Technology
Hardware Specifications
Console Basics
Key Terms
The video game industry is forever consumed in an
endless competition to come out with the best console
for the publics gaming experience. The industry is
always in constant motion, whenever one company come
out with a new system the next company is always right
behind them to stake their claim.
Video
Console Hardware Specifications
| |
PSX
|
N64
|
Dreamcast
|
PSX
2
|
Dolphin
|
X-Box
|
|
CPU
|
34
MHz
|
94
MHz
|
200
MHz
|
300
MHz
|
400
MHz
|
600
MHz
|
|
Memory
|
2
MB
|
4
MB*
|
16
MB
|
32
MB
|
32
MB
|
64
MB
|
|
Storage
|
CD
|
Cartridge
|
Proprietary
CD
|
DVD
|
DVD
|
DVD
|
|
Storage
Space
|
650
MB (CD)
|
128
MB
|
1.2
GB (GD)
|
4.7
GB (DVD)
|
4.7
GB (DVD)
|
4.7
GB (DVD)
8 GB (HD)
|
|
Polygons
|
360,000
|
120,000
|
3+
million
|
20
million
|
20-30
million**
|
30
million
|
|
Information
Transfer Rate
|
132
MB/sec
|
500
MB/sec
|
800
MB/sec
|
3.2
GB/sec
|
3.2
GB/sec
|
TBA
|
|
Modem
|
N/A
|
N/A
|
56K
modem
|
Buy
separately
|
TBA
|
56K
modem
|
|
DVD
playback
|
N/A
|
N/A
|
No
|
Yes
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
Price
(approx.)
|
$99 |
$99 |
$200
|
~$300
|
$150-$200
|
$300-$400
|
*
8 MB with expansion pack
** Rumored specification 
Console Basics 101
Have you ever wondered how Nintendo can afford to
put games like Zelda 64 into a little plastic toy
that can be sold for $99? Or how Sony can squeeze
the technology behind the arcade game Tekken 2 into
a sleek home CD player the size of a box of chocolates?
To sum up the process in three words, it's not easy.
People go to college for between four and ten years
to learn and master the art of electrical engineering,
a skill which enables proprietors to design and understand
designs of logic arrays, circuits that can translate
a single pulse of electricity into a complex series
of computer instructions. This article is not going
to discuss how individual arrays work but it will
provide an understanding to generally how a number
of parts inside of a game machine work together to
create the games we want to play.
The insides of the Nintendo 64 |
Let's take the Nintendo 64 as an example. There are
ten essential components that make the Nintendo 64
work, plus a single circuit board tying them all together.
How does Nintendo condense the power of an SGI workstation
into a $99 game machine? Part of the answer lies literally
in that condensation of hundreds of chips into a single
circuit board as long as only twice the height of
an N64 game cartridge. The rest lies in the price
of the chips and other parts, which become very inexpensive
when Nintendo commits to producing 6-10 million machines
- if you're doing business with Nintendo and you are
given an order for more than 5 million chips, you
can afford to shave a few dollars worth of profit
off of each chip and still walk away with millions
of dollars more in the bank.
The component that people always focus on is the
CPU or Central Processing Unit, which is the silver
chip on the left-hand side of the N64 board. Every
computer, game machine, and electronic device has
a CPU, a device that often acts as a machine's traffic
cop for instructions and handles other miscellaneous
game logic tasks.
People who lack understanding of hardware designs
often place far too much importance on the CPU, which
is rarely used to synthesize game graphics or music
- the CPU is more frequently used to handle "game
logic," meaning that it tells other chips what to
do, waits for them to do their tasks, and then connects
all the pieces to each other in the proper order for
you to see and hear them.
CPUs are not all just devoted to "logic," however.
It should be noted that the Nintendo 64 broke with
tradition and relied on its exceptionally powerful
CPU to handle much of the task of creating music and
playing back sound effects, because the CPU itself
was hardly being taxed by handling simple back-and-forth
instructions with other chips in the machine. In the
past, most game machines included weak CPUs that depended
heavily on special custom graphics and sound chips,
but after the Super NES was roundly criticized for
slowing down when too many things were going on at
once, Nintendo decided to give programmers more flexibility:
If you want incredibly complex music, you'll need
to have less complex game logic, or if you want incredibly
complex game logic, you'll need to have less complex
music.
The Nintendo 64
In most machines, two chips are far more essential
to the overall performance of the hardware than the
CPU: the graphics coprocessor (also referred to as
the GPU, graphics processing unit) and the audio coprocessor.
The Nintendo 64's graphics coprocessor is the top-central
silver chip on the board, and it handles everything
from the processing of 3D graphics to actually taking
on music processing when necessary. A game console's
graphics processor (or collection of processors) is
the component that calculates the complex polygon
models you see onscreen, figures out how to move them
properly in 3D, and makes all of the visual changes
you see onscreen. The reason that the Sega Genesis
is so much more powerful than the old Master System
has a lot more to do with the strength of its graphics
processor than with the fact that the Genesis has
a 16-bit CPU and the Master System only an 8-bit CPU.
