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captain carot on 18 January 2015
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mine said:
captain carot said:
Two ways for compatiblity:
Hardware: Have Wii 3 an actual SoC with Wii U CPU and GPU.

Software: Emulate PPC and GPU. If the triple core PPC in the Wii U is as standard as most think it actually isn't that difficult to emulate. It might need much CPU-power to emulate it with enough speed though.
The really challenging part would be the GPU. WiiU has likely a design based on Redwood or even RV730. AMD has already made a completely new GPU design since then and that basically means there might already be compatiblity issues.

As for a Wii U on a chip, it would cost money but could possibly be done pretty cheap with a future manufacturing process like 14nm.
Softwareemulation would cost some money as well in development. And need fast enough hardware.

 

Software emulation: that would need a really fast CPU to deliver the performance. Absolute the opposite of current Nintendos direction.

Hardware: a die shrink would help them to cut production costs of the Wii U too. But I guess it might cost them much more to get IBM doing that... 

Overall the Wii U is a very balanced console with state-of-the-art manufacturing. 

 

I bet Nintendo is more worried about the next generations of gamers than about the next generations of consoles...

Wii U is balanced, but by no means state of the art. Manufacturing process for the CPU (and likely the GPU) is 45nm. That is quite dated. The whole MCM is something that nobody elese is doing anymore. And the GPU is either dated or not that much dated but still dated. Not what i'd call the MILF within GPU's.


A 14nm SoC with the important components could be done very cheap in 2 years. Actually, a 28nm redesign on one die instead that MCM package could already be much cheaper.