StarTopic Future Nintendo Hardware & Technology Speculation & Discussion |ST| (New Staff Post, Please read)

[Yavga]

Hey Fami! Time for a vibe check. How are the vibes? Are we back, or is it Nintendover?

Trying to stay on top of every wave we make from "We're so back" all the way to "It's so over"

Currently it feels like "We're so back" looking at the state of Nintendo and its business compared to the current other competitors who aren't doing so hot with their lineups and current systems. That's 1, which is to say Nintendo is in a good starter position for a new generation apparantly.

2: Current expected specs from leaks seem on the positive side. Very positive even is the vibe I am getting from the people who understand this better than me.

3: Some 3rd parties started pledging their support for Nintendo its next system, always a good thing especially when some of these were not really developing for Switch 1.

 

[Kevin]

Hey Fami! Time for a vibe check. How are the vibes? Are we back, or is it Nintendover?

Pretty optimistic to be honest. To recap:

1. Nintendo finally acknowledged the successor to Switch 2 and even gave a window in which it will be shown.
2. Nintendo confirmed a Nintendo Direct in June focusing on first party games for Switch.
3. Leaked specs so far for Switch 2 has been pretty impressive so far, potentially surpassing expectations and leaving us hopeful that the system will be quite capable and a huge step up from the aging Switch console.

So yeah it's been a good month I would say. Excitement Level is at like a 7/10 so far and that could increase as time goes on.

 

[oldpuck]

I'm not in game dev but directed graphs does not seem like anything you would need dedicated hardware for.

Graph traversal - or any large data structure - is mostly about the shape of the structure, which is a software issue, and pointer math, which is classic integer operations, just bread and butter CPU stuff.

The one case I've seen of "Accelerated directed graphs" is actually in Nvidia hardware already. GPUs are optimized for floating point ops, RT requires are lot of pointer chasing, so Nvidia just added dedicated integer ALUs (just like a CPU) to the GPU. And then promptly pulled them back because they ate too much die space.

Question for those more familiar with Nvidia's architecture design, would it be possible and/or feasible to add a separate clock domain to
specific portions of the SM, like Tensor or RT Cores? Or are those logic blocks too tied into the Ampere/Lovelace SM structure for this to be viable without a significant architecture redesign? Thanks!

Going by what public docs there are, I'd say "no." SMs have a single scheduler, with a dispatch port for each set of cores. The scheduler is the hardware's interface to the SM. My suspicion would be that you would need to pull the tensor cores/RT cores out into a SM-like structure of their own to put them on a separate clock domain, and make the TPC or the GPC (the higher level structures) perform more sophisticated scheduling work.

One of the reasons that Nvidia RT is so fast is because pointers live in the L0 cache of the SM, so passing data between the RT core and the shader cores is a zero cost op.

At this point I feel vendor lock in will be because of BC. Emulation of Switch 2 games will be painfully difficult to achieve in a manner that is transparent for the consumer.

Why? I don't see anything particularly difficult to emulate. You may see some variation between "DLSS native" versus "DLSS implemented as a wrapper around FSR" but that's the only thing that might require special work. Unless I'm missing something.

As far as I can tell, this slide says that:

• A78@3GHz and [email protected] = 1W
• [email protected] = half [email protected] consumption
• Since 2.3 is less than 2.6, it means 2.1GHz is less than 0.5W.

But I don't see anything about 2.5GHz. Am I missing something?

it also compares TMSC 7nm to TSMC 5nm. Not sure it can tell us anything about the 8nm case regardless.

 

[justanotherperson]

Tha's true, I seem to remember mentions 1 CPU core would typically be reserved for OS.

does that means cores can be clocked differently even from within the same CPU?

If so, that could also allow them to clock the other 7 cores higher, so that instead of 8 cores @ 2.5GHz, we could get 7 cores @ 2.8GHz + 1 core @ 1GHz.

 

[Ghostsonplanets]

The 3DS launch failed because of software strategy and continued belief in being the casual gaming alternative, when that window was closing and people were hungry for full gaming experiences on the go.

Price + Launch Software Slate was a big problem. But I disagree on the full gaming experiences on the go bit. 3DS was literally sold on bringing console experiences to a Nintendo portable for the first time. And the vast majority of these software failed bad (Which damages Nintendo relationship with 3P).

3DS kinda lived on off Nintendo IPs, Monster Hunter, Pokémon and one or two 3P hit pieces. It was basically survival mode until Switch release for Nintendo.

