The organization of the system consisted of two major chips, the main CPU and the Reality Coprocessor (RCP) designed by SGI. MIPS and RPC processors were 0.35µ silicon manufactured by NEC for Nintendo.The system came with a multifunction 2D and 3D game controller, including digital and analog joysticks, many buttons.Texture mapping: tri-linear interpolated with mip maps, environmental mapping, and perspective correction.32-bit RGBA frame buffer, with 21-bit color video output.Resolutions range from 256 × 224 to 640 × Normal resolution is 320 × 240, 24bpp.Sound and graphics, and pixel drawing coprocessors, clock speed of 62.5 MHz.Rambus DRAM (4 Mbytes) with a maximum bandwidth of 4,500 Mbits/s.64-bit custom MIPS R4300 CPU, clock speed of 93.75 MHz.The little super-computer would be considered feature rich today, and other than the clock speeds, would be a competitive device. It was an amazing amount of technology crammed into a ridiculously small package, and at a crazy low price of $250 ($420 today).įigure 1: Nintendo 64 motherboard, CPU, and Reality Coprocessor, with RMEM below the processors. Later in May 1996, at the E3 conference in L.A., Nintendo showed the Nintendo 64 and announced it would be available in the U.S. Most consoles of the time were struggling to get from 8-bits to 32-bit 64-bits was considered science fiction.Įven so, they did it and on November 24, 1995, at Nintendo’s 7th Annual Shoshinkai trade show, the company unveiled the Nintendo 64 console. And thus, was born the idea of the Nintendo 64.Įven the number, 64, was outrageous. Nonetheless, in 1992 and early 1993, Silicon Graphics (SGI) founder and CEO Jim Clark met with Nintendo CEO Hiroshi Yamauchi to discuss just that-squeezing an SGI graphics system into a console. Therefore, the idea of adapting such state-of-the-art technology to a consumer product like a game console that sold for a few hundred dollars was considered bold, challenging, and crazy. A high-end super high-performance workstation could cost over $100,000. In the ensuing years, it developed leading graphics technologies at the high end. Silicon Graphics had been a leader and highly respected workstation developer that rose to fame and fortune based on its introduction of a VLSI geometry processor in 1981. Breakthrough design, genuinely disruptive
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