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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - will the wii u be able to upscale wii games?

Crono141 on 05 September 2012
Viper1 said:
walsufnir said:
Viper1 said:
walsufnir said:
Viper1 said:

Broadway (Wii GPU) is PowerPC .  The CPU in the Wii U is Power 7.

Hollywood (Wii GPU) was originally based on the ARTx designed GC Flipper GPU which utilized a TEV fixed function pipeline rather than AMD's unified shader architecture.

 

Because both the GPU and CPU are very different architecures, it requires them to have much of the Wii hardware built in to emulate the games and operate all the Wii peripherals with flawless operability.


1. power7 is ppc according to wikipedia. the isa is compatible.vhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gekko_(microprocessor) look at the right boxes.

2. gpu could be more tricky, yes. but as details from wiiU by now are missing.

3. if the hardware is built-in then you can't really speak of emulation.

1. No, it's not.   The box on the right has seperate sections for PowerPC and Power7.  Don't confuse PowerPC and Power7 with POWER architecture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Architecture


so you say the power isa of power7 is not backwards compatible? aix from ibm has to be rewritten for every new power-generation? somehow i doubt that. intel changed a lot with their latest generation cpus, but you still can write code for 386 and execute it.

Yes, there is a lot of backwards compatibility with each new instruction set but the differnces between a PowerPC 750CE and a Power7 CPU means you can't just drop code from the former on the latter and expect it to run.

Unless, of course, Nintendo had IBM bake in full BC in the particular chip that they are using in the WiiU.  Remember, it isn't an off the shelf CPU, its based on an off the shelf CPU with Nintendo requested customization.  Likewise with the GPU.  If Nintendo wants ATI and IBM to include Wii BC on each chip, they can make that happen.



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adsl on 05 September 2012

It is easy to implement anti-aliasing at the frame-buffer level without changing the native resolution. However upscale the native resolution of a game is not. Actually, the games developed for the Wii were made to run at 480p/i/576i so if the resolution changes to 720p, for example, it may lead to an unpredictable behavior.



walsufnir on 05 September 2012
Viper1 said:
walsufnir said:
Viper1 said:
walsufnir said:
Viper1 said:

Broadway (Wii GPU) is PowerPC .  The CPU in the Wii U is Power 7.

Hollywood (Wii GPU) was originally based on the ARTx designed GC Flipper GPU which utilized a TEV fixed function pipeline rather than AMD's unified shader architecture.

 

Because both the GPU and CPU are very different architecures, it requires them to have much of the Wii hardware built in to emulate the games and operate all the Wii peripherals with flawless operability.


1. power7 is ppc according to wikipedia. the isa is compatible.vhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gekko_(microprocessor) look at the right boxes.

2. gpu could be more tricky, yes. but as details from wiiU by now are missing.

3. if the hardware is built-in then you can't really speak of emulation.

1. No, it's not.   The box on the right has seperate sections for PowerPC and Power7.  Don't confuse PowerPC and Power7 with POWER architecture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Architecture


so you say the power isa of power7 is not backwards compatible? aix from ibm has to be rewritten for every new power-generation? somehow i doubt that. intel changed a lot with their latest generation cpus, but you still can write code for 386 and execute it.

Yes, there is a lot of backwards compatibility with each new instruction set but the differnces between a PowerPC 750CE and a Power7 CPU means you can't just drop code from the former on the latter and expect it to run.


i read that the nintendo-ppcs offered additional instructions but these can easily be added again.

can you please tell me what the difference exactly is in the isa of the wii-cpu and the power7? which would have to be emulated? looking at the above mentioned wikipedia-article the isa gets *extended* with every new generation - not changed, not exchanged.



Viper1 on 05 September 2012
Crono141 said:

Unless, of course, Nintendo had IBM bake in full BC in the particular chip that they are using in the WiiU.  Remember, it isn't an off the shelf CPU, its based on an off the shelf CPU with Nintendo requested customization.  Likewise with the GPU.  If Nintendo wants ATI and IBM to include Wii BC on each chip, they can make that happen.

The CPU, yes but not likely possible on the GPU.   It would be cheaper and easier to simply die shrink Hollywood and do B/C with that than to try to design a modern GPU with both a unified shader and a TEV.



The rEVOLution is not being televised

Viper1 on 05 September 2012
walsufnir said:
Viper1 said:

Yes, there is a lot of backwards compatibility with each new instruction set but the differnces between a PowerPC 750CE and a Power7 CPU means you can't just drop code from the former on the latter and expect it to run.


i read that the nintendo-ppcs offered additional instructions but these can easily be added again.

can you please tell me what the difference exactly is in the isa of the wii-cpu and the power7? which would have to be emulated? looking at the above mentioned wikipedia-article the isa gets *extended* with every new generation - not changed, not exchanged.

Go through this.

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

 

Then read through these.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?reload=true&isnumber=5730623

 

It's not a simple as you are thinking it is.



The rEVOLution is not being televised

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walsufnir on 05 September 2012
Viper1 said:
walsufnir said:
Viper1 said:

Yes, there is a lot of backwards compatibility with each new instruction set but the differnces between a PowerPC 750CE and a Power7 CPU means you can't just drop code from the former on the latter and expect it to run.


i read that the nintendo-ppcs offered additional instructions but these can easily be added again.

can you please tell me what the difference exactly is in the isa of the wii-cpu and the power7? which would have to be emulated? looking at the above mentioned wikipedia-article the isa gets *extended* with every new generation - not changed, not exchanged.

Go through this.

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

 

Then read through these.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?reload=true&isnumber=5730623

 

It's not a simple as you are thinking it is.


ok, read it. now you tell me why it is not simple if the isa of broadcam is mostly a subset of power7 which can be altered to nintendo's needs easily. really, you throw a 600-paper-doc at me without having it read by yourself? this is ridiculous.

i pleased you once before: where are the major-differences? where are the complications? linking to big documents to shut someone's mouth is not a good style...