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StarTopic Future Nintendo Hardware & Technology Speculation & Discussion |ST| (Read the staff posts before commenting!)

I think Nintendo having some really great casual piece of software or feature at launch that is exclusive will really help to make this system feel next-gen to the more casual player who is fine with the current switch specs. I just don't know what that could be besides a VR/AR feature, but that might make the system to expensive or mess with their profit margins, so they may wait until the switch revision to introduce those features.

I also think Nintendo has a great opportunity to innovate from an OS and community feature standpoint, especially since nobody would be expecting it considering how barebones the current switch online is. The rumored specs would give them a lot room to create some cool Nintendo like features. They tried to do some cool stuff with Miiverse, and the Tv functionality, but they tried it on the wrong system and didn't implement it well enough. Maybe they can bring streetpass back or something cool and unique from a connectivity standpoint. Didn't Nintendo have a patent that allowed user to get paid by others users for borrowing power or using their connection? It had a three-letter name iirc
 
If GTA V didn’t make it to Switch due to NSO limitations (according to Nate), I don’t see GTA VI making the jump either, even if Drake could theoretically handle a Series S-based port
 
Those older consoles weren’t “kneecapped” because they were already on a decline in terms of hardware sales. They were by all means slowing down. Nintendo announced the 3DS almost a year in advance and they also slashed DS prices in the fall.

...

Neither of those kind of situations are playing out right now with the Switch. It’s still tremendously successful and is poised to have another monster holiday.
The Switch hardware situation appears to be very close to the DS, but not quite as good. Both hardwares peaked at quarter 17. Five quarters later Switch is down about 24% while DS was down 13%. That same quarter 3DS was announced, and the rest of DS's entire lifetime (25.13m) was less than the previous year had been (27.11m).
 
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If GTA V didn’t make it to Switch due to NSO limitations (according to Nate), I don’t see GTA VI making the jump either, even if Drake could theoretically handle a Series S-based port
To be fair, GTA V ports from after 2015 would only exist to milk the online. The first years of GTA VI would be about hyping up the story mode part.
 
Do the people that downplay third party support and say it will never improve have Stockholm syndrome? Like maybe they’ve been so used to the tech gap, “withered technology”, and lacking traditional AAA third party software, that the idea of better or more support scares them?

It’s okay. Things are different now. You can dream of a better third party landscape. Have some faith and optimism.
 
I imagine if you’re doing most/all of your playing on the go then the Lite is a more appealing buy. It’s not totally surprising it would be overrepresented in the wild.

But that’s also why anecdotal data is anecdotal!
Anecdotally speaking, I can vouch that they are in fact anecdotal data!
But it is a reflection!... kinda. Sorta. Close.
Take the 1/4 being non-Lites, change non-Lites to Lites and we're close to the sales ratio. Just gotta lower that 1/4 to a tad below 1/5...
Sooo close to 'wow, that anecdote is the exact opposite of the sales'.
This is actually perfect. Let’s assume they are OLED models, which is the direct upgrade at the moment to the Lite models.


It really is the exact opposite lol


On another note, if I did the math right, (5nm) 7 A78 @ ~2.1GHz should consume about 3W? With the OS core it would all be less than 3.3W I think?

Now imagine this with a slightly denser battery…. It could be possible to squeeze it.

I’m dreaming I know….



It’s weird, I was looking at the comparison charts, and it seems to scale weirdly. If at 2.6 GHz for the cortex A77 it consumes 1 W. The cortex A78 on the otherhand at 3GHz consumes 1 W. However, on the other comparison, they have the A77 at 2.3 GHz and that is twice the energy consumption that the a A78 at 2.1GHz has.

Now of course this factors in the different nodes, but if 2.6GHz is 1W, theoretically 2.3GHz is 0.88W

And if the A78 @ 2.1GHz consumes roughly half of that, so ~0.4W at that clock speed, it seems like there’s a scaling factor at play and causes the A78 to really shoot up the closer it gets to the 3GHz line.

Now I don’t think that they’ll do 3GHz or close to that, and maybe I’m reading the chart wrong, but it seems like 2.1GHz is less than half a watt.


Arm-Cortex-A78-performance-gains.jpg.webp



Just trying to extrapolate from this that is, I’m ready to accept being very wrong about it.

But who knows?
 
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To everyone who think ToTK will look better on Drake. Yes, it will. Will it look substantionaly better than on the base Switch? No. This game was not build with Drake in mind. And I still don't think it's launching date and date with it.
 
To everyone who think ToTK will look better on Drake. Yes, it will. Will it look substantionaly better than on the base Switch? No. This game was not build with Drake in mind. And I still don't think it's launching date and date with it.

I completely disagree with this. If dev kits have been out to 3rd parties for quite awhile now, imagine how long internal Nintendo Studios have been working with the expected specs? For sure, those numbers are probably moving targets, and technically you'd be correct to say TotK wasn't built ground up for Drake... HOWEVER I almost guarantee Nintendo's probably highest profile release in the launch window of their new hardware will take as much advantage of said hardware as they have time to squeeze in. It's why I believe they delayed it in the first place!


