Latte (graphics chip)

Latte

An illustration of the Wii U MCM without heat spreader. The largest chip is the "Latte" GPU co-designed by AMD and Nintendo and manufactured by TSMC. The other chips are the "Espresso" CPU (smaller chip) from IBM and an unknown chip (tiny) from Renesas.
General information
Launched	2012
Discontinued	Present
Designed by	AMD and Nintendo
Common manufacturer	TSMC
Performance
Max. CPU clock rate	550 MHz
Architecture and classification
Application	Wii U
Technology node	40 nm
History
Predecessor	Hollywood

Latte is the codename of the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) and I/O chip used in Nintendo's Wii U video game console. It was designed by Nintendo and AMD, and is currently being produced using a 40 nm advanced CMOS process. The Latte chip resides together with a CPU from IBM on a MCM manufactured by Renesas. It was revealed at E3 2011 in June 2011 and released in November 2012.

Design

An illustration of the Wii U MCM with heat spreader. The markings indicate that its designed by Nintendo, and its components are made by AMD, IBM and Renesas. It also says that it was assembled in Japan, the 26th week of 2012.

AMD and Nintendo have revealed that the Latte graphics chip is based on the "Radeon HD" series of GPUs. Although there have been several reports of the GPU being based on the R700 family of AMD GPUs, die shots reveal a completely customized design which resembles no existing GPU on the market today. It is the largest die on the Wii U's MCM. The chip contains an Audio DSP, eDRAM, components for Wii Backward Compatibility,

Specifications

• 3 Separate Blocks of memory:

1 Block of 32MB of eDRAM,

1 Block of 1MB of SRAM - Possibly used in "Wii mode",

1 Block of 2MB of eDRAM

• Stream processing units (SPU): 320 clocked at 549.9 MHz

• ROP's: 8
• Texture mapping units: 16

Comparable to a heavily modified Radeon HD 4670/4650 albeit with less texture-mapping units.