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Nintendo 64 Architecture – A Practical Analysis

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Re: Nintendo 64 Architecture – A Practical Analysis

#71

Post by rasz »

plerpin wrote: post #58

Did Rambus have a dossier of compromising photos on industry executives in the mid 90's? Why did Intel and Nintendo go all in on such an expensive and technically inferior memory technology? The latency is such a killer, especially if you're on an architecture with really deep pipelines (ahem, P4).

Rambus meant Nintendo shipped 5 gen console on 2 layer pcb with only 4 big ICs. TWO layers! that was a huge cost saving. Compare to Sega Saturn with a total of something like 144bits of various memory buses divided into multiple memory banks over multiple memory chips.

Re: Nintendo 64 Architecture – A Practical Analysis

#73

Post by plerpin »

rasz wrote: post #71
plerpin wrote: post #58

Did Rambus have a dossier of compromising photos on industry executives in the mid 90's? Why did Intel and Nintendo go all in on such an expensive and technically inferior memory technology? The latency is such a killer, especially if you're on an architecture with really deep pipelines (ahem, P4).

Rambus meant Nintendo shipped 5 gen console on 2 layer pcb with only 4 big ICs. TWO layers! that was a huge cost saving. Compare to Sega Saturn with a total of something like 144bits of various memory buses divided into multiple memory banks over multiple memory chips.

How many layers did the Saturn's PCB have?

Re: Nintendo 64 Architecture – A Practical Analysis

#74

Post by lumberingjack »

zeta0134 wrote: post #55
monocasa wrote: post #38

I gave a talk not too long ago about running Rust on a Nintendo 64, with the slide deck written in Rust and running on an N64. https://twitter.com/DebugSteven/status/1054903603985559553 So I guess what I'm saying is that I have pretty hands on knowledge with the system and would be happy to answer any questions I can. One thing I'll throw out there, is that one of the biggest limitations of the N64 (its 4KB texture m…

> The crazy hacks that Rare did to subdivide their geometry on texture boundaries wouldn't be necessary for instance. I would love to know more about this. Is their texture format tomfoolery written up somewhere?

this is relevant but not same system https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izxXGuVL21o

Re: Nintendo 64 Architecture – A Practical Analysis

#75

Post by rasz »

plerpin wrote: post #73
rasz wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rambus meant Nintendo shipped 5 gen console on 2 layer pcb with only 4 big ICs. TWO layers! that was a huge cost saving. Compare to Sega Saturn with a total of something like 144bits of various memory buses divided into multiple memory banks over multiple memory chips.

How many layers did the Saturn's PCB have?

at least 4 like playstation, compare this nightmare https://mcretro.net/sega-saturn-photographing-has-begun/

to https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.php?threads/trimming-your-... revercse engineered pcb layout here https://gmanmodz.com/2020/01/30/2020-the-year-of-n64-again/

One was thrown together by committee with some function goal in mind, the other designed top to bottom with huge influence from process engineers. Simplified layout and reducent component count/variety means less time in pick&place, faster optical alignment, faster optical inspection, less opportunity for process flaws.

Re: Nintendo 64 Architecture – A Practical Analysis

#76

Post by plerpin »

rasz wrote: post #75
plerpin wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many layers did the Saturn's PCB have?

at least 4 like playstation, compare this nightmare https://mcretro.net/sega-saturn-photographing-has-begun/ to https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.php?threads/trimming-your-... revercse engineered pcb layout here https://gmanmodz.com/2020/01/30/2020-the-year-of-n64-again/ One was thrown together by committee with some function goal in mind, the other designed top to bottom with huge influence from process engineers. S…

Very interesting, thanks.

Re: Nintendo 64 Architecture – A Practical Analysis

#77

Post by [deleted] »

DarknessFalls wrote: post #7
jchw wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I would guess twice as much and four times as much respectively. I mean RAM is cheap today but if you wanted 128GB of it today it’d still run you like, $700. I can’t pretend to know what this particular type of RAM cost back in the day, but given how relatively cutting edge the machine was I can only guess it was not particularly inexpensive...

They should have released a Nintendo 64 Plus sometime before the release of the Gamecube that would have doubled its RAM to provide hi-res textures.

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