On another note, I went back to looking at designing simple Nintendo Switch 2 logos... I rather like this take:

switch2design.png


Repeating the rounded corner box feels nice to me. Oh and I can't wait to see something like this show up on a game box:

2exclu.png
 
If GTA V didn’t make it to Switch due to NSO limitations (according to Nate), I don’t see GTA VI making the jump either, even if Drake could theoretically handle a Series S-based port
it's most likely GTAO that prevented GTA5 from making the jump. and I'm not sure if it's NSO given all the other online games that hit the system unless Nate heard specifically it was the online service. to that, I'd assume it's a problem on Rockstar's end.

besides, they split the two components, so the online service has no bearing on the single player
 
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On another note, I went back to looking at designing simple Nintendo Switch 2 logos... I rather like this take:

switch2design.png


Repeating the rounded corner box feels nice to me. Oh and I can't wait to see something like this show up on a game box:

2exclu.png
Personally, I was thinking that maybe Nintendo could use the Joy-Cons to denote "II" if Nintendo were to call new hardware the "Nintendo Switch II".
 
Personally, I was thinking that maybe Nintendo could use the Joy-Cons to denote "II" if Nintendo were to call new hardware the "Nintendo Switch II".
They're already so strongly associated with the Switch brand in general that it seems like that might lead to confusion.
 
I completely disagree with this. If dev kits have been out to 3rd parties for quite awhile now, imagine how long internal Nintendo Studios have been working with the expected specs? For sure, those numbers are probably moving targets, and technically you'd be correct to say TotK wasn't built ground up for Drake... HOWEVER I almost guarantee Nintendo's probably highest profile release in the launch window of their new hardware will take as much advantage of said hardware as they have time to squeeze in. It's why I believe they delayed it in the first place!


On another note, I went back to looking at designing simple Nintendo Switch 2 logos... I rather like this take:

switch2design.png


Repeating the rounded corner box feels nice to me. Oh and I can't wait to see something like this show up on a game box:

2exclu.png
Niiiiccccceeeee
 
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Simplified summary of the news/rumours as of 22 September 2022
updated December 5 2022

Hey OldPuck, it's me again.
Oh hey, Anonymous Lurker, how is it going?

I noticed the thread got pinned, and thought I'd take a peek.
There is a lot of information in the OP if you wanna catch up.

Oh, I can't do that. There is just... so much info. Also, I'm not super technical, so even if I did read all of it, it would go over my head. Could you just tell me what we know.
Um... I honestly probably can't do that.

So you don't actually know anything?!?
We know more about this console than maybe any other unreleased console, ever.

Why can't you tell me anything then?
Imagine that you had the diagrams for a brand new car engine. You take them to an engineer, and excitedly ask questions about the car - how fast will it go? "Well, it depends on what sort of chasis they use..." what's the MPG like? "well, depends on how aerodynamic the body is and if they rate it for higher or lower RPMs" Don't you even know what the stereo system will be like??? "uh, absolutely not..."

It's the same here. We know a lot about the chip that the Next Switch will use, but there are also a lot of blanks. And we have good guesses for those blanks! But you don't care about that, you care about the games right?

Yeah, basically.
And a lot of smart people have made a lot of smart discoveries about the thing, but if I start saying specifics, I guarantee less than 1/3 of the regulars will agree with my final conclusions. At least 1 thing will be controversial. And that's why there is still a thread going even when there isn't new info.

It's like trying to solve a crossword puzzle when some of the clues are missing or blurry. We've actually filled a lot of it in, but the rest are reasonable guesses, or guesses based on guesses, or guesses based on those. It gets real tenuous after a while.

Okay but can't you tell me anything?
I'll tell you what I'll do. I'm going to compile the current as ofstate of affairs below. I'm going to summarize the best guesses, and I'm going to organize it from stuff we're 90% confident in all the way to "Guesses upon guesses upon guesses".

But I'm going to hide it all, because there has been a trend of disreputable people making bad-faith content out of the speculation here, and that causes lots of problems. I'm also going to hide chunks behind spoiler tags. I'm also going to update things here in the inevitable backlash as my fellow thread-dwellers correct me, but I'm not going to update this post as new data comes in.

Update: I said I wouldn't update this, but right after writing it, the Linux drops came out. In December, @JoshuaJSlone convinced me to make the post public, so I've brought it all up to date as best I can.

Got it?

Got it.

Earlier this year, Nvidia was hacked. They confirmed the hack was legit, and contained in the hack was the source code for what is essentially the graphics driver for a new Nintendo console, which tells us some stuff about the nature of the hardware in pretty clear terms. It's possible that the design has evolved since the hack, but unlikely it has changed considerably just due to the nature of chip development, and the state of the driver.

The new chip is codename "Drake" or T239. It uses the Ampere architecture the same as in Nvidia's RTX 30 series cards. It supports Ray Tracing and DLSS 2.0. It has 12 streaming multiprocessors.

Just a few days ago, Nvidia pushed a Linux kernel update that included references to T239, telling us that it has an octo-core CPU and is related to, but different from, Orin which is Nvidia's chip for Self Driving Cars, and in the same Tegra line as the TX1 chip that the current Switch uses.

