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

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RedSpring said:
I still think that if they do not stick with SD card, Nintendo will go with UFS. I believe there is already 2 lanes for UFS on the Orin board. It would be perfect if it was carried over the T239. One for internal storage and one for external. They probably using it for internal so it is simple to support it for external. It is designed to be energy efficient and thus suit the Switch perfectly unlike CFe and SDe which consume too much power at their rated speed. If they want backward compatibility, dual SD/UFS readers already exist though I imagined it will have to be updated to support the new standard.

Even if there haven't been recent development on the technology, 1.2gb/s is plenty. Especially since they will have to run CFe at a much lower speed to fit the power requirement so real world speed comparison will be much closer. And like CFe, it's essentially a plastic case around a much more actively developed standard. It would be simple to create a new card standard based on the current 4.0 standard for internal UFS.

No market share is a huge problem but Nintendo will have to kickstart the market either way whether they will be 100% or 90% of the market. It wouldn't be the first time either since I believed they were the biggest one to support SD card in the beginning. I don't know how many manufacturers there are for UFS but it's going by the size of the mobile phone market, there are plenty capable of adding a new product line.

Size is a big consideration for Nintendo. Putting in a CFe reader is basically another cartridge slot inside the Switch and there isn't any room for that. Viewing the internal, there's no comparison between the space for the microSD and the cartridge slot. Not to mentioned that CFe Type A is even bigger than a cartridge. Reports are hinting at a bigger Switch but not so much bigger that it will be an easy design. PSP did it by moving the reader away from the cramp center and into the control area. Joy Con are already cramp and detachable so that wouldn't work here. UFS on the other hand are already microSD sized as standard.

Also, Nintendo seems pretty averse to paying a license fee. They are a member of the SD card association so they won't have to pay a license for SDe but that standard have multiple problems. I don't know how much it cost to support CFe but I can imagine it being a deterrent for Nintendo. UFS is an open standard so there would be no license I believed.
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Very sound arguments. There’s one major obstacle to push the UFS Card format though: The UFS Card ecosystem seems to be defunct. Even though Nintendo may have the volume to reduce the price per card, the investment required to revive the ecosystem can be enormous. On the other hand, as Thraktor stated, the CFExpress ecosystem is the most robust among the high-speed removable media, therefore it might be easier for Nintendo (and its manufacturing partner) to drive down the costs.
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That said, it seems to me that it’d be much simpler for Nintendo to forgo all that R&D and manufacturing commitment, and just equip the NG model with a large enough internal storage. That may also foster the side effect of encouraging more digital downloads.
 
My thinking might be a bit out of line, but if bandwidth is the limiting factor, would lowering the amount of memory (yes I know the issue in this logic I will get to it) not resolve the practical load on that bandwidth? In other words, if you have a theoretical system with the memory of a PS5 and half its bandwidth, and another with half the memory and bandwidth of a PS5, if you were to properly scale your memory usage to the lower amount would you not be in practice pushing the bandwidth as much as if you a PS5's memory and bandwidth.

Of course the issue with that logic being, if a developer wants to use 12 GB of memory, they are going to do it, that just means swapping data in and out of memory more frequently, and suddenly now you've increased your memory load compared to when you have 12GB of memory with the same bandwidth. But also, at that point, that just means developing around the memory available to your properly need to use lower quality assets, which might end up having to happen to some degree anyways. So its an issue between latency in loading and texture quality, and I dont think there's an easy solution to both of those. But I might be horribly naive in my thinking here.
 
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ghostboltz said:
Nate is the slayer of dreams
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I'm interested to hear what he thinks is inside the damn thing. If it was able to play the Matrix demo in a way that was "comparable" to next gen systems it can't be that much different than what we think, right? Hopefully we can only go up...
 
RedSpring said:
I still think that if they do not stick with SD card, Nintendo will go with UFS. I believe there is already 2 lanes for UFS on the Orin board. It would be perfect if it was carried over the T239. One for internal storage and one for external. They probably using it for internal so it is simple to support it for external. It is designed to be energy efficient and thus suit the Switch perfectly unlike CFe and SDe which consume too much power at their rated speed. If they want backward compatibility, dual SD/UFS readers already exist though I imagined it will have to be updated to support the new standard.

Even if there haven't been recent development on the technology, 1.2gb/s is plenty. Especially since they will have to run CFe at a much lower speed to fit the power requirement so real world speed comparison will be much closer. And like CFe, it's essentially a plastic case around a much more actively developed standard. It would be simple to create a new card standard based on the current 4.0 standard for internal UFS.

