IBM and Nintendo Partner on Dolphin

CuriousGeorge113 writes "IBM and Nintendo recently anounced a partnership worth $1Billion where IBM will design a new 400MHZ processor for Nintendo's new Dolphin system acheduled for release by X-Mas 2000. Read more here. " What's really cool is the Dolphin system-they want to make this thing the center of your entertainment unit-DVD, CD, as well as hooking up to the Internet.

Comments

Nintendo Dolphin == IBM Blue Logic + iMac

[Douglas]

First posted on www.xlr8yourmac.com:

IBM recently has entered the custom CPU business with it's Blue Logic
library of CPU cores and peripherals. The following is a possible
combination of IBM's currently available cores that would be perfect
for Apple to use in a low cost portable.

This chip would allow a 3 chip motherboard with more features than the
current G3 350/DVD/MPEG Tower systems.

Note: even though the CPU is only running at 200mhz the integrated
peripherals would probably yeild performance better than a 266mhz
PowerBook G3. For maximum performance, the PPC 405 core can be replaced
by an external 333-466mhz Copper G3 CPU attached to the 60x bus/memory
controller.


PPC 405 CPU core (equivalent to an EC603E CPU)
66mhz 60x CPU bus/memory controller interface
2 independant on chip 64bit/66mhz I/O busses with crossbar switch
2 independant 64bit/66mhz memory controllers
1 32bit/33mhz Onchip Peripheral Bus
1.2 Gigabyte/sec internal I/O data transfer rate (2x 528Mb/sec + 133Mb/sec)

4 to 6 DIMM slots:
2 SDRAM DIMMs up to 256meg main memory
1-2 SGRAM DIMMs up to 32meg video texture and MPEG memory
1-2 SGRAM DIMMs (on ATI RAGE 128 LC) up to 32meg video memory

64bit/33mhz PCI bus
AGP 2x Graphics bus


Bus 1 PLB:
200mhz PPC 405 CPU
32k ICache/32k DCache
66mhz 60x bus interface
66mhz SDRAM controller
8 channel DMA controller
PLB/PLB crossbar switch
PLB/OPB bridge
PLB Arbiter
64bit/33mhz PCI bridge

Bus 2 OPB:
Timers
MPIC
GPIO
I2C
100baseT Ethernet
OPB Arbiter

Bus 3 PLB:
66mhz SGRAM controller
8 channel DMA controller
PLB/PLB crossbar switch
C54X DSP coprocessor
400Mbps Firewire
MPEG
MPEG AC-3 Audio
PLB Arbiter
AGP 2x bridge


Note: the following diagram displays correctly in a fixed width font like courrer.

66mhz
60xbus66mhz
SDRAMSGRAM
||
+==============|================================ |==========================+
|PPC60xbusmemory|
|Memorycontlercontler|
||||
|PPC405CPU--+----------PLB/Crossbar----------+-- C54xDSP-------{Serialout-
|200mhz||16kdataram/64kcoderam|
|32kICache|||
|32kDCache|32/33OPB+--400MbpsFirewire{1394i/o-
|+----PLB/OPB--+--EthernetSCP||
||||+--MPEGVideoDecoder|
||Timers--+--EthernetMAL||
||||+--MPEGAC-3Audio-{Audioout-
||GPIO----+--EthernetMAC||
|8channelDMA-+|||+--8channelDMAcontroller|
|||I2C--+--EthernetPHY||
|PLBArbiter--+||||+--PLBArbiter|
||||MPIC|||
|PLB/PCI|||100baseTPLB/AGP|
|64/33|||EthernetAGP2x|
|PCIbus||||||
+==============|======|==|===|========+========= |==========================+
||||||
ViaVT82C686ATIRage128LC
SouthbridgeAGP2xVideo
SuperI/O




The PPC 405 CPU core is equivalent to the PPC EC603E (no FP unit).
The FP unit core is not yet available in the Blue Logic library.

PLB: Processor Local Bus, 64bit, 66mhz split transaction on chip CPU bus.
OPB: On Chip Peripheral Bus, 32bit, 33mhz peripheral attachment bus
(similar to a PCI bus).
DMA: 2 - 8 channel intelligent DMA controllers with chained discriptors.
Timers: 5 multi purpose counter/timers.
GPIO: 32 General Purpose I/O lines.
I2C: I2C serial port for sensing SDRAM confifguration and/or
configuring peripheral chips.
MPIC: Imbedded Programmable Interrupt Controller (OpenPIC compliant)
with 32 interrupt inputs and 4 interrupt outputs.
SCP: Serial Communications Processor (subset of the 68302 SCP).
MAL: Memory Access Layer (Logical Level API for serial communications).
MAC: 100baseT Ethernet Media Access Controller.
PHY: 100baseT Physical Media Controller.
C54X: C54x Digital Signal Processor, binary compatible with TI C54x
(16k data ram, 64k code ram).
Firewire: 400Mbps Fire Wire plus MPEG sequencer
(allows playing MPEG encoded video streams from a Firewire DVCam).
MPEG: MPEG video decoder, MPEG audio layer 3 and Dolby AC-3 audio.
AGP 2x: AGP 2x port for video controller.
PCI64: 64bit, 66/33mhz PCI controller (PCI 2.2 compatible)

VIA: Via technologies VT82C686 Super South Bridge
SoundBlaster Pro Hardware and Direct Sound Ready
Integrated AC-97 2.0 (meets PC98 (TM) Basic Audio spec.)
- Dual full-duplex Direct Sound channels between system memory
and AC97 link
- PCI master interface with scatter / gather and bursting capability
- 32 byte FIFO of each direct sound channel
- Host based sample rate converter and mixer
- Standard v1.0 or v2.0 AC97 Codec interface for single or
cascaded AC97 Codec's from multiple vendors
- Loopback capability for re-directing mixed audio streams into
USB and 1394 speakers
- Hardware assisted FM synthesis for legacy compatibility
- Direct two game ports and one MIDI port interface
Integrated Super I/O:
FDC,
ECP/EPP parallel port,
2 serial ports,
IRDA port with seperate 3rd serial port
Voltage, temperature, and fan speed hardware monitoring
UDMA/33 / ATA-66
Advanced mobile PC power management
Supports ATAPI compliant devices including DVD devices
USB
ACPI

ATI Rage: ATI Rage 128 LC (for Digital LCD screens)