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The Latest Console
Nintendo's latest machine is comiong out in october with about 15 launch titles. These will include Perfect Dark 2,Dinosour Planet and loads more. Hopefully they will even have a harvest moon. It was also said that you might be able to play Perfect Dark 2 on the internewt as rare have been buying up domain names for the past 3 months. Lets hope this wonderfull romour is true.
Gamecube Hardware
Its not a secret that Gamecube (GC) is a new and powerulf machine. The system has been said to house a very clean inside, as far as the Ps2 goes the insides are a cluttered mess. Not to say the Ps2 is not a powerful machine, but we will just say GC will blow it away.
One very important part of GC is S3TC. This is hardwared on the graphics chip. With this on the GC, the system has the ablilty to ratio textures at a 6:1 ratio. If a company wants to fit 50 MB of textured memory onto the GC, this means they will only be taking up about 8MB of space. This will provide the GC with great textures, while also having lots of them.
How about the polygon power of the cube? Its not a huge secret that polygons are playign a huge part in this next-gen of system wars. Here is what the GC has to offer agaisnt the competiton.
Gamecube: 6 to 12 million polygons per second (conservative, but realistic estimate) PlayStation 2: 75 million polygons per second (realistically first-gen games are more like 3-5 million) Xbox: 150 million polygons per second (does not consider real gameplay environments) Dreamcast: Roughly 3 million polygons per second Nintendo 64: Around 150,000 polygons per second PlayStation: Around 360,000 polygons per second (lacks comparable effects)
There is many companies that has been put with GC to help with the hardware.
Right now the list is Matsushita, IBM, NEC, ArtX, Macronix, MoSys, S3, Applied Microsystems, Factor 5, Metrowerks and Conexant.
* Matsushita
This company is the largest consumer electronics in the world. This company is the one providing Nintendo with the GC disc drive.
* IBM
IBM is the company providing GC with the central processor known as "Gekko". This is one of the fastest processors in a console running at 405 MHz, while being 0.18 micron technology at that.
* NEC
This company manufactures an ArtX-designed grapchis chip. NEC also does some of the memory on the system.
* ArtX
This company based in California, is the the one behind the graphics chip.
* Macronix
Macronix has not came into light just yet. What we do know is that the company will be developing the memory card.
* MoSys
This is the company that is behind 1T-SRAM. "1T" is the single transistor while the "S" is the RAM is staic. This all means very fast speeds.
* SE Inc.
A comapny with the ability to make textuers compress a ratio of 6:1.
* Applied Microsystems
This company will manufacture the GC development kits.
* Factor 5
Factor 5 will be putting the sound tools onto the GC.
* Metrowerks
This company provides the tools to use popular programming launguages.
* Conexant
This company will be making the 56k modem as well as a broadband adapter.
Now for the rest of what the GC can do. The list below is a detailed section devoted to the GC hardware.
MPU (Microprocessor Unit): IBM PowerPC "Gekko"
Manufacturing process: 0.18 Microns Copper Wire Technology
Clock frequency: 405mhz
CPU capacity: 925 Dmips (Dhrystone 2.1)
Internal data precision: 32bit & 64bit floating point
External bus bandwidth: 1.6GB/second (peak), (32bit address, 64bit data bus 202.5mhz)
Internal cache: L1: Instruction 32KB, Data 32KB (8 way), L2: 256KB (2 way)
System LSI: "Flipper"
Manufacturing process: 0.18 microns NEC Embedded DRA Process
Clock frequency: 202.5mhz
Embedded frame buffer: Approx. 2MB, Sustainable Latency: 5ns (1T-SRAM)
Embedded Texture Cache: Approx. 1MB, Sustainable Latency: 5ns (1T-SRAM)
Texture Read Bandwidth: 12.8GB/second (peak)
Main Memory Bandwidth: 3.2GB/second (peak)
Color, Z Buffer: Each is 24bits
Image Processing Function: Fog, subpixel anti-aliasing, HW light x8, alpha blending, virtual texture design, multi-texture mapping/bump/environment mapping, MIPMAP, bilinear filtering, real-time texture decompression (S3TC), etc.
Other: Real-time decompression of display list, HW motion compensation capability
The Gekko MPU integrates the PowerPC CPU into a custom game-centric chip.
(The following sound related functions are all incorporated into the system LSI)
Sound processor: Special 16bit DSP
Instruction memory: 8KB RAM + 8KB ROM
Data memory: 8KB RAM + 4KB ROM
Clock frequency: 101.25mhz
Minimum number of simultaneously produced sounds: ADPCM: 64ch
Sampling frequency: 48khz
System floating point arithmetic capability: 13.0GFLOPS (peak), (MPU, Geometry Engine, HW Lighting Total)
Actual display capability: 6 million to 12 million polygons per second (display capability assuming actual game with complexity model, texture, etc.)
System main memory: 24MB sustainable latency, (10ns or lower 1T-SRAM)
A-Memory: 16MB (100mhz DRAM)
Disc Drive: CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) system average access time 128ns, Data transfer speed: 16Mbpsto 25Mbps
Media: 8cm Nintendo Gamecube Disc based on Matsushita's optical disc technology – approximately 1.5GB capacity
Input: Controller port: x4, Digicard slot: x2, Analog AV output: x1, Digital AV output: x1, High-speed serial port: x2, High-speed parallel port: x1
The GC is a very complex machine as you can tell. We will continue to update you on more companies that have signed onto GC as soon as we know ourselfs.
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