Entroper on 09 February 2008
| DarkNight_DS said: There were talks about using the same config as the Gamecube in a future portable device. I wouldn't be surprised if they went that way or continued on with their use of ARM cpu's. I figure that shrinking the die size down to 45nm would be in Nintendo's best interest. It allows them to shrink the Wii down by 35% (matching Iwata's 3 DVD case speech he gave in 05). They can save aprox 1/2-1/3 the cost of each cpu or gpu they purchase at the reduced size. They can also drop the 50 watt power supply down to around 25-30 watts. They could stop using fans inside the cases and cut down the size of the motherboard even further. It's a win win for Nintendo if they did shrink the component sizes down. Obviously the sooner the better, the higher price the price of the Wii for consumers the more Nintendo makes off them. So why not increase profits even further? |
But the Wii already uses less than 20 W of power under load.
You guys are overestimating the need for this. The chips that go into the Wii are already pretty darn cheap. I'm sure Nintendo is always looking for ways to make the Wii cheaper to produce, but there are other factors at work here besides die size. Process maturity also affects yields, and the Wii's CPU is already down to just 19 mm^2. By comparison, the Cell die shrink was from 221 mm^2 to about 150 mm^2. They're not even in the same ballpark when it comes to chip costs.
