Supposedly, Final WiiU Specs from VGLeaks

[thewayofthepath]

zarx said:

lilbroex said:

zarx said:

IBM says it's 32-Bit

http://raidenii.net/files/datasheets/cpu/ppc_broadway.pdf

I suppose you think that the Pentium 3 is a 128-Bit CPU because it has a SIMD 128-bit Floating point register lol

http://www.ehow.com/list_7446473_pentium-3-specifications.html

 

The instruction set of the Broadway is 32-Bit it's a 32-Bit CPU

Why would I think something that I've stated otherwise many times?

Broadway has a 32-bit address bus and a 64-bit data bus.

You can't issue 64 bity instructions on a 32 bit processor.

CPU bits reffers to address space, not the floating point size/data size. Broadway is a 32-Bit CPU with a 64-Bit FPU, not a true 64-Bit CPU.

From the PDF I linked

Broadway implements the 32-bit portion of the PowerPC Architecture,
which provides 32-bit effective addresses, integer data types of 8, 16, and 32 bits, and floating-point
data types of single and double-precision.

 

From Wikipedia:

In computer architecture, 64-bit computing is the use of processors that have datapath widths, integer size, and memory addresses of 64 bits (8 octets) wide.

Without further qualification, a 64-bit computer architecture generally has integer and addressing registers that are 64 bits wide, allowing direct support for 64-bit data types and addresses. However, a CPU might have external data buses or address buses with different sizes from the registers, even larger (the 32-bit Pentium had a 64-bit data bus, for instance)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit_computing

 

Claiming that Broadway is a 64Bit CPU is disingenuous as it does not have an 64-bit instruction set, does not have a 64-bit address space and does not have a 64-bit intiger unit. Lots of 32-Bit CPUs have 64-Bit data bus and or a 64-Bit FPU.

I'll back you up.

The 32-bit ALU pretty much confirms a 32-bit CPU.  Much in the same way a Motorola 68000 is a 16-bit CPU despite sometimes being called 16/32 bit.  It did have 32-bit memory addressing (although only used 24-bit addressing for cost reasons) and was designed to be forwardly compatible with future 32-bit 68K CPUs.  But its ALU was 16-bit, hence the 16-bit label.

1984's 68020 was a true 32-bit CPU, but adding a 68881 FPU did not make it 64-bit despite support for double-precision floats.

Similar issues can be found with the SNES CPU.  It had a 16-bit ALU, but an 8-bit data bus.  However, nobody ever called it an 8-bit CPU.

Fun...