garf02
Cappy
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Amiibo will never have a good middle ground, either people complain they dont do enough, or they do too mucb
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StarTopic Future Nintendo Hardware & Technology Speculation and Discussion |ST| "Oh Black Knight, Tape Me Out to Denmark!"
- Thread starter Dakhil
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What leak?
TonyBaduy
Cappy
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As I thought, he brought the goods. I think it's funny that the Switch 4K is basically an open secret in the industry at this point, those NDAs must be brutal though.
I wanted to mention that it seems Kopite may not be so sure about the Dane's process anymore seeing as how Orin X is 7nm, but he said he'd be on the look out, hopefully he finds info soon.
I wanted to mention that it seems Kopite may not be so sure about the Dane's process anymore seeing as how Orin X is 7nm, but he said he'd be on the look out, hopefully he finds info soon.
ILikeFeet
Boo
Keep the current skyrim for $60, add a 4k/60 patch. Probably less work
Yeah what leak?
ILikeFeet
Boo
Late this year, early next year
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What's interesting on those, is that they may need more porting work. I believe they're compiled as 32 bit, and they may need a thin shim in order to make them work on future Switch systems.
OP
OP
I think what NateDrake is trying to say is that how Nintendo positions the DLSS model* to third party developers isn't necessarily indicative of how Nintendo would market the DLSS model* to the general consumers, which is a matter of marketing semantics for Nintendo.
I personally think that Nintendo would market the DLSS model* as an iterative successor, where it's a successor, but with a longer than usual cross-gen period, where Nintendo and I imagine a fair amount of third party developers develops games that work for both the Nintendo Switch and the DLSS model* for a couple of years.
My guess is around April 2022 at the absolute latest if Nintendo's targeting around an October 2022 release for the DLSS model*.
Klax0nKlax0ff
Rattata
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I’m curious, is the approach to have custom Maxwell GPU drivers embedded in the game with all shaders precompiled on one package a unique one within modern console game development? I assume this is done to aid performance on Switch but is there a similar practice on other modern consoles/hardware?
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Would you be upset if it were released before you were ready to upgrade?
RennanNT
Rattata
They will absolutely re-release their games with improvements and extra content like they did with the Wii U library. But they don't need to drop BC to do that, we have many examples of it since they started having BC on the GBC until the last years of WiiU/3DS.
OTOH, enhaced BC means the system will have extra demand early on if they fail to read the market or have a lackluster launch lineup again. The huge library will serve as a selling point of it and a reason to stick with their ecosystem. On top of it, their evergreen games will keep selling for decades as long as they're available.
Putting apart my desire for BC, it would be stupid as a business for them to not have BC unless there's a really good reason for this. And I see none so far for a Switch successor.
ArchedThunder
Uncle Beerus
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I wonder why MVG didn’t bring up partial emulation for the GPU issue, or even some customization to the GPU to allow it to boot into a separate mode or to natively support what it needs to support.
Glom
Cappy
I always thought your English was implausibly good. You were able to carry on a conversation with SG1 despite observing them for maybe 5 minutes from outside the cell.I think BC is almost a given since the new model should in theory expand the current Switch family. Am I wrong or did Nintendo talk about a "stretched generation" compared to the past?
p.s. Hi everyone I'm new
p.p.s. sorry for the bad English
BlackTangMaster
Rattata
I find it weird to see that many Nvidia customers mentioning 7 nm when talking about the Orin family of chip. Moreover, I believe it is the first time we have seen a Nvidia package made in Korea instead of Taiwan (Ampere chipsets while being made by Samsung have all been packaged in Taiwan). I would have really liked to see this as related to the use of a more exclusive process that would require the packaging to be made in Korea. That said, having to use one of Samsung's 3D packaging with the ram chip on top of the SoC in a sort of a more advanced PoP package could also require the packaging of a 8 nm chip to be made in Korea. (Again, we shouldn't close the door on Orin X/S being made on something different than 8 nm. Something happened in early 2020 that resulted in Orin (OG/X?) being upgraded to 21BTr instead of 17BTr and Orin S being delayed until further notice).