No market share is a huge problem but Nintendo will have to kickstart the market either way whether they will be 100% or 90% of the market. It wouldn't be the first time either since I believed they were the biggest one to support SD card in the beginning. I don't know how many manufacturers there are for UFS but it's going by the size of the mobile phone market, there are plenty capable of adding a new product line.

Size is a big consideration for Nintendo. Putting in a CFe reader is basically another cartridge slot inside the Switch and there isn't any room for that. Viewing the internal, there's no comparison between the space for the microSD and the cartridge slot. Not to mentioned that CFe Type A is even bigger than a cartridge. Reports are hinting at a bigger Switch but not so much bigger that it will be an easy design. PSP did it by moving the reader away from the cramp center and into the control area. Joy Con are already cramp and detachable so that wouldn't work here. UFS on the other hand are already microSD sized as standard.

Also, Nintendo seems pretty averse to paying a license fee. They are a member of the SD card association so they won't have to pay a license for SDe but that standard have multiple problems. I don't know how much it cost to support CFe but I can imagine it being a deterrent for Nintendo. UFS is an open standard so there would be no license I believed.
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UFS for removable storage is still fairly niche, when I search amazon I only get a single legit result and a bunch of microsd cards. It's likely more will appear on the market if NG Switch supports it, but Nintendo would have to partner with others to make it more widespread for launch.

Another possibility is supporting SD/microSD but just using it for backup and restore of games, though you would want a decent bit of in-built storage for this.
 
carbvan said:
this would be the same as other reports. nate said he has heard conflicting info.
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My guess is Nintendo has been experimenting with different amounts of ram available based on how the OS development is going. I don't think we're getting less than 12GB, but the question is how much is available to devs. Could be 10GB, could be 11.xGB
 
ILikeFeet said:
My guess is Nintendo has been experimenting with different amounts of ram available based on how the OS development is going. I don't think we're getting less than 12GB, but the question is how much is available to devs. Could be 10GB, could be 11.xGB
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would that be conflicting info tho? that's still 12 gigs in the system, just necrolipe never specified how it'd divided up.
 
c'mon nate don't make us cry
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ILikeFeet said:
My guess is Nintendo has been experimenting with different amounts of ram available based on how the OS development is going. I don't think we're getting less than 12GB, but the question is how much is available to devs. Could be 10GB, could be 11.xGB
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This is reasonable. 16 would be super impressive, but 12 with a couple GBs set aside for the OS sounds more realistic. Still an impressive jump, if it turns out to be the case.
 
GPKs3 said:
This is reasonable. 16 would be super impressive, but 12 with a couple GBs set aside for the OS sounds more realistic. Still an impressive jump, if it turns out to be the case.
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12GB for Retail despite OS would still be at least 2GB more than Series S's Dev-Addressabe RAM. If not 3 as I don't think Nintendo would make the OS that much bigger.
 
GigaUltraMoon said:
Worst-case scenario, 8GB would still be acceptable for a Nintendo handheld wouldn't it?
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It would be acceptable for Nintendo and no one else I'd assume. We'd get bigger Nintendo games and competent PS4 and Xbox One ports, but I think we'd only see rare occurrences of current gen games getting ported to it, similar to as we do now.
 
GigaUltraMoon said:
Worst-case scenario, 8GB would still be acceptable for a Nintendo handheld wouldn't it?
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probably not. I thin publishers would want to spend as little money on porting as possible so easing the process with more memory than a Series S (which is already giving devs headaches) would go a long way
 
Meelow said:
So why are people saying 8gb vs 12gb vs 16gb? I think 12GB is the safety net, 8GB seems low and 16GB seems on the high end.
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Because Nate has heard conflicting reports about the memory of the system. Which means it probably isn't 12. And based on Nintendo's history since the Wii, it probably ain't 16.
 
12 GB is more future proof.

8 GB was in the PS4 / PS4 Pro so it'd be fine for last-gen games. But if Nintendo is customizing the chipset for their own ends to make current-gen ports more possible, then I would hope this mindset extends to the RAM.
 
Instead of panicking because the Switch 2 will have 8GB (absolutely no leaker/insider has said this yet), maybe we should wait for Nate's video tomorrow. Saying he heard "conflicting reports" doesn't immediately mean 12GB is not happening or that suddenly we should go to the worst case scenario...
 
From the fantastic summary on the Switch 2 by oldpuck et al. :

Notebookcheck provides a handy tool for querying a large data set of shipped phones and laptops. We can see that 4GB 64-bit LPDDR5 memory modules don't seem to have shipped. Unless Nintendo chooses to purchase a custom RAM solution, 12GB would actually be cheaper than 8GB.
Click to expand...

