Nintendo Wii Chip Ships
By Ed Sperling -- EDN, September 8, 2006
IBM has begun shipping Power-architecture chips for Nintendo’s upcoming Wii video console, the last of the Big Three gaming platforms for which IBM has developed microprocessors.
Details were few and far between, however, and executives at both companies declined to answer questions about how many cores the new chips will have or when the Wii platform will be released. What is known is that the chips, code-named Broadway, will be produced at IBM’s fab in East Fishkill, N.Y.
The first shipment is part of a multi-year agreement between the two companies that was inked earlier this year. Ron Martino, director of IBM’s Technology Collaboration Solutions, said the chip is based on 90 nanometer silicon-on-insulator technology and is about 20 percent more power efficient than previous generations of Nintendo chips.
“We are not commenting on the architecture,” Martino said. “What we are saying is that we are shipping the processor in volume production.”
Martino noted that Chartered Semiconductor could be used as a backup production facility if needed. In addition, he said the chip was custom designed for Nintendo.
Nintendo, meanwhile, was even more circumspect about the announcement. Perrin Kaplan, VP of marketing and corporate affairs, said that Wii will launch this fall for less than $250. But when asked about technical specs for the chips, Kaplan responded: “Technical specs are not what Wii is about. Wii’s graphics will be beautiful, of course. But the real leap forward comes from the innovative use of the Wii remote. It’s so simple that even gaming novices can use it.”
Translation: You’re going to have to wait to find out, because neither company is talking at the moment.
IBM also developed the three-core, dual-thread Power chips for Microsoft’s Xbox 360, and the seven-core Cell processor that is being used in Sony’s forthcoming Playstation 3. In addition, IBM developed the previous Nintendo GameCube Gekko chip.
