Broadway

IBM Broadway microprocessor from the inside of a Nintendo Wii. The reference to Canada in the picture is related to where it was packaged i.e. by IBM Canada in Bromont.

Broadway is the codename of the Central Processing Unit (CPU) used in Nintendo's Wii video game console. It was designed by IBM, and is currently being produced using a 90 nm SOI process.

According to IBM, the processor consumes 20% less power than its predecessor, the 180 nm Gekko used in Nintendo's GameCube video game console.^[1]

Broadway is being produced by IBM at their 300 mm semiconductor development and manufacturing facility in East Fishkill, New York. The bond, assembly and test operation for the Broadway module is performed at the IBM facility in Bromont, Quebec. Very few official details have been released to the public by Nintendo or IBM. Unofficial reports claim it is derived from the 485 MHz Gekko architecture used in the GameCube and runs 50% faster at 729 MHz.^[2]

In March 2009 IBM shipped the 50 millionth Broadway processor to Nintendo.^[3]

Specifications

• 90 nanometer process technology
• Power Architecture core, specially modified for the Wii platform
• IBM silicon on insulator (SOI) technology
• Backward compatible with the Gekko processor
• 729 MHz
• 32-bit integer
• 64-bit floating-point (or 2 × 32-bit SIMD)
• 64 KB L1 cache (32 KB instruction + 32 KB data)
• 256 KB L2 cache
• 2.9 GFLOPS

External bus

• 64 bits wide
• 243 MHz
• 1.9 gigabytes per second bandwidth

References

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