I remember one post from a lot of years ago, in some web I can not remember, about Nintendo 64 manufacture history. I remember that it said that Sillicom Graphics (SGI) had heavy issues during the design/manufacture of the N64 RCP coprocessor. Because of this, finally this chip was made by other company, not SGI.
Recently I looked for that post but could not find it. I read other posts about this history but none talks about this SGI issue thing.
Does somebody know anything about this? Maybe is just me remembering it wrong.
Says here SGI demoed the coprocessor to both Nintendo and Sega. Sega bowed out after their engineers found / perceived problems with the SGI design. I do not remember any behind the scenes article about the realtionship between Nintendo and SGI but having heard a lot of stories, I suspect the read would be entertaining …
Thanks!
It’s basically an NEC VR4300. Produced by NEC based on a MIPS R4300i.
Sorry, I was talking about the RCP, not CPU. I already fixed the OP. Thanks anyway.
SGI only made the RCP, Reality CoProcessor.
NEC (who sold the PC Engine, PC-FX consoles and the PC-98XX series home computers at the time) licensed the MIPS R4200 CPU designs from MTI. They then created the derivative CPU the N64 used, the MIPS VR4300i.
You are right about the RCP. I fixed the op. Thanks.