Later, in progress Linux code for Drake was discovered online. Analysis (by me) confirmed that the driver architecture is very similar to Orin, with the self driving car elements removed. @Thraktor found Drake added a new feature Orin doesn't have - a File Decompression Engine for video games, likely to decompress textures directly to memory, a performance tool that other consoles have used off and on.

NVN means Nvidia/Nintendo, and is the name of the Switch API. NVN2 is definitely for Nintendo. Drake is a chip that doesn't have another place in Nvidia's product line, is referenced in the NVN2 code, and is clearly built for a game console. If you want to dive further into that look at these posts

NVN/NVN2 Summaries
T239 Timeline

Okay, here is the deal. We basically know how big the design is and how modern the design is, but we don't know how fast the clock speeds will be. Nintendo is going to be limited by battery life and heat in a way that other console makers aren't, and this thread has broad opinions on how far they can and will push it.

BUT - if we just plug in the Original Switch clock speeds into this design, you get something that looks a lot like an Xbox One but with ray tracing and DLSS.

This level of power will make games like The Witcher III - the "impossible ports" of the current Switch era - into "straightforward ports."

DLSS lets those games get to 4k, like the Pro consoles of the last gen, with a lot less power.

RT opens up new options for cross-gen ports, and future "impossible" ports.

First party games have a bigger bump than from Wii U to Switch.

Also:
this is only on GPU level. The CPU/Memory situation is very similar - we know the outline, but the details are unset, everything points to a sort of "8th gen plus" level of performance.

8 CPUs. The current Switch is 4 CPUs. The Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X, the Playstation 4 and Playstation 5 all have 8 CPUs.

The last gen Xbox/Playstation CPU was notoriously weak. The current Switch CPU is a Cortex A57, which already performs similarly to the Jaguar CPUs in the Xbox One and the Playstation 4 - it just has half as many. Even if Nintendo doesn't raise the clock speed, 8 CPUs would all but guarantee that the CPU performance of Drake would outrun the last gen.

It's a way NVidia organizes the various bits and bobs in the GPU. For comparison, AMD uses a similar structure but calls them "compute units." The Xbox One had 12 of these, same as Drake. But Drake is using Ampere, a much more modern architecture than the early RDNA version on the last gen consoles.

Imagine a GPU's power being like a river. The amount of water that a river can move is based on how big it is and how fast the water moves. 12 SMs tells us how big the GPU is, but the clock speeds tell us how fast. And right now, clock speeds are just guesses..

Yes way, but don't get crazy with it. Remember what I said about clock speeds? The RT cores in Ampere are significantly better than the ones in PS5/Xbox Series consoles, but are going to run much slower, just for battery life/heat reasons. Nintendo is probably going to run the GPU clock at speeds beneath any other Ampere graphics card on the market, at least in handheld mode.

This makes it really hard to know what it can do, and it means that Ray Tracing based ports will likely have to "cut down" the ray tracing to fit. BUT - they won't need to build a whole new lighting solution from scratch. This is one of the reasons we say that "new impossible ports will be possible."

Higher resolution = higher detail, but more pixels to draw, so slower
Lower resolution = lower detail, fewer pixels to draw, better frame rates.

Temporal reconstruction is a technique that lets you break this relationship, so that you can get most of the detail of high resolution, with most of the frame rate of lower resolution.

Most modern AAA games use a form of temporal reconstruction, DLSS is a specialized version that uses AI techniques and is hardware accelerated for quality and speed that generally outperforms other solutions.

If you have heard of "checkerboard rendering" from Playstation 4 Pro, that is temporal reconstruction. Checkerboarding makes a 4k image out of 2k pixels. DLSS can make a 4k image that looks as good or better out of just 1k pixels. The Pro consoles last gen needed a huge amount of excess power just to get to 2k, and then use checkerboard rendering to get to 4k. DLSS gets you that Pro console experience with a lot less GPU power.

Update:
Nvidia has since announced DLSS 3.0, which uses upgraded hardware that isn't in Ampere thus likely not in Drake. There is no indication that DLSS 3.0 will be possible on Drake. DLSS 3.0 isn't designed for 30-60fps games, and because of that, is probably not a great fit for Nintendo anyway.

This is the stuff that journalists with good track records say. Plans can shift, journalist's sources can have incomplete pictures, but these are things stated from folks who have a record and aren't making stuff up, and that at least multiple sources have said.

It's a Switch - in other words this is not a new TV only console, or a VR headset or anything like that, but a device that Switches, and plays Switch games. It is slated for release in the first half of 2023. It will have at least one exclusive.

We're a bunch of forum goers and internet randos, so trust is maybe a little out of the question ;)

The release date issue has been thrashed to death and summarizing it here would double the length of this already gigantic post. Short version: For over a year now we've known that 3rd parties were expecting a release sometime in the H2 2022 - H1 2023. Some optimists consistently want to see it in the earliest possible part of that window, while more aggressive pessimists have disbelieved much of what you're already reading here. That causes a lot of "boom and bust" cycles on the release date.