As for all this BC talk... It would be quiet funny to see Lovelace or Ampere not being able to emulate the Maxwell ISA when unoptimized and less powerful Snapdragon SoCs are able to run switch games.
(I won't apologize for my bad English because I'm speaking the language of the prophet Thugtas)
As for all this BC talk... It would be quiet funny to see Lovelace or Ampere not being able to emulate the Maxwell ISA when unoptimized and less powerful Snapdragon SoCs are able to run switch games.
(I won't apologize for my bad English because I'm speaking the language of the prophet Thugtas)
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TonyBaduy
Cappy
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It is weird that Orin X was claimed to be 7nm when we knew Orin was being made on 8nm, whether this has any implication on Dane or not remains to be seen. If it somehow jumped to 7nm in the last year without anyone knowing then it'd be quite the development. As for BC, I am sure Nintendo and Nvidia figured something out ages ago.
OP
OP
My guess is that IM Motors is speculating that Nvidia's using Samsung's 7LPP process node to fabricate Orin X, but Nvidia could in actuality be using Samsung's 8N process node to fabricate Orin X, similar to how Gainware speculated that consumer Ampere GPUs were fabricated using a 7 nm** process node, but in actuality, Nvidia's using Samsung's 8N process node to fabricate consumer Ampere GPUs.
** a marketing nomenclature for all foundry companies
TonyBaduy
Cappy
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I guess we will have to wait for a bit for further clarification, but not too long as at least Orin X should have already a prototype made, right?
ArchedThunder
Uncle Beerus
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How well do Snapdragons emulate Switch? People are freaking out about this but I pretty much immediately just assumed Nintendo would simply use emulation on the GPU side and it'd be fine.
Alovon11
Rattata
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Ehh, seems a bit odd though considering they legit were given the prototype board to show it seems.
Hard to mess up the NM Process when you are allegedly reading press material from NVIDIA themselves on a board they gave you to show.
Especially with how secretive NVIDIA has been about Orin, this Prototype being legit the first real Orin board physically shown to my knowledge.
BlackTangMaster
Rattata
It runs on the 10 nm Snapdragon 845 with the Vulkan API (?) (with lower fps than more up to date Qualcomm SoCs) but it is obviously impossible for Nvidia to make a compatibility layer for a GPU and an API they made themselves for Nintendo.
ArchedThunder
Uncle Beerus
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Lol. Yeah, it's weird to me that people are freaking out about this, it seems like something Nvidia and NERD could figure out just fine.
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Already have, I'm sure.
ArchedThunder
Uncle Beerus
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I would imagine. It's not like this is something that would have caught Nintendo and Nvidia off guard, they've probably planned for this since the Tegra X1 was chosen for the Switch.Already have, I'm sure.
the_marmolade
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Yeah just read TL;DR on Nates "Leak", ofc early Dev Kits wont have BC as thats something they work on later in production and ramp up nearing the product release. I say there is 99.5% chance Switch "2" will have BC also think they will play it to their advantage probably many games are still in development for Switch aiming for late 2022/2023 date as I could see them doing Smart Delivey route Xbox doing, also when was last time Nintendo didnt have BC that had same disc/cartridge format?
However im going play devil advocate here I dont really trust Nate with these big leaks like Gamepass for Switch and Switch "Pro" now "2". I honstley would wait for a more reptuable source such as Jason Schreier or VGC/Eurogamer that can collaborate this than random non webcam podcaster/spawncast guest on leaks at this scale.
However im going play devil advocate here I dont really trust Nate with these big leaks like Gamepass for Switch and Switch "Pro" now "2". I honstley would wait for a more reptuable source such as Jason Schreier or VGC/Eurogamer that can collaborate this than random non webcam podcaster/spawncast guest on leaks at this scale.
Klax0nKlax0ff
Rattata
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It’s crazy that the narrative on BC turned into dooming so quickly. But I guess we can only speculate on methods by which Nintendo will get around this hurdle and those intent on catastrophizing will continue to do so for the next year.
