![]() The RCP is a 62.5 MHz chip split internally into two major components, the "Reality Drawing Processor" (RDP) and the "Reality Signal Processor" (RSP). Nintendo 64's graphics and audio duties are performed by the 64-bit SGI co-processor, named the "Reality Co-Processor". ![]() These emulators performed most calculations at 32-bit precision, and trapped the few OS subroutines that actually made use of 64-bit instructions. This problem is further compounded by the RDRAM's very high access latency.Įmulators such as UltraHLE and Project64 benefit from the scarcity of 64-bit operations in the game's executable-code, as the emulator is generally hosted on a 32-bit machine architecture. Though powerful, the CPU was hindered by a 250MB/s bus to the system memory not only that, but in order to access the RAM, the CPU had to go through the RCP ( Reality Co-Processor), and could not use DMA to do so (the RCP could). N64 game-titles generally used faster (and more compact) 32-bit data-operations, as these were sufficient to generate 3D-scene data for the console's RSP (Reality Signal Processor see below) unit. Except for its narrower 32-bit system bus, the VR4300 retained the computational abilities of the more powerful 64-bit MIPS R4300i, though software rarely took advantage of 64-bit data precision operations. Ĭlocked at 93.75 MHz, the N64's VR4300 was the most powerful console CPU of its generation. The 4.6 million transistors CPU is cooled passively by an aluminum heatspreader that makes contact with a steel heat sink above. Built by NEC on a 0.35 µm process, the VR4300 is a RISC5-stage scalar in-order execution processor, with integrated floating point unit, internal 24 KB direct-mapped L1 cache (16KB for instructions, 8KB for data). ![]() The Nintendo 64's central processing unit (CPU) is the NEC VR4300, a cost-reduced derivative of the 64-bit MIPS Technologies R4300i. ![]() The Nintendo 64 motherboard, showing CPU, RCP and RDRAM ![]()
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