Last night, IBM announced that it had shipped the first large batch of their "Broadway" CPU—the central processor behind Nintendo's upcoming Wii console. "The first chips are in our possession," said Genyo Takeda, Senior Managing Director, Integrated Research and Development Division, Nintendo. Ron Martino, a director for IBM's Technology Collaboration Solutions, confirmed that the East Fishkill, New York fabricating facility has already "shipped a significant volume [of the Broadway chips] in this quarter."
The announcement comes one week before Nintendo's scheduled press conference on September 14th in New York, where the company is expected to finally reveal the Wii's target price and ship date. Given the availability of the chips, it seems that the company is on schedule for a release of the Wii in time for this year's holiday season.
The exact details of the Broadway CPU are still not known, but IBM has said that it runs "significantly better" than the G3-derived "Gekko" chip that powered Nintendo's last console, the GameCube. It is a custom design based on IBM's Power architecture. The chip is fabricated on a 90nm manufacturing process using Silicon on Insulator (SoI) technology, and runs with 20 percent more power efficiency than its predecessor. Both Nintendo and IBM are being careful not to reveal the exact performance of the chip, but the emphasis on power efficiency should at least ensure that the Wii does not have major problems with overheating, an issue that has affected some Xbox 360 consoles.
Nintendo is enthusiastic about the new chips and their new console. "Today's milestone marks the final stage of our drive to reach both core and nontraditional gamers with an inviting, inclusive, and remarkable gaming experience," said Takeda. With the recent announcement that the PlayStation 3's European launch will be delayed until March 2007 and that the North American and Japanese launches will be limited to 400,000 and 100,000 units respectively, this represents an opportunity for Nintendo to grab back some of the market share it lost to Sony with the Nintendo 64 and GameCube.
