IBM to Unveil New Processors
This may seem off topic, but it may be more relevant to Nintendo than you think. Slashdot is reporting that IBM will unveil their new Power6 processor and a second-generation version of the Cell processor. The processors are supposed to run up to 5Ghz. They also say the processors are fairly power efficient considering the processing capabilities. I know Nintendo’s follow-up to the Wii may be a ways down the road, but these processor lines could be a taste of what we’ll see from Nintendo’s Wii2 (Wii Wii, or whatever you want to call it now). Here’s the excerpt from Slashdot:
“In addition, the [Power6] chip ‘consumes under 100 watts in power-sensitive applications,’ a power range comparable to mainstream 95-watt AMD Opteron chips and 80-watt Intel Xeon chips. Power6 has 700 million transistors and measures 341 square millimeters, according to the program. The smaller that a chip’s surface area is, the more that can be carved out of a single silicon wafer, reducing per-chip manufacturing costs and therefore making a computer more competitive. Power6, like the second-generation Cell, is built with a manufacturing process with 65-nanometer circuitry elements, letting more electronics be squeezed onto a given surface area.”
Nintendo has always been very conscious about power consumption, so this could be a processor that Nintendo, Microsoft, or even Sony are already looking into for their respective next, next-gen systems.
Source: Slashdot