Topic: IBM Ships its 10 Millionth "Gekko"

[MikeHrusecky]

IBM plans to announce today that they have shipped 10 million "Gekko" processors for the GameCube.

IBM plans to announce today that they have shipped 10 million "Gekko" processors for the GameCube, which debuted just a little over a year ago in Japan.

Nintendo has reported approximately 3.8 million GameCubes have been sold at the end of its fiscal year (March 30) and expects to sell 16 million total by next March 30.

The "Gekko" processor is GameCube's main CPU, based on IBM's PowerPC architecture. It's powered by a 485MHz core and build with copper interconnects on an .18 micron process.

Copper interconnects are the "gates" that connect together the millions of transistors found inside a processor. Copper has become the new standard over aluminum because copper is a better conductor of electricity, and helps transfer data more efficiently within a CPU.

A micron represents the measurement of the transistors found inside the processor. 1 micron (or micrometer) is about 40 millionths of an inch. Comparatively, the Nintendo 64's CPU was built on a .25 micron process.