No one knows. It's definitely what you would expect from a successor in terms of an internal design, but how Nintendo will position it, how 3rd parties will respond, and how long OG Switch support will continue are all open questions.

Lots of folks have theories many of them well supported. But no one knows, and this is one of the many things the thread discusses.

This thread knows a lot about silicon and game dev, and has done a lot of research. If you make some reasonable assumptions, you can make some decent guesses, but they are just that, guesses.

The base assumptions here are this device basically shares the current Switch's form factor. Nintendo will take advantage of the mobile market and purchase off the shelf components where reasonable to do so, and Drake, the new SOC, shares some architectural similarities to Orin, NVidia's platform for self-driving cars.

8MB of RAM with good throughput are reasonable baselines.

Nintendo will likely use LPDDR5 RAM, as that's pretty standard for mobile hardware manufactured now, and matches the RAM in Orin. Nintendo will likely use off the shelf memory, because with the number of mobile devices out there, Nintendo can get high quality RAM for cheap. The NVN2 hack doesn't list the amount of memory, but it does imply a memory bus width of 128 bits - half of Orin's.

Given all this, the minimum RAM is 8GB, twice the current amount in the Switch. Nintendo doesn't skimp on RAM, and the market actually makes 12GB a potentially cheaper alternative, though it would eat more power/space and generate more heat. As such 12GB has sort of become the standard assumption.

TL;DR: Expect clocks to stay the same, or to have a modest bump, and most of the new power to come from the large number of SMs and cores

We can look to Orin for reasonable Max and Minimum GPU clock speeds. Orin doesn't go below 420Mhz in its most power saving mode, that is likely where Ampere's efficiency bottoms out. And even in Max power mode, the GPU clock doesn't go past 1.3Ghz, but requires active cooling that might be unreasonable for the Switch even in docked mode.

@Look over there has determined that Drake might be limited by memory bandwidth if clocks go past 1GHz. @Thraktor sees that even at the 420Mhz clock, the GPU eats more power than the OG Switch, meaning Nintendo will need to find savings elsewhere to keep battery life up.

The current Switch is 768Mhz in docked mode, 300Mhz by default in handheld mode, but many games use a 460Mhz mode in handheld. 420Mhz would be the bottom of the range, 460Mhz would be enough for backwards compatibility in handheld, unless Nintendo starts to get truly desperate on the battery life front.

DLSS creates some advantages for games to have very close to 2x GPU in docked mode. So 840-920Mhz seems like a reasonable target, assuming heat isn't a problem.

FLOPS are not a great measure of GPU power when it comes to games. But.

CUDA cores do 2 FLOPs a cycle, 12SMs=1536 CUDA cores, FLOPS=2*1536*Clockspeed

Drake at current Switch clocks = 2*1536*(768 or 460) = 2.3 TFLOPS docked, 1.4 TFLOPS handheld.

8 powerful CPU cores, running at 1-1.25 Ghz

The Linux driver updates for Drake say that it runs 8 ARM cores in 1 cluster. There are only a three CPUs that can do that.

A715, which is very new, and doesn't offer 32 bit support, which Switch probably needs.
A710, which is also fairly new, and doesn't have great power/performance characteristics
A78C, which is a variant of the same cores in Orin, and is designed specifically for gaming. This is almost definitely the CPU core in Drake.

A78C is a nice upgrade over the A57 in the current Switch. Benchmarks tend to show similar performance to Zen 2 (the chip in PS5 and Series S|X) at similar clock speeds. Orin power data suggests that an 8 core A78C cluster uses about the same about of power as the current Switch's 4 core A57 cluster, at the same clocks.

Considering how hungry the GPU is, and how powerful the CPU is, keeping the CPU at roughly the same clocks as the current Switch makes sense. A modest bump would be very cheap, if there was some headroom.

There are no indications about the screen, but as OLED screens are more common and thus driving down the price and Nintendo is unlikely to want a downgrade from their current “premium” model, and OLED screen seems likely.

720p is a sweet spot at the screen size of the existing Switch, but if Nintendo goes with faster handheld clocks, and phones drive OLED production, a 1080p screen is certainly possible.

This is one of the more controversial questions, historically. Smaller node = more expensive device, but better power efficiency

Orin is on Samsung 8nm, as is the entire Ampere desktop GPU line. This should be considered the default. However, there has been considerable discussion on whether the leaked Drake design is too big to run on Samsung 8nm and have decent battery life.

Orin's power data shows that Drake would almost definitely draw more power than the original Switch, even at pretty low clocks, but not so much more power that Samsung 8nm is impossible.

These are unverified wild scribblings, but not stuff that has been clearly disconfirmed

There are some plausible "leakers" on Chinese language forums, which we have collectively followed, and it turns out they follow us. There are some indications that production is moving out of the prototype stage, but even if these leakers are legitimate factory employees, they've a record of not fully understanding what they're working on and "leaking" things that were not new.

Some of this seems to indicate a possible change to the kickstand design so instead of being a solid piece like the OLED model, it runs the outline of the device, ala some HP devices on the market.

