DSi PCB
The DSi is 74.9 mm tall × 137 mm broad × 18.9-mm wide (when closed) which is about 12% narrower (2.6 mm) than the Nintendo DS Lite, but slightly broader.
Screens:
The Nintendo DSi has two larger (than DS-lite) TFT-LCD screens at 82.5 millimetres (3.25 in), instead of the former 76.2 millimetres (3.00 in), capable of displaying 260,000 colors.
The lower display of the console is overlaid with a touchscreen, designed to accept input from the included stylus or a curved plastic tab attached to the optional wrist strap.
Buttons:
Also on the front are the four face buttons, the directional pad, and the Start, Select, and Power buttons. The back of the DSi features the two shoulder buttons
The power switch has been replaced with a power button, such as the original DS had, but it provides extra functions and is located next to the bottom-left side of the touchscreen.
slots
a slot for game cards, a slot SD-card
In addition to the cameras, the DSi has an SD card slot behind the cover on the right-side of the handheld.
a power cable input underneath the hinge.
camera:
The handheld has two VGA (0.3-megapixel) digital cameras: one on the internal hinge pointed towards the user and the other in the outer shell.
Volume and brightness
Volume and brightness are adjustable on the left-side of the handheld. The DSi has five brightness settings compared to the DS Lite's four.
battery
however battery life is reduced on all brightness levels.
such as 9–14 hours on the lowest brightness setting compared to the 15–19 hours of its predecessor.
The unit uses an 840 mAh internal rechargeable battery compared to 1000 mAh for the DS Lite,and it may be replaced by the user at the end of its useful life of approximately 500 charge cycles.
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Technical specifications
The DSi's main printed circuit board
Nintendo has released few technical details regarding the DSi system. The company has modified some of the DSi's hardware (as compared to the DS Lite), such as the main central processing unit (CPU) and the random-access memory (RAM).
Also, the CPU was relocated, and the battery housing was raised to curtail unused space. The DSi features louder and better sound quality due to the inclusion of Codec IC, which can amplify sound and convert digital signals into analog signals. The IC responsible for sound output was upgraded. Nintendo has stated that, to improve portability without sacrificing durability, the front slot for Game Boy Advance (GBA) cartridges had to be removed. As a result, the unit has lost its backward compatibility with GBA Game Paks and its compatibility with accessories that require the GBA slot, such as the Nintendo DS Rumble Pak and the Guitar Hero: On Tour series guitar grip, which is required to play those games.
CPU: The DSi has two ARM architecture CPUs; ARM9 and ARM7.
The main CPU is clocked at 133 MHz.
RAM: 16 MB of RAM (four times as much as previous models)
Storage: 256 MB of internal flash memory with an SD card (up to 2 GB) and SDHC card (up to 32 GB) expansion slot
Wireless: 802.11b/g internal wireless connectivity
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ARM920T and ARM922T
http://www.arm.com/products/CPUs/families/ARM9Family.html
The ARM9 processor family is built around the ARM9TDMI processor and incorporates the 16-bit Thumb instruction set, which improves code density by as much as 35%. The ARM9 family's comprehensive feature set enables developers to implement leading-edge systems, while delivering considerable savings in chip area, time-to-market, development costs and power consumption. The ARM9 family consists of the ARM922T cached processor macrocell.
ARM922 Features
32-bit RISC processor with ARM® and Thumb® instruction sets
5-stage integer pipeline achieves 1.1 MIPS/MHz
Up to 300 MIPS (Dhrystone 2.1) in a typical 0.13µm process
Single 32-bit AMBA bus interface
MMU supporting Windows CE, Symbian OS, Linux, Palm OS ( and )
Integrated instruction and data caches
Excellent debug support for SoC designers, including ETM interface
8-entry write buffer — avoids stalling the processor when writes to external memory are performed
Portable to latest 0.18µm, 0.15µm, 0.13µm silicon processes.
ARM7
ARM720T, ARM7EJ-S, ARM7TDMI and ARM7TDMI-S
The ARM7 family is a range of low-power 32-bit RISC microprocessor cores optimized for cost and power-sensitive applications.
Introduced in 1994, the ARM7 family continues to be used in a variety of designs, but newer and more demanding designs are increasingly making use of latest ARM processors such as the Cortex-M0 and Cortex-M3 both of which offer several significant enhancements over the ARM7 family.
The ARM Cortex™-M3 32-bit processor has been specifically developed to provide a high-performance, low-cost platform for a broad range of applications including microcontrollers, automotive body systems, industrial control systems and wireless networking. The Cortex-M3 processor provides outstanding computational performance and exceptional system response to interrupts while meeting low cost requirements through small core footprint, industry leading code density enabling smaller memories, reduced pin count and low power consumption.
The ARM® Cortex™-M0 processor is the smallest, lowest power and most energy-efficient ARM processor available. The exceptionally small silicon area, low power and minimal code footprint of the processor enables developers to achieve 32-bit performance at an 8-bit price point, bypassing the step to 16-bit devices.
The ARM7 family offers up to 130MIPs (Dhrystone2.1) and incorporates the Thumb 16-bit instruction set. The family consists of the ARM7TDMI, ARM7TDMI-S and ARM7EJ-S processors, each of which was developed to address different market requirements:-
Integer processor
Synthesizable version of the ARM7TDMI processor
Synthesizable core with DSP and Jazelle® technology enhancements for Java acceleration
Cached core with Memory Management Unit (MMU) supporting operating systems including Windows CE, Palm OS, Symbian OS and Linux
Applications
Personal audio (MP3, WMA, AAC players)
Entry level wireless handsets
Two-way pagers
ARM7 family
Established, high-volume 32-bit RISC architecture
Up to 130 MIPs (Dhrystone 2.1) performance on a typical 0.13µm process
Small die size and very low power consumption
High code density, comparable to 16-bit microcontroller
Wide operating system and RTOS support - including Windows CE, Palm OS, Symbian OS, Linux and market-leading RTOS
Wide choice of development tools
Simulation models for leading EDA environments
Excellent debug support for SoC designers, including ETM interface
Multiple sourcing from industry-leading silicon vendors
Availability in 0.25µm, 0.18µm and 0.13µm processes
Migration and support across new process technologies
Code is forward-compatible to ARM9, ARM9E and ARM10 processors as well as Intel's XScale technology
----------http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=274
I haven’t had much of a chance to play around with the device yet, but from what I can tell the CPU is substantially beefed up (consistent with reports of the DSi battery life being shorter than the DS-lite, despite having similar battery capacities of 840 mAh for the DSi and 850 mAh for the DS-lite), as it can do all kinds of real-time image manipulation tricks on the video feeds, and it also has a built-in minigame for audio streams where you can loop in samples over music files and do some low-quality pitch distortion on the fly. The markings on the CPU package yield no clues about its performance, but my guess is that any ARM9 or ARM11 CPU manufactured in 2007 would have a performance around the 266-533 MHz range. Of course, I took the device apart, and I have some photos of it to share with you from my hotel room…
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