Broadway is the codename of the

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in 32- bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calcula ...

central processing unit A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, an ...

(CPU) used in Nintendo's Wii home video game console. It was designed by IBM, and was initially produced using a 90 nm SOI process and later produced with a

65 nm The 65 nm process is an advanced lithographic node used in volume CMOS (MOSFET) semiconductor fabrication. Printed linewidths (i.e. transistor gate lengths) can reach as low as 25 nm on a nominally 65 nm process, while the pitch ...

SOI process. According to IBM, the processor consumes 20% less power than its predecessor, the 180 nm Gekko used in the Nintendo

GameCube The is a home video game console developed and released by Nintendo in Japan on September 14, 2001, in North America on November 18, 2001, and in PAL territories in 2002. It is the successor to the Nintendo 64 (1996), and predecessor of the W ...

video game console A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location connected to ...

. ''Broadway'' was produced by IBM at their 300 mm semiconductor development and manufacturing facility in East Fishkill,

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

. The bond, assembly, and test operation for the Broadway module is performed at the IBM facility in Bromont,

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Government of Canada, Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is ...

. Very few official details have been released to the public by Nintendo or IBM. Unofficial reports claim it is derived from the 486 MHz Gekko architecture used in the GameCube and runs 50% faster at 729 MHz. The PowerPC 750CL, released in 2006, is a stock CPU offered by IBM and virtually identical to Broadway. The only difference is that the 750CL came in variants, ranging from 400 MHz up to 1000 MHz.

Specifications

* 90 nanometer process technology, shrunk to 65 nm in 2007. *

Superscalar A superscalar processor is a CPU that implements a form of parallelism called instruction-level parallelism within a single processor. In contrast to a scalar processor, which can execute at most one single instruction per clock cycle, a sup ...

Out-of-order execution

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple– IBM ...

core, specially modified for the Wii platform * IBM

silicon on insulator In semiconductor manufacturing, silicon on insulator (SOI) technology is fabrication of silicon semiconductor devices in a layered silicon–insulator–silicon substrate, to reduce parasitic capacitance within the device, thereby improving perfo ...

(SOI) technology * Backward compatible with the Gekko processor * 729 MHz * 4 stages long Two integer

ALU ALU, Alu or alu may refer to: Computing and science ;Computing *Arithmetic logic unit, a digital electronic circuit ;Biology * Alu sequence, a type of short stretch of DNA *'' Arthrobacter luteus'', a bacterium Organizations * Abraham Lincoln ...

s (IU1 and IU2) – 32 bit * 7 stages long 64-bit floating-point unit (FPU) (or 2 × 32-bit SIMD, often found under the denomination "paired singles") * Branch Prediction Unit (BPU) * Load-Store Unit (LSU) * System Register Unit (SRU) *

Memory Management Unit A memory management unit (MMU), sometimes called paged memory management unit (PMMU), is a computer hardware unit having all memory references passed through itself, primarily performing the translation of virtual memory addresses to physical ...

(MMU) * Branch Target Instruction Cache (BTIC) * SIMD Instructions – PowerPC750 + Roughly 50 new

SIMD Single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) is a type of parallel processing in Flynn's taxonomy. SIMD can be internal (part of the hardware design) and it can be directly accessible through an instruction set architecture (ISA), but it should ...

instructions, geared toward

3D graphics 3D computer graphics, or “3D graphics,” sometimes called CGI, 3D-CGI or three-dimensional computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data (often Cartesian) that is stored in the computer for th ...

* 64 kB L1 cache (32 kB instruction + 32 kB data) * 256 kB L2 cache * 2.9

GFLOPS In computing, floating point operations per second (FLOPS, flops or flop/s) is a measure of computer performance, useful in fields of scientific computations that require floating-point calculations. For such cases, it is a more accurate mea ...

External bus

* 64-bit * 243 MHz * 1.944

gigabyte The gigabyte () is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The prefix '' giga'' means 109 in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one gigabyte is one billion bytes. The unit symbol for the gigabyte is GB. This defini ...

s per second bandwidth

Gallery

References

{{Nintendo hardware, Wii Nintendo chips Wii hardware IBM microprocessors PowerPC implementations PowerPC microprocessors