A certain user here has claimed a connection at Rockstar in Edinburgh. They've said several things about the device are consistent with more vetted statements, but their distinct claims are RDR2 is coming to Drake and that the device is 12GB

They've also claimed the devkits were earlier 6GB, a claim which has disputed plausibility, and that partners were recently briefed, which has since been confirmed by Nate.

There are a series of less plausible leaks. They're not included here, even in the wild speculation section, because you need some standards. Two notable ones I include here to debunk.

One was a Chinese forum post that listed very plausible specs for a device that seemed to match a lot of what we know. Some detective work found that the almost definite origin of this "leak" was a speculative post of mine on this very board, as it contained an obvious mistake I made despite rewording.

The second was an extensive and impressive Spanish insider. There was lots of potentially interesting new information, specifically about power management on the device moving towards dynamic clocks rather than specific profiles. However, this "leak" said several things about the CPU that were directly contradicted by the Linux driver updates. It seems that this person has been posting 'Switch 2' updates for some time, incorporating more information from the community, but in order to keep their story consistent, has had to hang onto some incorrect prior guesses.

Then I'm not sure this thread is for you, but if you don't believe the NVN2 hack you might be in denial. The Linux updates aren't even hacks, they're public dumps of technical data from NVidia. The above is very conservative.

But if it helps, this is consistent with Nintendo's trend of staying behind their competitors in power - it's just that Nintendo has had a "catchup" generation because the Wii U era was short.

Dunno. Drake/T239 is a high end chip, however the fact that Linux drivers have started to drop implies that NVidia plans to use the chip in non-Switch devices. This likely reduces costs on Nintendo’s side, as it means NVidia probably fronted some of the dev costs.

There is no indication of any. Nvidia's tech is oriented at AI and real time imaging, but a lot of that hardware is stripped away in Drake or used for DLSS.

There have been discussions about:
  • More cameras
  • Dropping the IR camera
  • Handheld streaming to the TV
But these are just idle speculation. There is no evidence.

No clue, but we're running with "roughly the switch's shape, so that Joy-Cons, Docks, coves and alternate controllers are compatible" but that's just an assumption

Will depend on myriad factors, but we're all roughly assuming that the increased power of the device will be countered by slightly improved battery efficiency to land right back in "Day 1 switch" territory

Dunno, again, this is about how Nintendo choses to position the device as much as anything else.

My personal vote is for "Nintendo Swuntch"

H1 2023 seems Highly Likely - that period has been tagged back as the date devs were expecting to release games in the earliest reporting, and tracks with other info ("partners were recently briefed). Most folks expect before Tears of the Kingdom, or a simultaneous launch, but it's an open question.

No clue, again it is unclear if Nintendo will launch it with exclusives, or just have "plays better on Drake" style updates to existing titles

Most folk expect that at least some games will get some kind of "boost mode" where they can more consistently reach their frame rate and max res. Big games might get some Drake specific patches. Again, this comes back to how Nintendo markets the device.

Uhhh, mostly? This will include some "99% sure, but could technically be wrong" guesses in here, but...

CPU: 8 Core ARM Cortex-A78C, in a single cluster. 32k L1 data cache, 32k L1 instruction cache, 256k L2 cache, 4M of L3 cache
  • the A78C supports a config that double these cache numbers
  • Due to the nature of the A78C power curve, a ~1-125GHz clock seems likely (<0.5W per core on 8nm)
  • A 1.75-2Ghz clock represents the "realm of possibility" maximum (<0.5W per core on N5)
GPU: Nvidia Ampere with 1536 CUDA cores (12 SMs/6 TPCs)
  • Original Switch Clocks seem likely, 460MHz/768Mhz, for 1.4/2.3 TFLOPS
  • 1Ghz in docked is the likely maximum.
  • The ratio between docked clocks and handheld clocks is not in any way set in stone, but ~2x matches with DLSS needs and screen size quite nicely.
Memory: 2x 4GB 64-bit LPDDR5 modules @34 GB/s
  • This is the minimum Orin config, and matches with the 128-bit bus that is available in T239
  • 2x 6GB 64-bit LPDDR5 @102 GB/s seems extremely likely based on the availability of those modules
  • Orin runs a 3200MHz memory clock in all but the strangest power configurations
  • But a 2100MHz clock is where Orin Nano lives, and might represent a source of power savings.

Update: Clarification from @Look over there, @Alovon11, and @Brofield. Updated on the 20th with info from @Cybergatuno because not doing so seemed dumb, even if it came in after the 18th. Added some info I found in the Linux drops from Nvidia, and updated with @BlackTangMaster's power data and @Thraktor's power analysis.
 
Anecdotally speaking, I can vouch that they are in fact anecdotal data!

This is actually perfect. Let’s assume they are OLED models, which is the direct upgrade at the moment to the Lite models.


It really is the exact opposite lol


On another note, if I did the math right, (5nm) 7 A78 @ ~2.1GHz should consume about 3W? With the OS core it would all be less than 3.3W I think?

Now imagine this with a slightly denser battery…. It could be possible to squeeze it.

I’m dreaming I know….



