Nintendo GameCube

The Nintendo GameCube is a video game console by Nintendo belonging to the same generation as Sega's Dreamcast, Sony's PlayStation 2, and Microsoft's Xbox.

Table of contents

1 Overview
2 New Approach
3 Hardware Specs

3.1 Central Processing Unit
3.2 System LSI
3.3 Aural Functionality
3.4 Other System Specifications

4 External Links

Overview

The Nintendo GameCube System and Controllers

The Nintendo GameCube was released on September 14, 2001 in Japan; November 18, 2001 in North America; and Spring 2002 across Europe. The Nintendo GameCube, or GCN, was widely anticipated by many who were shocked by Nintendo's decision to design another cartridge-based system after the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The Nintendo GameCube uses a unique storage medium, a proprietary format based on Matsushita's optical disc technology; the discs are approximately three inches in diameter (considerably smaller than a standard CD or DVD), and the discs have a capacity of approximately 1.5 gigabytes.

The Nintendo GameCube software library contains such traditional Nintendo series as Mario Bros, Star Fox, The Legend of Zelda, and Metroid. The Nintendo GameCube does not have any DVD-movie support, but a Nintendo GameCube hybrid product containing movie functionality has been released by Panasonic in Japan, named "DVD/GAME Player Q." Some popular titles for Nintendo GameCube include Super Smash Bros. Melee, Luigi's Mansion, Star Wars Rogue Squadron 2: Rogue Leader, Wave Race: Blue Storm, and Super Mario Sunshine.

New Approach

One of the defining aspects of the Nintendo GameCube is the rejuvenated relationship between Nintendo and its licencees. Unlike previous generations in which Nintendo was seen by some to bully its third-party game developers, Nintendo openly sought game-development aid on Nintendo GameCube. Sometimes, Nintendo would merely request that a third-party developer produce a game based on the third-party's own game franchises; other times, Nintendo would request that the third-party developer produce a game based on Nintendo's own game franchises. This effort from Nintendo resulted in many exclusive third-party games for the Nintendo GameCube. The following is a list of examples:

The Resident Evil series (from Capcom, based on Capcom's own game properties)
Tales of Symphonia (from Namco, based on Namco's own game properties)
Baten Kaitos (from Namco, based on Namco's own game properties)
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles (from Square Enix, based on Square Enix's own game properties)
F-Zero GX (from Sega, based on Nintendo's game properties)

However, this strategy financially failed Nintendo. Despite Nintendo's best efforts and numerous claims to the contrary, the Nintendo GameCube still lacks the third-party support of competing console systems. Multiplatform titles generally do not perform as well on this system as they perform on Sony PlayStation 2 and (to a lesser extent) Microsoft Xbox.

Hardware Specs

Central Processing Unit

Name: "Gekko"

Producer: IBM
Core Base: Power PC 705CXe
Manufacturing Process: 0.18-micron IBM copper-wire technology
Clock Frequency: 485 MHz
CPU Capacity: 1125 Dmips (Dhrystone 2.1)
Internal Data Precision:
- 32-bit Integer
- 64-bit Floating-point
- 128-bit SIMD
External Bus:
- 1.3 gigabyte/second peak bandwidth
- 32-bit address space
- 64-bit data bus; 162 MHz clock
Internal Cache:
- L1: instruction 32KB, data 32KB (8 way)
- L2: 256KB (2 way)

System LSI

Name: "Flipper"
Producer: ArtX/Nintendo
Manufacturing Process: 0.18-micron NEC embedded DRAM process
Clock Frequency: 162 MHz
Embedded Frame Buffer:
- Approximately 2 megabytes in capacity
- Sustainable latency of 6.2 nanoseconds
- RAM type is 1T-SRAM
Embedded Texture Cache:
- Approximately 1 megabyte in capacity
- Sustainable latency of 6.2 nanoseconds
- RAM type is 1T-SRAM
Texture Read Bandwidth: 10.4 gigabytes/second (at peak)
Main Memory Bandwidth: 2.6 gigabytes/second (at peak)
Pixel Depth:
- 24-bit RGB / RGBA
- 24-bit Z-buffer
Image Processing Functions:
- Fog
- Subpixel anti-aliasing
- 8 hardware lights
- Alpha blending
- Virtual texture design
- Multi-texturing, bump mapping
- Environment mapping
- MIP mapping
- Bilinear filtering
- Trilinear filtering
- Anisotropic filtering
- Real-time hardware texture decompression (S3TC)
- Real-time decompression of display list
- HW 3-line deflickering filter

Aural Functionality

Producer: Macronix
Clock Frequency: 81 MHz
Instruction Memory:
- 8 kilobytes of RAM
- 8 kilobytes of ROM
Data Memory:
- 8 kilobytes of RAM
- 4 kilobytes of ROM
Simultaneous Channels: 64 channels
Encoding: ADPCM
Sampling Frequency: 48 KHz

Other System Specifications

System Floating-point Arithmetic Capability: 10.5 GFLOPS (at peak) (MPU, Geometry Engine, HW Lighting Total)
Real-world Polygon Performance: 6 million to 12 million polygons/second (at peak) (assuming actual game conditions with complex models, fully textured, fully lit, etc.}*
Main RAM:
- Approximately 24 megabytes in capacity
- Sustainable latency of 10 nanoseconds
- RAM type is 1T-SRAM
Auxiliary RAM:
- Approximately 16 megabytes in capacity
- 81 MHz in speed
- RAM type is DRAM
Disc Drive:
- Drive type is Constant Angular Velocity (CAV)
- Average access time is 128 milliseconds
- Data transfer speed is between 2 megabytes per second and 3.125 megabytes per second
Disc Media:
- Based on DVD technology
- Diameter is 3 inches in length
- Producer is Matsushita
- Approximately 1.5 gigabytes in capacity
Controller Ports: 4
Memory Card Slots: 2
Analog Audio/Video Outputs: 1
Digital Audio/Video Outputs: 1
High-speed Serial Ports: 2
High-speed Parallel Ports: 1
Power Supply: AC Adapter DC12 volts x 3.25 amperes
Physical Measurements of Entire System: 4.3"(H) x 5.9"(W) x 6.3"(D)

* There are games that put out more than 15 million polygons each second