L0L_FAQ: 3DS CPU vs Wii CPU

This is an absolute lie. While PowerPC is a well respected series of processor architectures, the PPCs of yesterday had the limitations of the time.

I'll use the more powerful Broadway processor on the Wii for comparison; The ARM11 supports a 64 bit bus while the Broadway is a 32 bit chip.

Of course, I don't mean to go back to the early generation "bit wars", because it's a lot more complex than that, but here's the lowdown, and it's a bit simplified so as not to be confusing, but it's fundamentally correct: a "bit" in a CPU is one "piece" that can either represent a 1 or a 0; a 32 bit CPU can handle numbers up to 4,294,967,295, while a 64 bit CPU can handle up to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 meaning you can do math with bigger numbers.

For crunching larger numbers, the CPU has to undergo less cycles; so taking our example, a 64 bit CPU will churn out 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 in one cycle while our 32 bit CPU will take at least 4 294 967 297 cycles (because 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 is just 4 294 967 297 squared)

For big calculations, we have a CPU that is orders of magnitude stonger by simply being 64 bit. For smaller calculations, well, it's still twice as efficient; for anything a 32 bit processor can do, you can program a far more efficient process of calculations by simply having the process on 64 bits and handling half the calculations at a time by just using bigger numbers. So, for example, if a 32 bit processor calculates something as 2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2, a 64 bit processor can handle it as 4+4+4+4 (again an overly simplified explanation that's sufficient for understanding what's at play here).

Secondly, we have a more efficient L1 and L2 cache by virtue of just being newer and the L1 and L2 being 2 cycle caches. Third, we have deeper pipelines and an 88% accurate branch predictor in the ARM11.

We're just looking at a better CPU design. The Gecko and Broadway were based on a 1999-2000 design and processor tech. The ARM line just smokes anything from that era.