IBM puts Watson’s brains in Nintendo Wii U

Nintendo’s new console, the Wii U , was finally unveiled to the area today at E3 2011 , and we got a glimpse of its graphical prowess on the company’s keynote . Details were scarce concerning the IBM silicon Nintendo’s new HD powerhouse was packing, but we did some digging to get a bit more info. IBM tells us that in the Wii U there is a 45nm custom chip with “a good deal” of embedded DRAM. It is a silicon on insulator design and packs the similar processor technology present in Watson , the supercomputer that bested about a meatbags on Jeopardy awhile back. Unfortunately, IBM wouldn’t give us the chip’s clock speeds, but when it’s adequate to smoke Ken Jennings on national TV, we imagine it’ll do alright against its competition from Sony and Microsoft .

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This post is tagged: clock speeds, ken jennings, processor technology, silicon on insulator, supercomputer