4) have made a more powerful SoC capable of running Wii games as 1:1 ports but with modern tools like programable shaders. It would be as powerful as Xbox 1.

The 3DS GPU was said to be on par or superior to the Wii GPU (Of course when compared to the target output rendering resolution). The PICA 200 could do effects that Wii never could and was much more easier to develop for. The CPU, however, was the big miss. Had Nintendo clocked it higher or used a newer IP, there would be a lot more of Wii ports.

Even Nintendo realized their error and the New 3DS overclocked the dual core application CPU to 804MHz. But it was too late already.

 

[NineTailSage]

Why wouldn't it be? Anyone would try a deal with Nintendo. They can try. Doesn't mean they'll get it.

Well the MLID Switch 2 (AMD rumor) was that Nintendo went with Nvidia in the 11th hour and almost chose AMD...
Which the Nvidia hacked information says otherwise, plus the project t239 LinkedIn profiles kind of disprove his theory as well.

 

[Hermii]

Well the MLID Switch 2 (AMD rumor) was that Nintendo went with Nvidia in the 11th hour and almost chose AMD...
Which the Nvidia hacked information says otherwise, plus the project t239 LinkedIn profiles kind of disprove his theory as well.

All he said was AMD bid hard against Nvidia. Nothing about when this bidding happened.

 

[gabeplays]

Hey Fami! Time for a vibe check. How are the vibes? Are we back, or is it Nintendover?

It was never Nintenover! we've basically known since the leaks how the Switch 2 is going to be more or less. It's a going to be a fantastic and competitive 9th gen console and Furukawa's 3AM message for us EST peeps was great.

 

[RennanNT]

it also compares TMSC 7nm to TSMC 5nm. Not sure it can tell us anything about the 8nm case regardless.

Well, I was focusing on the claim 2.5GHz would take just 4W on 5nm, which isn't supported by the slide. So I was specifically talking about what info we could gather for A78 on 5nm.

But yeah, there's more info there. Like how them chosing 2.1GHz and 2.3GHz is quite suggestive (even if not conclusive) about their power curve.

 

[Steve]

All he said was AMD bid hard against Nvidia. Nothing about when this bidding happened.

i'm always curios with the behind the scene of bidding and exclusives rights.

Like, what could AMD offer, that Nvidia couldn't? Maybe a cheaper custom cheap for example.

Also, how would Nvidia and AMD bid? Like is it just making points of features, like DLSS.

 

[Mendinso]

 

[Steve]

Yeah, the video makes a valid point of saying F-Zero will never come back.

 

[Mendinso]

Yeah, the video makes a valid point of saying F-Zero will never come back.

....and of course I meant to post this in an entirely different section. Whoops.

EDIT: Oh I see what I did. I had the wrong tab open.

 

[Zordian]

It was never Nintenover! we've basically known since the leaks how the Switch 2 is going to be more or less. It's a going to be a fantastic and competitive 9th gen console and Furukawa's 3AM message for us EST peeps was great.

Do you mean 10th gen?

 

[Steve]

so... when are we y'all expecting the floodgates, like before or after summer game fest or maybe after the Direct. Also i'm at so much ease with the shipping information.

We are so close, yet so far away.

 

[gabeplays]

Do you mean 10th gen?

9th. We're still in the 9th generation of gaming and the Switch 2 will almost certainly be Nintendo's sole console when the 10th gen gets going, very much like the Switch 1.

 

[Shareholder Chad]

so... when are we y'all expecting the floodgates, like before or after summer game fest or maybe after the Direct. Also i'm at so much ease with the shipping information.

We are so close, yet so far away.

Final week of june. Im personally hoping to get some juicy details as switch 2 talk amongst shareholders and fans alike will be full tilt.

 

[Steve]

Final week of june. Im personally hoping to get some juicy details as switch 2 talk amongst shareholders and fans alike will be full tilt.

Makes sense, since there's a Q&A in June, also when it comes to asking questions is it most of the time the one with the highest stocks? Who has the ability to ask questions.

 

[Maxrunner]

What's the difference between a78 vs a78c? Switch 2 uses the 78c variant?

 

[godsforgiveme]

When are we gonna get the next shipment data? I forgot.

 

[Terrell]

So what happened in the past week that we added 40 pages? Nothing, per usual?

3 years from now.

I think Nintendo is likely to genuinely consider AMD anytime they're looking at new hardware. The Nvidia partnership is currently very strong, but Ko Shiota, head of the hardware team, has close relationships with AMD, having worked very closely with the silicon engineers on the Wii and the Wii U (and likely, but less clearly, the GameCube).