Anyone that could provide some truly satisfactory technical explanations for options to achieve BC are probably Nintendo employees, Nvidia employees, or under NDA.
Anyone that could provide some truly satisfactory technical explanations for options to achieve BC are probably Nintendo employees, Nvidia employees, or under NDA.
Benzychenz
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No BC means they can fill their lineup with Switch ports and also drip feed NES/SNES games again. Very smart move.
Mendinso
Rattata
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Unless I'm misremembering, Nintendo was planning to port the Switch OS to different hardware (based off of a job-listing I remember being posted). Wouldn't that also imply they intend to keep some level of compatibility layer if they want to keep the OS? So I'd be shocked at this point if they don't intend to have forward and backwards compatibility at this point.
lemonfresh
Boo
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you say this ironically but knowing nintendo.....
Serif
Rattata
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Porting and rereleasing current Switch games on Switch 2 (assuming no BC) still takes development time and cost, there are many more copies of Switch games out there (as opposed to the Wii U library which had a smaller install base) and they still do well at full price now. It would be more straightforward to have a BC solution and market Switch games as compatible with Switch 2 to boost hardware sales at launch, and still sell 4K remasters down the line.
BC is like the lowest on things I'm worried about for a Switch successor. At this point I'm curious what the resolution of the screen might be. I would be totally fine with a 720p screen though if they're able to balance battery life, 1080p could be a marketing bullet point.
BC is like the lowest on things I'm worried about for a Switch successor. At this point I'm curious what the resolution of the screen might be. I would be totally fine with a 720p screen though if they're able to balance battery life, 1080p could be a marketing bullet point.
Not really. I have the finances to buy it whenever it’s released. I wouldn’t buy it just because it’s more powerful though. If major third party content isn’t supported that it wouldn’t matter to me.
Benzychenz
Is already half Xehanort
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Mario Kart 8 Deluxe: 4K Edition
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You're confusing a rumor/leak with informed speculation that didn't even come from Nate. It came from MVG who is a Switch developer and knows exactly what he is talking about. And neither of them claimed there wouldn't be BC, in fact they both said they fully expect it.
They just talked about how it would take more work than most people think and might not be perfect BC.
Dark Cloud
Moblin
Please keep information on track. This spread of “no BC” from Nate is annoying
Z0m3le
Rattata
Adding Maxwell compatibility could possibly be achieved by modifying the fp32 blocks in the SM to add full Maxwell compatibility.
This sort of solution would only need to be applied to 4SM, for the 256 Maxwell shaders. Thing about Ampere is that it has more fp32 shaders than it can use at one time, this is why Turing is so much faster per flop, because theoretical flops are rarely achieved in Ampere, where as Turing has half the fp32 shaders per SM.
Given this type of solution, even 6SM with 256 shaders locked away under Maxwell compatibility (which we don't know if they would be unable to be used). would result in 1.5TFLOPs with efficiency closer to Turing, perhaps even better per flop performance. Now this would be a slight downgrade to having all the shaders be Ampere, but it could be a solution to Backwards compatibility.
If this is an 8SM part, you wouldn't be able to run the GPU at 1.5GHz normally without a very high power envelope, this would be 3TFLOPs btw, but with this solution where 4SM only have half the shaders available, it would be 2.3TFLOPs Ampere, now you could likely run at 1.5GHz, because 256 of the 1024 shaders would never have a load, and would give you similar performance to 3TFLOPs, because Ampere would be closer to theoretically hitting its flop capabilities, with 25% of them unavailable.
Another solution would be just to add an emulation layer to the shader cores, this is basically hardware emulation, compatibility given Nvidia's architecture compatibility, is likely to be very high, but emulation is rarely perfect, and there could be games that have graphical errors or don't run without a patch.
I just wanted to give some ideas, you don't need to shove a whole Maxwell GPU in Dane to get backwards compatibility, this is not the 90s, these are programmable shaders that can manage a lot more than old fixed function hardware, and the key here is Nvidia knows their architectures and what would be required to make a seemless solution for it.
