw in the Xenon demonstration at the GDC in terms of user interface. That was pretty awesome.

 

[Che]

Lets hope so. Those are the 3 issues that will make or break the Revolution in the West next generation. So far they're saying all the right things being very un-Nintendo like (BC, WiFi, HD) and I'm just preparing myself for them to do something very stupidly Nintendo-like for example sticking with a low capacity minidisk for Revolution. I also think they should make the Revolution FINALLY play DVD's because its exclusion from Gamecube hurt them more than they are willing to admit trying to keep the Cube "Cost Efficient". Don't give the competition ANY reason to call the Revolution underdeveloped Nintendo. "Pure Games Machine" is a thing of the past. Welcom to the Multimedia future.

I think what's more important is the capacity of the discs and not the multimedia part. I'd rather see 15GB discs than multimedia functions on plain DVD-ROM players(which btw are VERY VERY cheap). Unless you want BRD tech which I find highly unlikely for Nintendo to adopt. As for power I'm quite sure that Revolution will surpass an 1 year old technology which btw is not that advanced.

 

[jarrod]

After E3 I expect PS3 just edging Xenon which just edges out Revolution on paper for technical capability in terms of raw horsepower.

 

[Panajev2001a]

How much will MS and Nintendo spend on R&D for IBM and ATI contracts ? Pretty much the same.

How much resources they have to complement IBM and ATI in their efforts ? I would give you about the same, but it'd be a lie. Whatever, you decide.

How much will MS and Nintendo lose on each console sold or how much profit they will make ? You know more than I do that one player is likely taking a hit and that is Microsoft. Sure, they will not take a huge hit, but their talks about cutting costs compared to Xbox 1 is meant also over-all, over the whole life of Xenon hence why they licensed the chips from IBM and ATI and they will be manufacturing them with the fab(s) they choose.

Nintendo will bring Revolution to the market later an that gives a R&D advantage, but they will aim to have at worst a very small loss on each console sold and at best a mall but relevant profit on each unit sold.

This means that some R&D advances in Nintendo's case could very well be spent in lowwering the cost of the included technology rather than leap-frogging Xbox 2 performance-wise.

 

[xexex]

How much will MS and Nintendo spend on R&D for IBM and ATI contracts ? Pretty much the same.

How much resources they have to complement IBM and ATI in their efforts ? I would give you about the same, but it'd be a lie. Whatever, you decide.

How much will MS and Nintendo lose on each console sold or how much profit they will make ? You know more than I do that one player is likely taking a hit and that is Microsoft. Sure, they will not take a huge hit, but their talks about cutting costs compared to Xbox 1 is meant also over-all, over the whole life of Xenon hence why they licensed the chips from IBM and ATI and they will be manufacturing them with the fab(s) they choose.

Nintendo will bring Revolution to the market later an that gives a R&D advantage, but they will aim to have at worst a very small loss on each console sold and at best a mall but relevant profit on each unit sold.

This means that some R&D advances in Nintendo's case could very well be spent in lowwering the cost of the included technology rather than leap-frogging Xbox 2 performance-wise.

W E L C O M E T O H O L L Y W O O D P A N A J E V



Revolution will be comparable to Xenon for sure. some ways better, some ways not quite as much. maybe they will do 'more' with 'less'. in the end, they will all (all three) be pushing 100s of millions of tricked out polygons. easily 20x what we have today, at the very least.

 

[Red Dolphin]

I'm a little worried that even with Nintendo having a "$299" launch system that matches PS3 in nearly everyway, that many casual gamers will still be easily swayed by PS3's inclusion of Blu-Ray as "more bang for buck" and purchase it instead. I'm worried it's going to be the PS2 all over again with ppl heavily basing their purchase decision on a hyped-up new media format. I still remember so many casuals saying "I bought the PS2 because it could play DVDs". And coming off the massive success of PS2 gives me less hope. Nintendo are going to have some killer games at launch and a very sleek looking console.

I don't think the exclusion of DVD playing in Revolution would hurt it all that much. Most ppl that own a current console these days would have at least one dvd player by now. Still it would be good to have just so it's not lacking anything Xenon has. It must meet Xenon feature for feature since it's launching so far after it.

 

[ImNotLikeThem]

I still remember so many casuals saying "I bought the PS2 because it could play DVDs". .

the main major problem with that argument is how many casual gamers, or how many people in general, have the high-definition television to even take advantage of? the jump from vhs to DVD was much more significant (and easier to sell) than going from DVD to "super DVD". i've worked retail electronics, and it's hard enough getting the average person to buy even the right CABLES to take advantage of a standard DVD player, let alone a whole new everything.

 

[Shompola]

Of course a lot of them can't take advantage of it or don't care. But his point was that if it says play super awesome blue ray movies then the "casuals" will probably buy it simple just for that. BC is a lot the same. It's a great PR trick to make people interested in it.

 

[pestul]

Is it for certain that Nintendo won't offer BR or HDDVD?

 

[UltraMagnanimous]

Almost guaranteed it won't feature either. IMO.

 

[Paulokj]

Matsushita is one of partners of Blue Ray , and Matsushita aka Panasonic is very very friendly of Nintendo. Who Knows!