AMD might have been able to offer Nintendo better raw performance this time around. But it couldn't deliver DLSS, it couldn't deliver high ray tracing performance, and it would have had a significantly harder time offering backwards compatibility, or the sort of software investment that Nvidia has.

But AMD is actively trying to close the feature/technology gap with Nvidia, they have a much stronger custom chip division (where Nvidia's is essentially Just Nintendo), and they're hungry for it in a way that, by the third generation, Nvidia might not be.

AMD could come in and say, look, we've closed the gap on AI, on upscaling, on frame generation, on RT. But we're ahead of Nvidia on chiplets by a huge margin - we can integrate WiFi, Bluetooth, cartridge readers, your whole motherboard into a single SOC. We've got custom ARM cores we've been building on top of Zen's execution pipeline. We've moved to new process nodes faster than Nvidia, and are willing to give you chips at a razor thin margin.

Maybe it's only a 25% chance they pull that off, but that ain't 0%.

Of course, this is all operating under the assumption that Nvidia doesn’t have anything else to offer and I sincerely doubt Nvidia is just gonna roll over here. And this chiplet idea sounds like it might be a nightmare for repair costs for a low-cost consumer electronics product.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

So what happened in the past week that we added 40 pages? Nothing, per usual?

Of course, this is all operating under the assumption that Nvidia doesn’t have anything else to offer and I sincerely doubt Nvidia is just gonna roll over here. And this chiplet idea sounds like it might be a nightmare for repair costs for a low-cost consumer electronics product.

Chip stacking via chiplets are literally the only path to major performance gains outside of fixed function silicon with how bad new nodes are.

(this is not good at all for mobile hardware and makes me wonder how Apple will deal with node shrinks dying)

Like, I look at chip stacking and I just see an electricity consumption nightmare for mobile hardware so I'm a little lost on what Apple can do.

 

[godsforgiveme]

What's the difference between a78 vs a78c? Switch 2 uses the 78c variant?

Secure scalable performance with Arm Cortex-A78C CPU

This blog provides details about key features and benefits of the Arm Cortex-A78C CPU, which is the latest addition to the Cortex-A78 family.

community.arm.com

 

[ezidro3]

so... when are we y'all expecting the floodgates, like before or after summer game fest or maybe after the Direct. Also i'm at so much ease with the shipping information.

We are so close, yet so far away.

I'm guessing July-ish, around the time of Eurogamer's "NX is a hybrid" article

Maybe something like the April 2019 Switch Lite leak where the shell leaks out

 

[Zordian]

9th. We're still in the 9th generation of gaming and the Switch 2 will almost certainly be Nintendo's sole console when the 10th gen gets going, very much like the Switch 1.

I'm saying the Switch 2 will be a 10th gen console like the PS6 and the next Xbox.

I'm not doing this whole "9th and 10th console" thing even though generations don't mean anything anymore.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

Does anyone have a good article on what parts of Dragon's Dogma 2's scripting is likely eating CPU frametime?

 

[Lugia667]

Makes sense, since there's a Q&A in June, also when it comes to asking questions is it most of the time the one with the highest stocks? Who has the ability to ask questions.

have the Saudis ever asked anything? lol

 

[darthdiablo]

When are we gonna get the next shipment data? I forgot.

Beginning of June, for April data.

 

[Shareholder Chad]

Makes sense, since there's a Q&A in June, also when it comes to asking questions is it most of the time the one with the highest stocks? Who has the ability to ask questions.

Its not ordered by who has the most shares. The funny part is, Id say the big money shareholders usually keep quiet. Their questions get answered before the event (lmao, if you know, you know). Its usually the retail investors and fund managers that get their questions off.

The Q&A isn't as exciting for shareholders as you'd think. Its the talk before and after when everyone is networking that is the super fun (And informative) part.

 

[Shareholder Chad]

have the Saudis ever asked anything? lol

Never seen em'.
<_<

Kind of don't want to either. I don't think we have anything in common. I often talk with those of questionable moral values but if half the shit I've heard of the dudes running the Saudi investment firm are real then I'd rather stay on the other side of the room.

 

[godsforgiveme]

Beginning of June, for April data.

So only two weeks from now? Great!

 

[darthdiablo]

So only two weeks from now? Great!

More or less yes.

There’s a small chance the new Vietnamese data comes in shortly before end of month (May). Had happened couple of times before.