This sort of solution would only need to be applied to 4SM, for the 256 Maxwell shaders. Thing about Ampere is that it has more fp32 shaders than it can use at one time, this is why Turing is so much faster per flop, because theoretical flops are rarely achieved in Ampere, where as Turing has half the fp32 shaders per SM.
Given this type of solution, even 6SM with 256 shaders locked away under Maxwell compatibility (which we don't know if they would be unable to be used). would result in 1.5TFLOPs with efficiency closer to Turing, perhaps even better per flop performance. Now this would be a slight downgrade to having all the shaders be Ampere, but it could be a solution to Backwards compatibility.
If this is an 8SM part, you wouldn't be able to run the GPU at 1.5GHz normally without a very high power envelope, this would be 3TFLOPs btw, but with this solution where 4SM only have half the shaders available, it would be 2.3TFLOPs Ampere, now you could likely run at 1.5GHz, because 256 of the 1024 shaders would never have a load, and would give you similar performance to 3TFLOPs, because Ampere would be closer to theoretically hitting its flop capabilities, with 25% of them unavailable.
Another solution would be just to add an emulation layer to the shader cores, this is basically hardware emulation, compatibility given Nvidia's architecture compatibility, is likely to be very high, but emulation is rarely perfect, and there could be games that have graphical errors or don't run without a patch.
I just wanted to give some ideas, you don't need to shove a whole Maxwell GPU in Dane to get backwards compatibility, this is not the 90s, these are programmable shaders that can manage a lot more than old fixed function hardware, and the key here is Nvidia knows their architectures and what would be required to make a seemless solution for it.
Z0m3le
Rattata
Nate isn't saying that. He believes that Nintendo and Nvidia will 100% solve the issue, just that he isn't technically inclined to understand the situation well.
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The notion that Nate is spreading "no BC" is wrong.
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I think that's what Dark Cloud is saying.
Dark Cloud
Moblin
That’s what I’m saying. I’m seeing “Nate said no BC” in too many places and he never said that.
Supreme Overlord
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
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In my mind, backwards compatability would have been integral to the Switch plan, along with upgrades on the same game cartridge when used in the later system, so long as they were programmed in.
... that might just be a result of sketches I made before the Switch was actually revealed, cementing the idea in my head.
But the backwards compatability makes sense. It means games released later for OG Switch also have Later Console users as part of the viable target. And keeping the games to this one unit type, rather than separately selling upgrades, also consolidates production lines.
It could be interesting to see how the compatability is achieved.
Maybe idioms get the best of you sometimes, but that happens to us all. You have nothing to apologize about.
... that might just be a result of sketches I made before the Switch was actually revealed, cementing the idea in my head.
But the backwards compatability makes sense. It means games released later for OG Switch also have Later Console users as part of the viable target. And keeping the games to this one unit type, rather than separately selling upgrades, also consolidates production lines.
It could be interesting to see how the compatability is achieved.
I think that was the point. The spread is annoying because it's misinformation.
Hi, Teal'c! I'll just have you know your English is fine.I think BC is almost a given since the new model should in theory expand the current Switch family. Am I wrong or did Nintendo talk about a "stretched generation" compared to the past?
p.s. Hi everyone I'm new
p.p.s. sorry for the bad English
Maybe idioms get the best of you sometimes, but that happens to us all. You have nothing to apologize about.
Klax0nKlax0ff
Rattata
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Thanks for this explanation. Bear with me being technically illiterate. Would adding the compatibility for Maxwell increase the cost and efficiency of producing Dane SoCs? The assumption is it’ll be pretty “off-the-shelf”, right? Also, in the scenario you outlined, would Maxwell games be able to take any advantage of better hardware or would it be more like reproducing the same performance and resolution as the originals? I think the dream was that OG Switch games would be BC with better hardware with the opportunity to run better out of the gate. But I guess those would all need to be patched to run natively on Dane?Adding Maxwell compatibility could possibly be achieved by modifying the fp32 blocks in the SM to add full Maxwell compatibility.
