| Stefan51278 said: Yeah, Overclocking and Underclocking are options from a parallel universe... |
| MDX said: So what you are saying is that Nintendo does not customize their chips? |
Since you asked, try to follow along now.
the 3DS uses a modified ARM11 MPcore processor, specifically the MPcore processor because the GP and G series lack modularity of certain aspects and sacrifice performance for die size, Nintendo's 3DS SDK has and will always favor syncronous operation, each of the two cores in the 3DS run at 268mhz which is actually LOWER speed than the part the cpu is based on, an option Nintendo took to favor battery life and keep thermals down, the absolute newest ARM11 MPcore runs at 427mhz, which is less than 2x faster than the current clockspeed of the 3DS, which is running downclocked from the stock component.
3DS devkits running debug run at the parts normal speed to compensate for the debug overhead and because battery life isnt an issue since power is provided over the workstation link.
Even if Nintendo uses the latest MPcore to upgrade the 3DS, and used the full operating speed of the newer part, it would still be less than 2x faster than the current CPU in the current 3DS.
Given that Nintendo have clearly stated the newer console has even BETTER battery life, it is more probable that they have opted to go with the newer part and downclock it MORE than they downclocked the original, the end result should mean the new part runs at around 327mhz (a reduction of 100mhz), the current CPU runs at a much smaller reduction so has less of a power saving.
Result is the CPU would be 60-100mhz faster but more efficient in power and be running at around 2.7 DMIPS/mW, providing more solid performance but retaining the low heat and gaining some efficiency on power saving.
To be clear, nintendo do customize the chip with IO and linking structures to optimize the hardware specifically for its use, but they don't, never have, and never will UPCLOCK a part over it's stock specifications, so the line that the new 3ds CPU runs 3x faster is obviously false, the line that the CPU runs 2x faster is subjective based on performance gains on the newer cpu over the old design, even though the cpu will only be 60-100mhz faster, it could feasably run up to 2x faster depending on how much they downclock it from stock, and how they handle the addressing space.
That however does very little to negate the fact that the CPU was bottlenecked by the GPU in the old design, and they are not changing or upgrading the GPU for the new console, only switching the cpu, that combined with the latest SDK update not having profiles for newer hardware suggests to me that the additional processing power from the new CPU isn't a massive upgrade, and that part of the reason they went with the change was for better battery life and to use some of the extra power for handling NFC communications without impacting operation of standard software.