Remove the graphics processor and there will be nothing
to see onscreen at all. Sound processors handle everything
from creating sounds to playing back sounds recorded
on chips or CDs and mixing those sounds together to
create a smooth and believable audio environment for
you to explore. Take the sound processor out of a
machine and you don't hear anything at all while you
play.
The CPU, the GPU, and the sound processor(s) constitute
the three main components that create and change the
things you see and hear based on the cartridge or
CD you plug into your system. As game console design
has evolved, engineers have found increasing value
in the concept of flexibility, often merging the functions
of two chips into a single chip or allowing one chip
to do tasks that otherwise might have been handled
by another. Not every software company wants to make
games with amazing graphics - some want to have the
best music, and others want to have the most intense
gameplay. If you design your game machine to play
only slow-paced games with great graphics and music,
you'll have a great machine for RPGs but a lousy platform
for shooters. The Jaguar, Saturn, PlayStation, and
Nintendo 64 all have been designed in a way that allows
unused chips to take up extra slack for certain types
of games.
One component of any video game system that most
people downplay is its RAM architecture, which is
in reality perhaps the single most important part
of a game machine. RAM, or Random Access Memory, essentially
dictates how much information the game system can
be dealing with at one time. Both cartridges and CDs
contain ROM, or Read-Only Memory, which is the equivalent
of a book that the game system can read and digest.
All other things being equal (especially the quality
of the code being used), less RAM means less complex
games - think of it as the difference between having
the "book" and being able to understand only a word
at a time or digesting the entire thing in one glance.
In the 16-bit days, game systems had between a sixteenth
or an eighth of a megabyte of RAM; nowadays, CD-based
game systems such as the Dreamcast pack upwards of
24 megabytes of RAM.
d
RAM holds the data
in games like The World Is Not Enough for the Nintendo
64
RAM is vital in three ways: It holds graphics, sound,
and game logic, so if you have more RAM inside of
a game system, you can have more or more-detailed
artwork onscreen at a given moment, more or better-quality
music and sound effects coming through the speakers,
and more or more-complex things to do within a game.
The Nintendo 64's Rambus-developed memory processor
is the silver item on the bottom center of the board,
with two actual RAM chips situated to its right. Pull
out a system's RAM and you'd be left with the horsepower
to do many things, but like reading a book word by
word, only the ability to do them very slowly. (Note:
You can tell the difference between a RAM chip and
a ROM chip by turning off the power - if it's a RAM
chip, it loses all data when it's turned off, but
if it's a ROM chip, turning off the power changes
nothing.)
It is the combination of CPU, GPU, audio processor,
and RAM that basically make up the typical console.
How the console performs as a whole will depend on
how well these components are integrated and how advanced
each part is.
A Few Key Terms
Capacitor, Diode, Resistor, Semiconductor, Transformer,
Transistor: The "extra" pieces found on circuit
boards, which do everything from storing to conducting
to changing electrical signals that run through paths
on the board.
EEPROM: Electronically Erasable Programmable
ROM, an odd sort of backup ROM chip that does not
rely on batteries yet continues to store data even
when the power is turned off. After roughly 100,000
uses, the EEPROM can no longer make changes to the
data contained inside.
FM Synthesis: In its earliest form, this played
only simple analog sound effects and music. Nowadays,
FM sound systems have been improved dramatically and
are used in leading sound cards and console chips.
IC: Integrated Circuit, a more complex chip
that contains multiple pathways for information to
be processed and read.
LSI: Large-Scale Integration, a technological
advance that enabled ICs to contain unprecedented
numbers of pathways for the processing of data.
Micron Technology: Microns (as in 0.5 Micron
technology) are a unit of size measurement for distances
only visible under a microscope. The smaller the number
of microns between pathways in a technology, the smaller
a chip can be made.
Multi-Layer Chip: The more layers a chip has,
the more can be crammed inside of a single plastic
casing, and the faster a system can physically run
data from one point to another. Five-layer chips are
presently being manufactured with some success.
PAL: Programmable Array Logic, chips that
are used for simple, isolated purposes within a design,
processing data and shuttling it off elsewhere on
a board. They consolidate the logic from scattered
smaller chips into fewer and less expensive individual
processors.
PCM: Pulse Code Modulator, inexpensive digital
audio chips that synthesize clear audio effects and
music. The SNES contained a Sony-designed PCM audio
chip.
PROM: Programmable ROM, a chip that contains
read-only memory that cannot be changed once written.
PSG: Programmable Sound Generator, a chip
that generates audio to the specifications of the
coder.
SRAM: Static or Save RAM, a chip specifically
designed to work in conjunction with a battery to
hold "backed-up" game data until the battery runs
out.
VLSI: Very Large-Scale Integration, a step
above LSI, which enabled even more advanced processors
to be fit into much smaller spaces.
VRAM: Video RAM, a chip or chips specifically
set aside in a game console or arcade machine to contain
the exact image that you see on the screen. VRAM is
crucial to a system and determines what resolution
and number of onscreen colors any machine can support,
among other things.