It’s weird, I was looking at the comparison charts, and it seems to scale weirdly. If at 2.6 GHz for the cortex A77 it consumes 1 W. The cortex A78 on the otherhand at 3GHz consumes 1 W. However, on the other comparison, they have the A77 at 2.3 GHz and that is twice the energy consumption that the a A78 at 2.1GHz has.

Now of course this factors in the different nodes, but if 2.6GHz is 1W, theoretically 2.3GHz is 0.88W

And if the A78 @ 2.1GHz consumes roughly half of that, so ~0.4W at that clock speed, it seems like there’s a scaling factor at play and causes the A78 to really shoot up the closer it gets to the 3GHz line.

Now I don’t think that they’ll do 3GHz or close to that, and maybe I’m reading the chart wrong, but it seems like 2.1GHz is less than half a watt.


Arm-Cortex-A78-performance-gains.jpg.webp



Just trying to extrapolate from this that is, I’m ready to accept being very wrong about it.

But who knows?
Power draw scaling is predominantly quadratic (it should be dominated by voltage squared), not linear. That's why the curve looks like it starts slow then shoots upward as you get closer to the upper end.
A78-X1-crop-20_575px.png


-

@oldpuck
Hidden content is only available for registered users. Sharing it outside of Famiboards is subject to moderation.
 
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Every possible naming convention is thrown out in this thread except the naming convention Nintendo’s been using to denote “everything you love, but more of it”: Nintendo Switch Deluxe (or DX)
Do the people that downplay third party support and say it will never improve have Stockholm syndrome? Like maybe they’ve been so used to the tech gap, “withered technology”, and lacking traditional AAA third party software, that the idea of better or more support scares them?

It’s okay. Things are different now. You can dream of a better third party landscape. Have some faith and optimism.
No, it’s just pessimistic despair that, due to years of unfounded hope for such titles appearing on hot-selling Nintendo hardware, combined with Nintendo’s own past mistakes on the subject and developers continuously sticking their feet into their mouth so vigorously that they can taste kneecap (see example: Penny Blood dev, RGG studio head Yokoyama), has developed into “doomer”-ish incredulity.
 
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Hey OldPuck, it's me again.
Oh hey, Anonymous Lurker, how is it going?

I noticed the thread got pinned, and thought I'd take a peek.
There is a lot of information in the OP if you wanna catch up.

Oh, I can't do that. There is just... so much info. Also, I'm not super technical, so even if I did read all of it, it would go over my head. Could you just tell me what we know.
Um... I honestly probably can't do that.

So you don't actually know anything?!?
We know more about this console than maybe any other unreleased console, ever.

Why can't you tell me anything then?
Imagine that you had the diagrams for a brand new car engine. You take them to an engineer, and excitedly ask questions about the car - how fast will it go? "Well, it depends on what sort of chasis they use..." what's the MPG like? "well, depends on how aerodynamic the body is and if they rate it for higher or lower RPMs" Don't you even know what the stereo system will be like??? "uh, absolutely not..."

It's the same here. We know a lot about the chip that the Next Switch will use, but there are also a lot of blanks. And we have good guesses for those blanks! But you don't care about that, you care about the games right?

Yeah, basically.
And a lot of smart people have made a lot of smart discoveries about the thing, but if I start saying specifics, I guarantee less than 1/3 of the regulars will agree with my final conclusions. At least 1 thing will be controversial. And that's why there is still a thread going even when there isn't new info.

It's like trying to solve a crossword puzzle when some of the clues are missing or blurry. We've actually filled a lot of it in, but the rest are reasonable guesses, or guesses based on guesses, or guesses based on those. It gets real tenuous after a while.

Okay but can't you tell me anything?
I'll tell you what I'll do. I'm going to compile the current as of September 18, 2022 state of affairs below. I'm going to summarize the best guesses, and I'm going to organize it from stuff we're 90% confident in all the way to "Guesses upon guesses upon guesses".

But I'm going to hide it all, because there has been a trend of disreputable people making bad-faith content out of the speculation here, and that causes lots of problems. I'm also going to hide chunks behind spoiler tags.

I'm also going to update things here in the inevitable backlash as my fellow thread-dwellers correct me, but I'm not going to update this post as new data comes in. Got it?

Got it.

* Hidden text: cannot be quoted. *


Update: Clarification from @Look over there
This post was perfect for someone like me who wants to keep up with this thread but the tech jargon always ends up way over my head. Thanks for putting it together!
 
Talking about rumors, that brazilian nintendo guy said that maybe ridge racer 8 for switch wasn’t cancelled.

Wouldn’t surprised me its going to be a Switch title announced alongside next HW. Generally this racer games are a good showcase of new hardware capabilities. Microsoft has Forza and Sony has Gran Turismo, so maybe Nintendo got interest on getting Ridge Racer ?.
Who's that? An employee?
 
Power draw scaling is predominantly quadratic (it should be dominated by voltage squared), not linear. That's why the curve looks like it starts slow then shoots upward as you get closer to the upper end.
A78-X1-crop-20_575px.png


-

@oldpuck
* Hidden text: cannot be quoted. *
Hmm, then would the assumption be correct or incorrect in this case? 2.1GHz isn’t 0.7W but like, ~0.4W?
 
