Broadway (microprocessor)

Broadway

IBM Broadway microprocessor from the inside of a Wii. The reference to Canada in the picture is related to where it was packaged i.e. by IBM Canada in Bromont.
Produced	From 2006 to Present
Designed by	IBM and Nintendo
Common manufacturer(s)	IBM
Max. CPU clock rate	729 MHz
Min. feature size	90 nm
Instruction set	Power Architecture
Microarchitecture	PowerPC ISA 1.10
Cores	1
L1 cache	32/32 kB
L2 cache	256 kB
Application	Nintendo Wii
Predecessor	Gekko
Successor	Espresso
Variant	PowerPC 750CL

Broadway is the codename of the 32-bit 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 the Nintendo 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]

The PowerPC 750CL, released in 2006, is a stock CPU offered by IBM and virtually identical to Broadway. The only difference seem to be that the 750CL comes in variants, ranging from 400 MHz up to 1000 MHz.^[3][4][5]

Specifications

• 90 nanometer process technology
• Out-of-order execution 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 unit
• 64-bit floating-point (or 2 × 32-bit SIMD, often found under the denomination "paired singles")
• 64 kB L1 cache (32 kB instruction + 32 kB data)
• 256 kB L2 cache
• 2.9 GFLOPS

External bus

• 64-bit
• 243 MHz
• 1.944 gigabytes per second bandwidth

References