MoSys Confirms Wii Technology; New Wii Trademarks

Officials from electronics firm MoSys have announced that Nintendo’s Wii console will be using the company’s patented 1T-SRAM technology to implement the high performance memory within the Wii’s graphics system. MoSys has worked with Nintendo for the last six years (previous generations of MoSys' 1T-SRAM technology were incorporated in the GameCube) and the use of 1T-SRAM technology in the Wii was actually revealed in a MoSys conference call in May 2005. The newest 1T-SRAM implementations embedded within the Wii console are fabricated using NEC Electronics' advanced 90nm CMOS-compatible embedded DRAM process technology. These high speed and ultra low latency memories are used as the main embedded memory on the graphics chip and in an additional external memory chip. "Designing the Wii console required an incredible list of breakthroughs in technology and innovation. The performance delivered by MoSys' 1T-SRAM technology is an important element of our solution," said Genyo Takeda, senior managing director, general manager, Integrated Research & Development Division at Nintendo. "The graphic performance of Wii benefits from MoSys' ability to develop highly innovative and dependable embedded memory products." In contrast to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the technical specifications of the Wii have been left purposefully vague by Nintendo - it has been presumed because on paper, the console appears notably less powerful than Microsoft and Sony’s machines. However, the lack of concrete information has left to wild speculation across the Internet as to the format’s true abilities, with no indication as to if and when Nintendo will reveal the full details of the console’s innards. In related news, online fans have discovered that Nintendo of Japan has recently registered three new trademarks: WiiPointer, WiiCulture and !!M. Although no official information is available for any of them, it has been noted that !!M is a mirror image of the Wii logo upside down.