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My napkin math/ballpark guess for A78 on N5 @ 2.1 Ghz would be about 0.49 watts.
If we're going from the 3 Ghz at 1 watt figure, I divide 3 by 2.1 to get the proportional increase in frequency, square it by hitting x^2 to get the approximate proportional increase in power, then flip it around by hitting 1/x.
Earlier napkin match had A78 on 7nm 1.7Ghz at 0.5W, which tracks with this and ARM's advertised 20% win for the node change.
 
My napkin math/ballpark guess for A78 on N5 @ 2.1 Ghz would be about 0.49 watts.
If we're going from the 3 Ghz at 1 watt figure, I divide 3 by 2.1 to get the proportional increase in frequency, square it by hitting x^2 to get the approximate proportional increase in power, then flip it around by hitting 1/x.
Considering that TSMC's N6 process node offers 18% higher logic density compared to TSMC's N7 process node, but offers the same performance and power efficiency as TSMC's N7 process node, and TSMC's N5 process node offers 1.8x higher logical density, and offers 15% higher performance at iso-power or consumes 30% less power at iso-performance, compared to TSMC's N7 process node, I do wonder how much power the Cortex-A78 consumes using TSMC's N6 process node?
 
Do the people that downplay third party support and say it will never improve have Stockholm syndrome? Like maybe they’ve been so used to the tech gap, “withered technology”, and lacking traditional AAA third party software, that the idea of better or more support scares them?

It’s okay. Things are different now. You can dream of a better third party landscape. Have some faith and optimism.
For me personally I just want all the software & devs to make bigger software outside the realm of mid-tier. I’ve always used it as an example but mobile/PC is what I am looking for in terms of support. Gets all types of support including exclusives for that particular system only w/devs making games for that system only.
┐(´ー`)┌
 
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My napkin math/ballpark guess for A78 on N5 @ 2.1 Ghz would be about 0.49 watts.
If we're going from the 3 Ghz at 1 watt figure, I divide 3 by 2.1 to get the proportional increase in frequency, square it by hitting x^2 to get the approximate proportional increase in power, then flip it around by hitting 1/x.
Earlier napkin match had A78 on 7nm 1.7Ghz at 0.5W, which tracks with this and ARM's advertised 20% win for the node change.
Thanks! Hm, ok, so if I try to lower it

1.9GHz would be ~0.4W per core I think, by 7 would be ~2.8W, having the OS core at around 1.3GHz should be about 0.19W (rounded up)


So, they can fit all that in around 3W just for the CPU. OS core I’m a bit iffy on though…. If they can clock it that low.

Anyway….


That is a ~13.3x performance increase for the CPU alone in only ~3W compared to the Switch and it’s ~1.83W budget (estimated) that the original Quad Core A57 setup uses.


That’s a monstrous leap.


This increase would be a bigger one than the PS4 to 5 or One to Series X. In a slight bump in total power usage.


Just for comparison for others reading! Doesn’t mean it’ll outperform them though!
 
Thanks! Hm, ok, so if I try to lower it

1.9GHz would be ~0.4W per core I think, by 7 would be ~2.8W, having the OS core at around 1.3GHz should be about 0.19W (rounded up)


So, they can fit all that in around 3W just for the CPU. OS core I’m a bit iffy on though…. If they can clock it that low.

Anyway….


That is a ~13.3x performance increase for the CPU alone in only ~3W compared to the Switch and it’s ~1.83W budget (estimated) that the original Quad Core A57 setup uses.


That’s a monstrous leap.


This increase would be a bigger one than the PS4 to 5 or One to Series X. In a slight bump in total power usage.


Just for comparison for others reading! Doesn’t mean it’ll outperform them though!
This almost exactly tracks where I was at when trying to engineer Drake out of Orin's power numbers, and why I ultimately changed by mind about the viability of 8nm.
 
A78's power curve shouldn't be significantly different from the A77's (-4% power draw ISO-process is not going to radically change the napkin math), so I think that subbing the A77's 2.6 Ghz@1 watt on N7 should function well enough for conversation purposes. Besides, 2.6 * 1.15 = 2.99, which is pretty close enough to 3.
 
This almost exactly tracks where I was at when trying to engineer Drake out of Orin's power numbers, and why I ultimately changed by mind about the viability of 8nm.
Yeah, though these are on 5nm I should note. It would be lower of course on the 7nm.

But A78 isn’t optimized best for that, but best for 5nm if I’m not mistaken.

And I think the GPU can actually draw like 3-5W clocked low on 5nm. Better than the switch clocks but clocked low still. Like 460MHz or so I think it was.
 
Hey OldPuck, it's me again.
Oh hey, Anonymous Lurker, how is it going?

I noticed the thread got pinned, and thought I'd take a peek.
There is a lot of information in the OP if you wanna catch up.

Oh, I can't do that. There is just... so much info. Also, I'm not super technical, so even if I did read all of it, it would go over my head. Could you just tell me what we know.
Um... I honestly probably can't do that.

So you don't actually know anything?!?
We know more about this console than maybe any other unreleased console, ever.

