Wii U GPU new info and more speculation

[RazorDragon]

ninjablade said:

RazorDragon said:

ninjablade said:

Why talk about something, when you don't understand it,  what you stated goes against evrything i read from tech head's at neogaf and beyond3d. at the moment the block that hold the sp's are not even big enough to hold 40sp which is why everybody is confused.

 

 

As HoloDust said:

480:24:8 @40nm GPU is 118mm^2

400:20:8 @ 40nm GPU is 104mm^2

 

And TSMC's 40nm eDRAM should give 37mm^2 (got that from http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?p=1680372 )

So that would give us a final die size of 155mm^2, which is a little smaller than the 156.21mm^2 die size of Wii U's GPU. Introducing design overheads/redundancies for I/O and also increasing yield, it would get us in the 156.21mm^2 range. Of course, that was all speculation before the photo from Chipworks came, but it was all thought by NeoGAF and Beyond3D. I guess you didn't read those topics enough, because what i said was in the expectations of NeoGaf and Beyond3D users.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1703471&postcount=4532

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1703534&postcount=4533

Read and understand. the link you provided was 3 months ago, the descussion has since progressed since we have GPU pics.

That was the intention. Still, it doesn't make any sense to have 160SPs on a 156mm^2 die size. There would be so much wasted space in that GPU and that simply wouldn't happen, except if Nintendo somehow wanted to lose money creating empty space on the die which would magically explain everything. It's still not known the fabrication process on Wii U's GPU. You can't predict that the SIMD blocks are less dense or denser than Llano or whatever GPU they're comparing, because depending on your GPU design you can change the density for more or less without modifying the fabrication process. Even in that topic some Beyond3D users don't agree with that conclusion you posted:

http://beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1703605&postcount=4535

 

For example, removing the double precision extensions can improve density without modifying fabrication processes. As this user said:

http://beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1703684&postcount=4544

And looking over the next few pages, nobody posted Redwood's DP-less die shots for comparison, so it's actually not known if the removal from DP extensions would make the Wii U be able to hold 40SPs per block or not.

And, as i said, knowing the eDram die on Wii U takes 38.68mm², which allows for the GPU itself to take a whole 118mm^2, the minimum you can expect from a die with this side are 320 SPUs, even if the GPU was made in a 55nm process, there would still be a lot of space left on the die if there were only 160SPs, for example.