Official Wii U Thread!: Pokemon Rubmle U coming to Wii U

[Viper1]

drkohler said:

Totaldemon said:
Oh, and the Wii U will not be limited to a single thread. It's rumored to be a tri-core IBM cpu based on "Watson" aka the Power7 CPU from IBM which does out of order execution, and does 4..YES FOUR simultaneous threads per core...so that tri-core would do 12 threads.

As much as I'd love to see something like a Power7 CPU in a console, consider that:

The Power7 is a server processor. It has two memory interfaces for paired ECC DMMs and shitloads of cache to make use of the quad-threaded cores. (It also comes in 4,6,8 cores and burns a shitload of power). You'll never see such a processor in a console. Maybe a significantly trimmed down version. And four threads per core doesn't make sense in gaming console either. Check websites where people compare gaming performance on Intel I7s with/without multithreading enabled. Those 12 cores processing a single program ("the game") would probably lower performance, not increase it.

It's either Power7 or A2 based on the details given by IBM so far.  Both are server chips (pretty much all IBM makes these days anyway).   Previous generation IBM non-server chips simply don't fit with the information given.  

And IBM said the Wii U CPU is based on the CPU used in the Watson AI super computer which is powerd by Power7 CPU's.

I do expect it to have so reduced silicon and dropped clocks.