Why can't you tell me anything then?
Imagine that you had the diagrams for a brand new car engine. You take them to an engineer, and excitedly ask questions about the car - how fast will it go? "Well, it depends on what sort of chasis they use..." what's the MPG like? "well, depends on how aerodynamic the body is and if they rate it for higher or lower RPMs" Don't you even know what the stereo system will be like??? "uh, absolutely not..."

It's the same here. We know a lot about the chip that the Next Switch will use, but there are also a lot of blanks. And we have good guesses for those blanks! But you don't care about that, you care about the games right?

Yeah, basically.
And a lot of smart people have made a lot of smart discoveries about the thing, but if I start saying specifics, I guarantee less than 1/3 of the regulars will agree with my final conclusions. At least 1 thing will be controversial. And that's why there is still a thread going even when there isn't new info.

It's like trying to solve a crossword puzzle when some of the clues are missing or blurry. We've actually filled a lot of it in, but the rest are reasonable guesses, or guesses based on guesses, or guesses based on those. It gets real tenuous after a while.

Okay but can't you tell me anything?
I'll tell you what I'll do. I'm going to compile the current as of September 18, 2022 state of affairs below. I'm going to summarize the best guesses, and I'm going to organize it from stuff we're 90% confident in all the way to "Guesses upon guesses upon guesses".

But I'm going to hide it all, because there has been a trend of disreputable people making bad-faith content out of the speculation here, and that causes lots of problems. I'm also going to hide chunks behind spoiler tags.

I'm also going to update things here in the inevitable backlash as my fellow thread-dwellers correct me, but I'm not going to update this post as new data comes in. Got it?

Got it.

* Hidden text: cannot be quoted. *


Update: Clarification from @Look over there
Minor typo on your release date part in the hidden-text section, 1H 2023, not 1H 2022 (that already happened)
 
I find this to be so funny, because the sales don’t reflect this lol
Does someone have Japanese sales numbers? Because this tracks with everything I saw in Japan, as well. I literally never saw a non-Lite Switch except for the one I brought with me. Which means I saw more 3DS's than switchable Switches.

There are multiple explanations of course, it's entirely possible that Lites sell better in Tokyo specifically (where I was much of the time) where multihour salaryman commutes are pretty much a given. In a week in Tokyo I saw literally hundreds more Lites in the hands of adults on the train than I have in the rest of the Switch's lifetime in Washington, DC.

Also simply possible that it is a side effect of gaming being more normalized in Japan, and that as a percentage of buyers, the Lite sells the same there, but as a percentage of the population console ownership is much higher
 
So what are we thinking my fellow Switch 4K wanters???

Nintendo was going to release Switch 4K this fall but when that didn't pan out, Metroid Prime Remastered was pushed into next year (which is why insiders are left confused why it never showed up this year), Super Mario Bros. movie was delayed because the Super Mario Bros. 2D movie tie in won't launch until the Switch Drake launches, Pikmin 4 which has super high resolution textures that are unlikely possible on Switch will be a launch title for Switch 4K which is why there is no details beyond like 2 seconds of footage and a 2023 release date and finally Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom which is still very much shrouded in mystery will also be released within the first 2-3 months of the Drake launch and Nintendo wants to hold the big media blowout when they can show it off in 4K on new hardware. 2022 lacked in HUGE Switch games (though still a solid year of mid-tier stuff) could pave way for an incredible year of 2023 games on Drake. Thoughts ya'll?
 
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Does someone have Japanese sales numbers? Because this tracks with everything I saw in Japan, as well. I literally never saw a non-Lite Switch except for the one I brought with me. Which means I saw more 3DS's than switchable Switches.
Shipments rather than sales, but the three models in Japan through the middle of this year.
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u1KVJGV.png
 
Does someone have Japanese sales numbers? Because this tracks with everything I saw in Japan, as well. I literally never saw a non-Lite Switch except for the one I brought with me. Which means I saw more 3DS's than switchable Switches.

Page 15. Lite performs a little better in Japan than it does elsewhere compared to the OG Switch, but it's not a huge difference.
 
I find this to be so funny, because the sales don’t reflect this lol
Probably not really surprising. The only people buying the Lite are probably those who actively want to have them around outside, and/or attempt to play them outdoors, which is seemingly a small population even in Japan, since most people just turn to mobile games in those situation rather than carry around a dedicated device.
 
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Don't we have official NVIDIA info on the current Orin AGX platform regarding lithography?
I know they could totally work on drake under a different node but wouldn't their current platform serve as a base for speculating about clock speed x power draw scaling?
 
To everyone who think ToTK will look better on Drake. Yes, it will. Will it look substantionaly better than on the base Switch? No. This game was not build with Drake in mind. And I still don't think it's launching date and date with it.

When people say that ToTK will look better on Drake, they thinking mostly about higher resolution, maybe HDR and more stable frame rate,
saying that, some other graphical improvements are also possible compared to game running on current Switch models.

Just higher resolution (for instance 1440p vs 900p) can make big IQ difference on big screen.
 
Please read this staff post before posting.

Furthermore, according to this follow-up post, all off-topic chat will be moderated.
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