HappySqurriel said:
Viper1 said:
| JEMC said:
OT. That "gaming console" could very well be OnLive's microconsole.
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This. It fits OnlIve's microconsole far more so than it does the idea of powering Nintendo's next home console.
HappySqurriel said:
ssj12 said:
why would they not use a next generation PPC processor from IBM? It breaks tradition.
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I don't know how well the newest Power PC processors compare, but previous versions of the Power PC core were not particularly competitive in terms of performance for the energy consumption or cost. With how low performance the Wii was, it should be (reasonably) easy to maintain backwards compatibility through emulation of the system, which enables Nintendo to choose technology partners that make the most sense for them.
Beyond that, Nintendo has tended to work with both smaller technology partners (ArtX, Mosys, Factor 5) as well as larger companies to get the hardware they think will meet their needs.
Finally, few games are (really) CPU bound anymore and Nintendo could be designing their system with this in mind. Besides advanced physics the CPU of both the XBox 360 and PS3 are entirely adequate for most games today; and the nature of physics simulations makes them better suited to be executed on a GPU or on a stand alone PPU rather than on a CPU.
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I also believe they'll continue to use PPC architecture. IBM could do the same thing for Nintendo's next home console that they did for Wii by taking a current IBM product and re-engineering it a little to better fit Nintendo's request for efficiency. A reduced clock Power6 or even Power7 makes far more sense to me than this chip does.
Something else to consider. The PS3, Wii and X360 are all based on PowerPC architecture. That means devs have had a lot of years working with them. Sticking with a similar architecture for Nintendo's next home console would enable easy B/C and ensure developers can get to work quickly on quality code. out of familiarity.
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I don't know what Nintendo should or is doing, I'm just playing devil's advocate ...
There are always going to be advantages and disadvantages of taking different approaches with hardware designs; and depending on what other design decisions you make, you could design a system using (just about) any CPU and have it be reasonable.
With a company like Nintendo (or any console manufacturer) you're interested in more than just the raw performance; or how that raw performance relates to energy consumption and cost. They have to determine an approach that will lead to the greatest overall performance in game, with the lowest development effort, at the lowest manufacturing cost, and under a set energy consumption limit. While I can't know (at this point in time) whether Nintendo decided that a lower performance CPU paired with a PPU would achieve these gains better than going with a higher performance CPU, I can always argue that that is a decision that Nintendo could have made.
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But...one could easily argue that timing certainly suggest OnLive more so than Nintendo. All those other factors aside, a “major customer preparing to launch a new gaming platform” alludes to the upcoming launch of the OnLive microconsole more than Nintendo given the unliklyhood that Nintendo will launch a new home console anytime soon (at least a year a way if not more) and the multimedia functionality of the Marvell chip mirror the reported functionalities of OnLive's microconsole.
