For the past year there has been rampant speculation about whether the Wii U’s CPU will be Power 7. IBM’s Watson Twitter account had said it was back in June 2011 but everyone went silent on the matter for over a year.

Even a month ago, the Watson account repeated that the CPU in the Wii U would be Power 7. But IBM has tweeted something that jeopardizes that possibility. IBM tweeted:

WiiU chip clarification: It’s a “Power-based microprocessor”

IBM even went on to say the Power 7 comments by the Watson account were an error, saying “Pardon the error. It’s a custom chip built on Power Architecture base.”

Rumor has it that the Wii U’s CPU is being called “Espresso” behind the scenes and that it is similar to the Wii’s Broadway processor but clocked higher.

This doesn’t mean it is derivative of the Broadway CPU, and even if it is the Broadway CPU is a very good piece of tech. It does things very well at lower clock speeds than CPU’s like the Xbox 360’s Xenon.

I think for the time we can say it isn’t Power 7. Sorry to tell you folks but we all wanted IBM to give us more details but all they had was table scraps to dish out. At least we can put the Power 7 debates to rest.

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