Everything about the ol' Switch 2

A number of Switch 2 technical leaks have emerged over the last few years, several of which have missed mainstream discussion. The following is a fairly complete technical summary of that information. We'll cover The Context leading up to these discoveries, The Linux Finds that confirm many...
telegra.ph telegra.ph
 
0
fwd-bwd said:
Very sound arguments. There’s one major obstacle to push the UFS Card format though: The UFS Card ecosystem seems to be defunct. Even though Nintendo may have the volume to reduce the price per card, the investment required to revive the ecosystem can be enormous. On the other hand, as Thraktor stated, the CFExpress ecosystem is the most robust among the high-speed removable media, therefore it might be easier for Nintendo (and its manufacturing partner) to drive down the costs.
* Hidden text: cannot be quoted. *

That said, it seems to me that it’d be much simpler for Nintendo to forgo all that R&D and manufacturing commitment, and just equip the NG model with a large enough internal storage. That may also foster the side effect of encouraging more digital downloads.
Click to expand...

Agreed. If I was to bet on one, I would said large (>256gb) internal storage with SD as non bootable game storage. Good solution for the reader problem. I have no experience in market launch so I don't know how hard it is to relaunch a product. I can't imagine it's much harder than increasing the existing market at least 10 fold though. I don't see Nintendo singlehandedly propping up a format that they will have to pay a license fee on though I guess they can always join the association.

FireGrey said:
UFS for removable storage is still fairly niche, when I search amazon I only get a single legit result and a bunch of microsd cards. It's likely more will appear on the market if NG Switch supports it, but Nintendo would have to partner with others to make it more widespread for launch.

Another possibility is supporting SD/microSD but just using it for backup and restore of games, though you would want a decent bit of in-built storage for this.
Click to expand...

microSD for backup is probably the plan. Any other options have single digit result on Amazon except for CFe. Even with CFe, Nintendo will need more partners along with asking the existing manufacturers to ramp up production to meet production needs.
 
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image.png

Everything about the ol' Switch 2

A number of Switch 2 technical leaks have emerged over the last few years, several of which have missed mainstream discussion. The following is a fairly complete technical summary of that information. We'll cover The Context leading up to these discoveries, The Linux Finds that confirm many...
telegra.ph telegra.ph
 
carbvan said:
Because Nate has heard conflicting reports about the memory of the system. Which means it probably isn't 12. And based on Nintendo's history since the Wii, it probably ain't 16.
Click to expand...

True but conflicting reports could also mean 16GB. Nate is usually very careful with his words. If he straight up heard 8GB he probably wouldn't have replied to that post and would have just waited until tomorrow to say anything, he knows how we formboards go. Especially when it comes to Nintendo systems.
 
brutaka3 said:
Instead of panicking because the Switch 2 will have 8GB (absolutely no leaker/insider has said this yet), maybe we should wait for Nate's video tomorrow. Saying he heard "conflicting reports" doesn't immediately mean 12GB is not happening or that suddenly we should go to the worst case scenario...
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This is exactly what it means. Otherwise, there is no drama. But seriously, you're right. However I don't think I'm jumping to the worst case scenario for the sake of being a doomer. I'll be pleasantly surprised if I turn out to be wrong but I don't see how hearing conflicting reports about the memory when everyone settled on 12GB means it could be 12GB, it wouldn't be conflicting info then. Hopefully my definition of conflicting is just way off.
 
Beansy said:
image.png

Everything about the ol' Switch 2

A number of Switch 2 technical leaks have emerged over the last few years, several of which have missed mainstream discussion. The following is a fairly complete technical summary of that information. We'll cover The Context leading up to these discoveries, The Linux Finds that confirm many...
telegra.ph telegra.ph
Click to expand...
So they exist, but have not actually been purchased/spun up.

Ironic case where Nintendo "Because Nintnedo"-ing may actually be the more expensive route XD
 
Optimist perspective: nate has probably read a lot of the RAM doom posts here and I don't think he has said anything negative about the recent info he recieved. It's all been positive. Probably nothing to worry about!

Surely it isn't 8GB (I'm on the brink of collapse)
 
eye0h said:
Optimist perspective: nate has probably read a lot of the RAM doom posts here and I don't think he has said anything negative about the recent info he recieved. It's all been positive. Probably nothing to worry about!

Surely it isn't 8GB (I'm on the brink of collapse)
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At this point I just want some distinction between the devkits and the retail configurations... Probably too much to ask for currently, but that should clean out most of the confusion.
 
y'know I'm pretty detached from insider culture at this point, especially in the hardware sphere. and I don't really know or understand nathan drake.

despite all that, I somehow feel very confident that if he had heard it was 8GB he would've sounded the alarm by now
 
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