they better call it the Switch 2 then
They’d likely target something like the Switch Lite battery life. Or close to it. So at minimum of 3H. Maybe 3.5H min.
And Nintendo has lowered battery life before with a midget refresh like the DSi, so I wouldn’t rule out that it means it’s a 2 because of that.
For reference, OG 3DS was 3-5H. N3DS was 3.5-6H. 3DSXL was 3.5-5.5H. N3DSXL was 3.5-7H.
OG DS was 10H
DSLite was 15-19H at lowest brightness and 5-8H at highest brightness.
DSi was 3-4H at highest brightness and 9-14H at the lowest.
DSiXL was 4-5H at highest brightness and 13-17H at lowest brightness.
OG switch 196 gflops mode was literally a last minute addition, created mainly for botw. So I think the originals 150 gflops mode is around where they would like to be.
Was that actually last minute
This is an interesting question. With what we know from the leak though, how the chip is specified with its core counts specifically there is only one scenario I can forsee where this could be misunderstood, and that's Thraktors assessment in having GPU cores disabled in handheld mode, I do have issues with this also which I will explain. I'm focusing on GPU here as its the only real known quantity.
So let's say we do have an 8nm chip, using original switch handheld clocks but having only 6sm active in handheld mode. That gives us 768*307*2 = 471 gflops handheld. Then in docked we have the full 12 sm at 768mhz which gives us 768 * 1536 * 2 = 2.359 tflops. A difference of around 5 between handheld and docked. I think the difference between processing in 720p and 4k is around 9 times the power, so throw in DLSS and this may be enough to give us an enhanced 4k switch experience. Would be a huge upgrade still and still the same product we have been following ultimately. So IMO this doesn't change much for me.
The problem I have around this is purely a technical one. The Orin chipset that have different operating profiles that disable cores, DLA etc require a hardware reboot to change profiles as far as I know. Much like using a MUX switch on a laptop to disable the on board GPU. With how software will be coded to use as many cores as available on the GPU I don't think there's an easy solution for the whole moving from docked to handheld seamlessly. Logic could be running on 12sm and then suddenly there's only 6sm available? That is the only bit I can't square, nvidia has some of the best engineers in the world so I am sure they could solve it, but there comes a point where the cost of doing so becomes prohibitive compared to other solutions.
Speaking of which, the proposal of an advanced node for Drake, enabling a 12sm chip to run all cores in handheld also poses another problem but its not the chip shortage, or because Nintendo, its that delta between handheld and docked.
This however is a much easier problem to solve. Let's use base handheld clocks again as a starting point, even though its likely the floor for clock speed where th chip is most efficient will raise. We will use all 12 sm so it's 307 * 2 * 1536 = 943 gflops in handheld. So how do we get that difference of 5 to push 720p fidelity at almost 1tflop up to 4k? We throw more power and cooling at it.
My laptop has a 8nm RTX 3070 at 140w which boosts up to 1720mhz and runs around 1300mhz normally. Now the laptop has more room for cooling and the cooling is very well engineered so I'm not saying you can get a 1720mhz 8nm GPU in the switch form factor. Could we get a 12sm 1500mhz GPU into the switch form factor if it's built on TSMC 5nm? I think with a very well engineered cooling solution and obviously more power for the unit in docked, its possible.
So 1536 * 2 * 1500 = 4.6 TFLOPS docked.
Do I think this specific setup is likely? No. Possible? Yes.
There are chip bin rates etc to consider as well, but overall I think the easier problem to solve is the second problem, rather than throwing however many man years of engineer time at solving the engineering problem of disabling GPU SM during gameplay.
So yeah, I think what the leak says is what we get. I'm about 35/65 on cores being disabled / bigger delta between handheld and docked. Ultimately in power I think we get something in between the two, maybe something made on TSMC 6NM with more reserved docked clocks putting us at 3 TFLOPS docked or there abouts. Maybe it is 8nm and they just run it at 1-1.2ghz in docked.
Either way, we get the same product in my eyes, a switch that runs at 4k in docked mode. The fidelity may change but the product concept is the same.
This is an interesting post, it’s sort of highlights an issue that I feel like would have them present if there was GPU disabling between the modes, either A) games are not coded that well to the switch to and they are more loosely coded thus it leaves some levels of performance on the table, Or B) Drake will have a hypervisor that manages the games in the same way that Xbox manages its games and swaps. However with Xbox it is the whole system and it is that one config, it does not switch between two configurations. And looking at tegra ORIN, it probably wouldn’t be able to reasonably do 6SM‘s at a comfortable way in portable more without drawing too much power as it is already so I’m not really sure if they’d disable 6, because 6 might still be a bit much.
I’d guess that 4SMs would probably be more of a sweet consumption spot.
well shit
two and a half hour battery is a tough sell. I'm not sure if it would be worth it
Well, not really that low. I think Joshua is referring to a step back from the V2, not that it’ll target to be so bad it’s V1. Like it’s not safe to assume it’ll 100% be guaranteed to have 4.5H min and a 9H battery at the highest.
Probably in between the Lite and the V2 if I were to guess.
But better than V1.
So, my current interpretation/understanding is that the API looks for 12 active SMs. Ergo, the physical die is at least 12 SMs.
If that understanding is wrong, then it's the other way around; the die is what's 12 SMs large. Then maybe I'd be thinking of 10 functioning SMs with 2 to eat defects baked in. Pre-hack, I was thinking 6 or 8 SMs, but post-hack, with that sort of die size, fusing off so many SMs to get down to 6/8 seems pretty silly.
Clocks would have to be adjusted, but ultimately, my power targets probably won't change. In my head, I'd probably still try to configure CPU+RAM+GPU+actively reading from storage at 25 Celsius to hit... ~9 watts or less when portable, 14-17 watts when docked. IIRC, those targets are higher than even OG Switch, but what can I say, power draw inflation from RAM's annoying.
Yeah 6-8 seems pretty reasonable here.
When you say 9W that’s just the SoC right? Not for the whole system such as the screen and joycons or fan, etc.? I think the switch draws now 7W for the whole system in portable mode.