 

[Steve]

Its not ordered by who has the most shares. The funny part is, Id say the big money shareholders usually keep quiet. Their questions get answered before the event (lmao, if you know, you know). Its usually the retail investors and fund managers that get their questions off.

The Q&A isn't as exciting for shareholders as you'd think. Its the talk before and after when everyone is networking that is the super fun (And informative) part.

Makes sense, since they have the most in stake with their personal finances, compared to the Norwegian government or big shareholder, since they also have different company to rely on.

 

[navierStokes]

Latest iPad Pro batteries come in pairs (parallel) 3.819V, 38.99Wh or two 19.91Wh battery cells (5145 mAh).

There’s no thickness or dimensions provided (yet), but the device itself is 5.1mm thick, and these are even slimmer than that, like 2mm?

They may be a bit too long, but it’s quite impressive how much Wh they’ve packed in there for the device.

 

[ExoticSpice]

Chip stacking via chiplets are literally the only path to major performance gains outside of fixed function silicon with how bad new nodes are.

(this is not good at all for mobile hardware and makes me wonder how Apple will deal with node shrinks dying)

Like, I look at chip stacking and I just see an electricity consumption nightmare for mobile hardware so I'm a little lost on what Apple can do.

Apple will have move to 3D packaging.

I expect Apple will introduce a new tier of IPhone. iPhone Ultra and spread the cost of their new chips.

2nm and later is VERY expensive.

 

[Beansy]

The vibe is impeccable!

 

[ArchedThunder]

When do you think realistically AMD will have a shot at getting Nintendo business again?

I think either Nintendo or Nvidia would have to do something to sour their relationship for Nintendo to even consider the possibility of taking on AMD as a partner.

 

[justanotherperson]

Latest iPad Pro batteries come in pairs (parallel) 3.819V, 38.99Wh or two 19.91Wh battery cells (5145 mAh).

There’s no thickness or dimensions provided (yet), but the device itself is 5.1mm thick, and these are even slimmer than that, like 2mm?



They may be a bit too long, but it’s quite impressive how much Wh they’ve packed in there for the device.

I don't know a single thing about Apple products, so, how much does that cost? It's a total of 10.000 mAh, is that one of the reasons why it's so freaking expensive? I wish the Switch 2 had that much watt-hour, so that it could allow for better CPU clocks and, in general, more parity with current gen consoles.

 

[Dakhil]

What's the difference between a78 vs a78c? Switch 2 uses the 78c variant?

The Cortex-A78 supports a maximum of 4 CPU cores per cluster.

The Cortex-A78C supports a maximum of 8 CPU cores per cluster, as well as other extensions not supported on the Cortex-A78 (e.g. Pointer Authentication, Enhanced Pointer Authentication, etc.).

And based on Nvidia's description of the CPU on T239, T239's very likely using the Cortex-A78C.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

Apple will have move to 3D packaging.

I expect Apple will introduce a new tier of IPhone. iPhone Ultra and spread the cost of their new chips.

2nm and later is VERY expensive.

I mean, won’t this just blow up wattage and make phones not really… phone shaped anymore?

I don’t know how you do passive cooling with stacked chips, each chip using a good bit of electricity…

Like, in a node shrink, the distance between transistors becomes smaller and thus the electricity cost goes down.

But if you just stack another chip on top… Like I don’t see where the electricity savings are coming from?

 

[ShadowFox08]

When are we gonna get the next shipment data? I forgot.

IiRC, regular A78 CPU cores clusters typically have one big 4 (A78) CPU core cluster and one little 4 (A55) CPU core cluster. A55s are for energy efficiency and clocked cloeer than A78s. Big little cpu core clusters are common in mobile devices (phones).

A78AE is what the tegra Orion modules have, and they come in 6, 8 or 12 big core clusters. They support up to 3mb l2 cache and 6mb l3 cache

A78cs in comparison come in 6 or 8 big core clusters (A79) and are made with gaming in mind. They also support up to 8mb l3 cache.and have better multi threaded performance, and security features over the other variants apparently. I don't know it they are physically smaller or more energu efficient though. The leaks over a year ago stated that t239 have an 8 core cluster. Regular A78s don't have that. So it seems like A78cs are a shoe in to many of us, though I don't know any SoCs off the top of my head that use A78cs. They mentioned mali..

Secure scalable performance with Arm Cortex-A78C CPU

This blog provides details about key features and benefits of the Arm Cortex-A78C CPU, which is the latest addition to the Cortex-A78 family.

community.arm.com

NVIDIA Jetson Orin

Next-level AI performance for next-gen robotics.

www.nvidia.com

 

[ertaboy356b]

That only works until MS acquires said studio.

