Concernt
Optimism is non-negotiable
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Chip binning doesn't just mean core count, so I could see them using low binned chips for the Drake Lite that can't reach the high frequencies needed for TV Mode. As far as I'm aware that is (or was) already the case for Nintendo Switch, with Nvidia products (Shield, Automotive) getting high binned chips, while those that can't quite reach the necessary speed were handed off cheap as chips to Nintendo, since the Switch doesn't need them to hit the highest speeds anyway. I believe many Intel Core i5 processors have the same core count as the i7s they're binned from, just not the same speed.Ummm... there's stuff on the Tegra X1 that's not in use or usable. Erista (and quite likely Mariko) feature a totally unused Cortex-A53 CPU on the SoC. But I see what you're angling at.
If portable mode does not require every available core to be active in order to achieve desired results at the correct thermal envelope (which seems likely), they absolutely could introduce binning as a way to maximize usable chips produced on each wafer. By their nature, cores are only ever active when necessary to perform tasks, either multiple tasks at once or multi-threading a single larger task. If testing shows that no game in portable mode is using more than 50% of the CPU or GPU cores, they could effectively use binned chips for a Lite model where 25% of the cores are faulty and disable those cores (no power can be sent to activate them) and the software would simply indicate that the cores they think should be there are halted (not idle, just off), while still giving an extra 25% CPU/GPU cushion to the expected usage of cores on the SoC just as a precautionary measure, and still be fine since the faulty cores for sure would never be active anyways.
EDIT: And getting that maximum necessary core figure is theoretically easy: stress-test the SoC in TV mode at its maximum achievable spec, then run the same test rendering at the target display resolution in portable mode, find out how many cores are never put into use and then conservatively estimate how many CPU/GPU cores a binned chip can do without based on those tests.
I wouldn't be shocked if the Switch Lite is taking advantage of binned Mariko chips already and no one's really done the work to find out.
Someone can correct me if I'm wrong about this.