This sort of solution would only need to be applied to 4SM, for the 256 Maxwell shaders. Thing about Ampere is that it has more fp32 shaders than it can use at one time, this is why Turing is so much faster per flop, because theoretical flops are rarely achieved in Ampere, where as Turing has half the fp32 shaders per SM.
Given this type of solution, even 6SM with 256 shaders locked away under Maxwell compatibility (which we don't know if they would be unable to be used). would result in 1.5TFLOPs with efficiency closer to Turing, perhaps even better per flop performance. Now this would be a slight downgrade to having all the shaders be Ampere, but it could be a solution to Backwards compatibility.
If this is an 8SM part, you wouldn't be able to run the GPU at 1.5GHz normally without a very high power envelope, this would be 3TFLOPs btw, but with this solution where 4SM only have half the shaders available, it would be 2.3TFLOPs Ampere, now you could likely run at 1.5GHz, because 256 of the 1024 shaders would never have a load, and would give you similar performance to 3TFLOPs, because Ampere would be closer to theoretically hitting its flop capabilities, with 25% of them unavailable.
Another solution would be just to add an emulation layer to the shader cores, this is basically hardware emulation, compatibility given Nvidia's architecture compatibility, is likely to be very high, but emulation is rarely perfect, and there could be games that have graphical errors or don't run without a patch.
I just wanted to give some ideas, you don't need to shove a whole Maxwell GPU in Dane to get backwards compatibility, this is not the 90s, these are programmable shaders that can manage a lot more than old fixed function hardware, and the key here is Nvidia knows their architectures and what would be required to make a seemless solution for it.
Z0m3le
Rattata
It frustrates him too, because he is saying the opposite. I'm just making sure that the thread understands that this problem is blown up into something it isn't. I wish MVG had mentioned virtual solutions like we saw with the PS3 or Xbox, with Nvidia behind this problem and solution, it should be fully solved without the need to literally put TX1 on the motherboard.
If they added Maxwell shaders or Maxwell compatible shaders to the SM like I mention? Any increase in clock would allow that clock to increase performance just like an overclocked Switch. To achieve docked performance, it would only need to run at 768MHz, but this is not a limitation of Dane, and could add a higher clock and manage to max out dynamic resolution games as well as locked max frame rates as well. Dane is a custom SoC, though it might end up being used outside of Nintendo's hardware, it is being designed for Nintendo first.
BlackTangMaster
Rattata
The emulation layer is the futur proof solution. Especially at the release of the Switch 3 that will face the same problem having to emulate the Switch and Switch 2 GPU hardware.
Z0m3le
Rattata
Switch 2 just needs to not put the driver in the game and precompile shaders, but yes it could end up being the case where 256 Maxwell shaders need to be present in a Switch 3 as well with this solution, though at 3nm, this is likely not really much of a problem.
I believed that this press release from Zhiji/IM Motors is sanctioned by Nvidia.
- It's a press release by an auto company but it mentions no car.
- They are somehow allowed to share never-before-seen photos of Orin X, while putting their logo on top.
- It includes the exclusive info of 7nm process.
- For no reason at all, it loudly dunks on Tesla and Mobileye, Nvidia's two main rivals in autonomous driving.
Dark Cloud
Moblin
If Nintendo treats this like a true successor then we will know sooner than later compared to a Switch upgrade. It’ll be revealed at least 5 months before launch.
BlackTangMaster
Rattata
Having precompiled shaders may be necessary in order to maximize the performance of the small TX1 GPU. That said, I have seen several YouTube videos showing the emulation of switch games running on snapdragon phones and it seems that games that suffer the most from running via emulation are heavily optimized games such as BOTW as opposed to 3rd party multiplatform games that tend to suffer less from running in an emulated environment. If true, that would mean that Nintendo will only have to recompile a few selected games less closer to the metal for the Switch 2 hardware.
This. Orin X may actually be the 7 nm version of the original 8 nm Orin chip that had been taped out in march 2020.
lemonfresh
Boo
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But Nintendo said they had no plans for a successor reveal any time soon in their latest press release
Dark Cloud
Moblin
gigglesBut Nintendo said they had no plans for a successor reveal any time soon in their latest press release