Yeah true, imagine if Mercury Steam got acquired by someone else, we'll probably not see another 2D metroid in a while and Nintendo would have to look around for another worthy dev again.

 

[Dakhil]

A78AE is what the tegra Orion modules have, and they come in 6, 8 or 12 big core clusters. They support up to 3mb l2 cache and 6mb l3 cache

The Cortex-A78AE only supports up to 4 CPU cores per cluster.

Going by the Jetson AGX Orin and Jetson Orin Nano block diagrams, Jetson Orin has 2-3 active CPU clusters depending on the configuration.

 

[MuddySeal]

I don't know a single thing about Apple products, so, how much does that cost? It's a total of 10.000 mAh, is that one of the reasons why it's so freaking expensive? I wish the Switch 2 had that much watt-hour, so that it could allow for better CPU clocks and, in general, more parity with current gen consoles.

It’s expensive mostly due to the brand new (for Apple) screen tech they’re using, I’d be surprised if the battery cost more than $100 to make

 

[Raccoon]

doing my monthly mental health check in on the hardware thread users

fuck I missed this

 

[ertaboy356b]

I think 3DS would have been more successful if:

1) Dropout 3DS gimmick and system be called 2DS
2) Screen resolution to 480p
3) Feature both second stick and ZR/ZL buttons
4) have made a more powerful SoC capable of running Wii games as 1:1 ports but with modern tools like programable shaders. It would be as powerful as Xbox 1.
5) Possible priced as $200

It would have been more successful if they just made the New version from the very beginning with the headtracking.

 

[MuddySeal]

fuck I missed this

 

[ertaboy356b]

NPC behavior is generally controlled by stuff called "finite state machines" or "behavior trees" which are just types of directed graph. Directed graphs have nodes that follow an order. NPC behavior has the NPC's brain following the instructions in the directed graph where it acts as demanded in the certain node until a condition happens that causes it to go to another node.

eg

Yeah, it's really basic. I have made AI in warcraft 3 before (DOTA like games) and it's like in the image.

 

[ertaboy356b]

ah ok. intresting, are state machines particularly cpu intensive? how and what kind of dedicated hardware could help with such a thing?

No unless you have a ton of them.

 

[Koti]

Excellent points. One thing I want to mention is the difference between disappointment, failed expectations, and outright customer faith loss. This is subjective but most people I talk to did not feel "betrayed" by the Wii-U. They were betrayed by the 3DS. In Japanese culture, Honor is a big deal. I know American media likes to make light of it and make it out to be dramatic but its important to them. The Wii-U was a total miss. The 3DS was a betrayal of customer faith due to the launch and pivot. Instead of Nintendo doubling down on 3D and correcting that specific point of the 3DS they gave up and shoehorned 3D in for the rest of the generation after Super Mario 3D land. I can understand how some would think that was the correct move but I'd wager in context of Japanese culture it would have been better to "go down with the ship" and do their damn best to justify 3D. They sort of did this with the Wii-U. They kept at it even though the tablet gaming concept truely sucked.

Again, Lots of subjective talk here. I think opinions on this are very wide ranging.



I know you think that was probably funny but you can miss us with that. People are here communicating for a variety of reasons and most are capable of understanding internal changes as things develop and not letting it affect our day to day. Its okay to disappointed when hearing about delays or some kind of hardware addition/subtraction. It doesn't mean or hint anything as to the mental health outside the internet.

When people talk about difference in culture and stuff, I feel like they overestimate how much of a difference there is especially after like 2010. For example, recently there's been some controversy with Apple's iPad ad. There was quite a bit of backlash all over the world. Some people were replying in the comments that Japan has a belief that objects have soul called Tsukumogami, and that's why it's especially disheartening to Japanese people. It generated a lot of engagement and likes. However, I guarantee you Japanese people weren't thinking about tsukumogami. It wasn't that deep, most people probably saw the ad and cringed a bit just like others. When people try to explain different cultures to people, they tend to overcomplicate and overexaggerate things. So looking at your comment, I feel the same way. "They were betrayed by the 3ds" what betrayal? "Honor is a big deal" what? "in context of Japanese culture it would have been better... to justify 3d" nobody in Japan thought this way. The 3ds launch wasn't that big of a deal unless we look at specific groups of people like ones posting on 2ch. You can say the Switch went through the exact same thing. Too expensive, nobody cares about hybrid, poor software lineup, ps3 specs. There's going to be people feeling "betrayed" regardless.