Sega Naomi Arcade

Released in 1998 at one-third the price of the Model 3 Shared architecture with Dreamcast, but with additional main, graphics and sound memory (32, 16 and 8 megabytes respectively) Uses Hitachi SH-4 CPU processor and PowerVR graphics processor Uses ROM boards, with optional GD-ROM compatible CD-ROM drive. If a drive is used, it will be used at bootup to copy data to a DIMM RAM board instead.[118] Naomi multiboard can use 3 or 4 boards at the same time depending on the game NAOMI is a backronym for New Arcade Operation Machine Idea. The name NAOMI was reportedly selected by Sega R&D head Hisashi Suzuki in honor of the British model Naomi Campbell.

NAOMI (New Arcade Operation Machine Idea) also Japanese for beauty above all else. Notice that Naomi has twice the amount of main memory and graphics memory that Dreamcast has, so ports from Naomi to Dreamcast may involve more conversion time. Also note that the Naomi board has four times the sound memory of the Dreamcast, and the reason for this is because the Naomi board is'nt meant to spool redbook audio from the GD-ROM drive. The Naomi architecture is very flexible in that a cabinet can have anywhere from 1 to 16 boards. A multi board system would operate in parallel increasing the power of the system tremendously! Theoritically a 16 board Naomi system could do (16 x 3.5 mpps) = 56 million polygons per second maximum! Realistically it would most likely be around 20 to 30 mpps. Then of course there is also the issue of the CPU being capable of driving all of this hardware.