OL2.OCT–August 31, 1993 RM
Nintendo pact puts Mips processor in a high-volume market
Is Intel feeling heat from microrival Mips Technology? It's hard to think
so, given the vast difference in market share between their respective
microprocessor families. But that's how it appeared at a recent press
meeting hosted by Intel to educate the press on the tradeoffs of
microprocessor and computer design. Puzzled observers at the Intel press
conference wondered why the world's largest semiconductor company would
even notice the existence of Mips, never mind go to so much trouble over
it. Video-game giant Nintendo provided an answer a week later when Silicon
Graphics, Mips parent company, and Nintendo announced agreement to build
64-bit arcade and home entertainment systems. Nintendo has sold 100
million systems over about 10 years. It has the marketing potential to
make the new systems pervasive. The new systems will have a Mips
processor, a graphics accelerator, and unspecified ASICs. The partners
call this “Reality Immersion Technology.” Attendees at SIGGRAPH '93 in
Anaheim, CA, got a taste of what this technology might accomplish at the
Silicon Graphics booth, if they were willing to stand in line for hours.
They got a chance to “ride a pterodactyl” in a canyon with rushing water
below. The wrap-around screen let several people get into the scene with
each lucky rider. Target features of the Nintendo system include 24-bit
color, CD-quality audio, over 100,000 polygons/s, with polygons defined as
50-pixel meshed triangles. Real-time anti-aliased texture mapping, another
feature, is one of the things that gives Silicon Graphics workstations an
emotional appeal to their users. To the extent the chips developed for
Nintendo are directly usable in PCs, the economies of scale in
entertainment systems would make Mips a much more formidable competitor
for Intel than it is today. The plans call for arcade games in 1994 and
home systems, about $250, in 1995. –Rodney Myrvaagnes
PULLOUT:
Nintendo and Mips Technology are creating “Reality Immersion Technology”
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