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Nintendo 3DS GPU Revealed
An anonymous reader writes "The GPU for the Nintendo 3DS has just been revealed, and it's not made by Nvidia, ATI, or even Imagination Technologies. Instead, Nintendo has signed up Japanese startup Digital Media Professionals (DMP) in a deal that sees the company's PICA200 chip churning out the 3-D visuals. For the first time in Nintendo's history, the 3DS will feature a GPU with programmable shaders, rather than a fixed-function pipeline, meaning the 3DS is more graphically versatile than the Wii. Among the PICA200's features are 2x anti-aliasing, per-pixel lighting, subdivision primitives, and soft shadows. As well as featuring DMP's own 'Maestro' extensions, the PICA200 also fully supports OpenGL ES 1.1. The architecture supports four programmable vertex units and up to four pixel pipelines."
TFA doesn't mention why they went with this over a more established and modern GPU like Imagination's PowerVR or Nvidia's Tegra. OpenGL ES 1.1 isn't really anything to brag about, so I assume it either uses a lot less power, or (more likely) is much cheaper to make.
I figured they'd take this opportunity to make a single-purpose gaming device that was more powerful than the phones they're now having to compete with, so this seems like a weird choice.
Here's a pdf of the specs for PICA200.
http://www.dmprof.com/release/leaflet_PICA200_en.pdf
Looking at just the gfx chip features would draw the conclusion that the PowerVR chips found in a good number of portables is more powerful. It seems to provide ammunition to Apple for them to say the iphone is more powerful.
The demo vids shown are inconclusive though. The Metal Gear Solid demo vids is better than anything on the iphone. As is the suspicious Resident Evil demo. However Kid Icarus is on par with the best iphone games graphically and Star Fox and Mario kart in their current form wouldn't exactly max out the iphone.
Depending on the trickery on display in the MGS and RE demos, the power of the 3DS seems to range from PS2 level to slightly above GC level. Although those two demos are likely not well optimised for the console, they also don't have the gameplay/AI overhead you'd get from a full game.
It's probably safe to assume that the main CPU will be similar to that in the DSi and XL, probably at a higher clock (maybe with a few new instructions).
The main advantage of the 3DS will likely be the battery life. Despite Apple's claims about how amazing the battery life for their devices are, they only ever do benchmarks for tasks offloaded from the main CPU or that aren't taxing. The second you start playing an intensive game, you're looking at a 2 hour battery life. This is something that almost every tech site ignores when talking about idevices as gaming machines.
Seems odd to advertise programmable renders (suited to OpenGL ES 2.0), but only support OpenGL ES 1.1. Looking at the leaflet, it looks like they only allow vertex rendering programs and not fragment rendering programs. This might be preventing DMP from claiming OpenGL ES 2.0 support. Have to wonder if the lack of interoperability in this respect make these chips cheaper?
Note that the article summary is wrong: there is no pixel shader support in the PICA200 device (and neither is in OpenGLES 1.1), although the chip supports several marketspeak 'extensions' that somewhat allows you to hack a few selected shader-like features into the rendering pipeline.
That is also the case for the Playstation 3, and you can not deny it has pixel shader support.
Uncompetitive? How so? They've sold way more consoles than their competition. What is wrong with mass appeal? It keeps them in business!
Demo video
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Tegra2 would also need significant modifications (including two additional CPUs, an ARM7 and an ARM9) for backwards compatibility with the older systems, and would be significantly more expensive (as in, SIGNIFICANTLY below cost would have to be required,) and use significantly more power. So, if you want a 3DS that has 3 hours of battery life and costs $600, yes, Tegra2 would be great.
You forgot the part where they make some of the greatest video games in the world. But don't let that fact get in the way of your argument.
They could have stuck a Fermi inside! Perfect for warming your hands for half a minute when you live in the artic!
The GPU wars died about 3 years ago. There was a point at which people stopped willing to pay an extra $200 - $300 for a marginal increase in realism.
The name of this chip is the "PICA200".
One day, the DMP guys invited the Nintendo suits in for a product demo. As soon as the Nintendo suits saw the promo posters scattered around the room with the demo board on the table, they all sprouted enormous anime-style eyes and shouted "PICA200, I choose you!".
That's how it went down. True Facts.
the Cortex can run ARM9 code with a pretty simple trap for the privilege instructions due to the huge similarities between ARM9, ARM11 and Cortex.
Also the Tegra2 has an ARM7 hidden in it already.
The lower end Tegra2 is $18 and can play video for about 10 hours on a 1200mAh battery. the 2W of the AP20 (the most power hungry of the Tegra2) is the peak, not the average.
The modifications would really to kill areas of the silicon that won't be used and put it in a reduced pin count package to help lower cost. These are not significant for a company that pushes millions of units worldwide.
1. where do you get your "3 hours of battery life" number? 2. where do you get your $600 number? 3. are you a licensed nvidia partner, or are you more of an armchair technologist?
They also started to realize polycount != fun.
Just look at all the nearly empty boxes at supermarket, that are way too large for their content, or look larger in volume than they are. Same strategy.
Bullshit. Where is Nintendo lying about the capabilities of their hardware? Where are they selling something that doesn't do what it says on the box?
It always takes two. The fault lies just as much on the idots who buy it, as it lies on the fraudulent (in my eyes) companies.
How is the fact that Nintendo isn't putting the emphasis on graphics performance to the exclusion of other factors somehow dishonest? And how is basing the decision to buy a videogame system on something other than graphics performance stupid? And finally, what is the great crime here for which "fault" needs to be assigned? Marketing a product that you don't want to buy? What a grievous sin that is.
Video is 10 hours on Tegra 2 because it doesn't stretch the GPU or CPU.
Look at an iphone. I can watch 8 hours of video no problem. Start up an intensive game like Espgaluda 2 and I'll barely get 2 hours.
I just love it how technoclowns brow-beat the Wii for being low power hardware. Out of the XBox 360, the PS3 and the Wii, which one has the most lowly hardware. Right. Now tell me, which one was the most profitable for its manufacturer?
Yea, that's what I thought.
I hate printers.
How is it a bad thing to focus on the mass-market instead of focusing on graphics abilities alone? The Wii and DS have been astounding successes, showing that the market doesn't really need superb graphics.
When you call Wii "uncompetitive", how do you combine that with the fact that it sells more than the "competitive" consoles combined?
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