 

[gofreak]

Sony/Matsushita are working on mini-Bluray discs, supposedly. Same size as the GC disc, holds up to 15GB on a single layer. It probably would be far too expensive for Nintendo next year, though. They're talking about putting them in camcorders that, if released, would probably be triple the cost of a regular camcorder. They said last year that they might have such camcorders out this year, so i don't know, maybe in 2006 it'd be more reasonable. Then again, those discs have to be recordable - a mini-Bluray read-only disc would have to be more affordable? From a technical perspective, they would be perfect. Capacity would be more than fine (up to 30GB with a dual layer disc? - proportionally, that's a lot closer to its bigger brother than the mini-DVD was) and physically they match the GC disc etc.

Philips has made a 3cm Bluray disc that holds 1GB..

Of course, I would really prefer to see Nintendo swallow their pride and put a full blown Blu-ray drive in there. It would elevate their marketing competitiveness with Sony to a whole other level. Who knows, it might happen - afterall, Nintendo is in the movie business now (that new animation division), so maybe that's the "excuse" they need to embrace a standard movie format in their own console. You'll need a movie player to watch Nintendo's movies!

BTW, how far did mini-DVD tech go in terms of capacity?

 

[Laurent]

Sony/Matsushita are working on mini-Bluray discs, supposedly. Same size as the GC disc, holds up to 15GB on a single layer. It probably would be far too expensive for Nintendo next year, though. They're talking about putting them in camcorders that, if released, would probably be triple the cost of a regular camcorder. They said last year that they might have such camcorders out this year, so i don't know, maybe in 2006 it'd be more reasonable. Then again, those discs have to be recordable - a mini-Bluray read-only disc would have to be more affordable? From a technical perspective, they would be perfect. Capacity would be more than fine (up to 30GB with a dual layer disc? - proportionally, that's a lot closer to its bigger brother than the mini-DVD was) and physically they match the GC disc etc.

Philips has made a 3cm Bluray disc that holds 1GB..

Of course, I would really prefer to see Nintendo swallow their pride and put a full blown Blu-ray drive in there. It would elevate their marketing competitiveness with Sony to a whole other level. Who knows, it might happen - afterall, Nintendo is in the movie business now (that new animation division), so maybe that's the "excuse" they need to embrace a standard movie format in their own console. You'll need a movie player to watch Nintendo's movies!

BTW, how far did mini-DVD tech go in terms of capacity?

I think they might end up with standard-size Blu-Ray drive that includes special way to detect the smaller GameCube disc format and read it accordingly. They could find another way to prevent piracy with a standard format IMO.

 

[pestul]

It really is quite a mystery as to what format they're going to use..

I'm going to go out on a limb too and say for $299, they're probably going to use Blu-Ray too. I mean, it's not like they're using Cell, so maybe they can pull it off.

 

[gofreak]

$299

I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with how much people are relying and trusting that this will actually be the case. So IGN said it, some time ago. Enough to make it reliable? Not sure.

I agree, if they do this it opens up new opportunities for them on the hardware side. But I'd be more surprised if they did this over going with something they can sell more cheaply.

 

[OG_Original Gamer]

I've been thinking about the length of R&D time of Hollywood for the past couple days, so I have question. If ATI west started working on the chip design right after they finished the Flipper chip, is it possible it could end up being something of a entirely different design then what MS is getting?

I mean four years of development, would alow them the time to come up with new tech and make the chip far more efficient than the Flipper. There was some things in the Flipper design that didn't exsist in ATI current chips that were on the market at the time the GC getting ready to launch.

 

[acidviper]

it would be funny if they downplay graphics and end up with the most power GPU of the 3

 

[ImNotLikeThem]

I've been thinking about the length of R&D time of Hollywood for the past couple days, so I have question. If ATI west started working on the chip design right after they finished the Flipper chip, is it possible it could end up being something of a entirely different design then what MS is getting?

I mean four years of development, would alow them the time to come up with new tech and make the chip far more efficient than the Flipper. There was some things in the Flipper design that didn't exsist in ATI current chips that were on the market at the time the GC getting ready to launch.

thats EXACTLY the point that many people in some other discussions seem to be forgetting. Nintendo is working with a group of people, many of which who started a partnership back in the N64 days. It is a completely seperate team working for Nintendo than it is for MS, and one that has had years of experience with how Nintendo works, what they want, and more importantly, how to do it well.
For people to even think that Revolution would be underpowered, let alone barely equal to Xenon is simply ignorant to the fact that there is a rather large history here. It's just like with IBM, even though all 3 competitors are using the same company for thier CPU technology, it is very unlikely that they would end up with something that shares similar features. I fully expect that all 3 systems will be incredibly powerful, and all 3 with have quite different strengths and weaknesses.

 

[Duckhuntdog]

it would be funny if they downplay graphics and end up with the most power GPU of the 3

Yeah it probably would, but I think Nintendo will settle for being second best behind the PS3.

The key is more than likely ArtX.

 

[MrSingh]

So will the sound chip be called Bollywood?

 

[Panajev2001a]

So will the sound chip be called Bollywood?

Why not ?

 

[acidviper]

Hmmm are they even going to have digital sound for Revolution like Dolby Digital.

 

[xexex]

Hmmm are they even going to have digital sound for Revolution like Dolby Digital.

Gamecube's sound processor, a DSP by Macronix I believe, was embedded into the Flipper. it was only capable of surround sound and then Dolby Prologic II 5.1 sound.

I am confident that Revolution will feature at least full realtime Dolby Digital 5.1
(seperate stereo right-left channels) if not 7.1