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

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oldpuck said:
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You didn't! I think optimism is fine! It's taking incomplete data and then using it to become convinced your optimism is cold, hard truth that I think is worth avoiding. Not only does it set you up for disappointment, but it can make the thread kinda toxic.

One group expected 8SMs, and another expected 4SMs and we got 12SMs. Both were wrong - the optimist rationale for 8 didn't hold up. The pessimists reading of the power data did hold up, but Nintendo did something crazy.
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Simple
It'll be a elegant home console with a dummy "Fischer Price" looking tablet to support portable mode via streaming.

And the name of it: Switch U
Problem solved

/s

Merry Christmas, everyone
 
I feel even more confused now. All I'm getting is that Nintendo did the crazy, unimaginable thing, but that seems to have completely contradicted those test clocks? If Nintendo went in the opposite direction of what we expected on 12 SMs...where are expectations now? Is PS4 in handheld too optimistic now?
 
mariodk18 said:
I feel even more confused now. All I'm getting is that Nintendo did the crazy, unimaginable thing, but that seems to have completely contradicted those test clocks? If Nintendo went in the opposite direction of what we expected on 12 SMs...where are expectations now? Is PS4 in handheld too optimistic now?
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The crazy thing they did was go for an SOC with 12SMs. That's not in debate really.

How they achieved that is still up for debate but it doesn't really change what the final product will be all that much. The process node really is not that important when we already know what the chip itself is.
 
mariodk18 said:
I feel even more confused now. All I'm getting is that Nintendo did the crazy, unimaginable thing, but that seems to have completely contradicted those test clocks? If Nintendo went in the opposite direction of what we expected on 12 SMs...where are expectations now? Is PS4 in handheld too optimistic now?
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From what I understand and correct me if I am wrong.

1) optimist were arguing for 8sm as they believe that's all Nintnedo can do.

2) pessimist were arguing for 4sm with a power budget around 12watts or something like that.

Nintendo did something out of the ordinary and went with 12sm going above what the most optimistic generally believe but still specing it to 12 watts that matched the most pestimestic people in terms of power consumption.

As for people doubting the NuSwitch ability...handheld mode should be in comparison to the PS4 and it should match the PS4 pro docked easy with out factoring modern techniques and DLSS at it's worst case scenario based on my speculation and from what I have read. I would be happy with ther performance honestly.
 
Quailman said:
From what I understand and correct me if I am wrong.

1) optimist were arguing for 8sm as they believe that's all Nintnedo can do.

2) pessimist were arguing for 4sm with a power budget around 12watts or something like that.

Nintendo did something out of the ordinary and went with 12sm going above what the most optimistic generally believe but still specing it to 12 watts that matched the most pestimestic people in terms of power consumption.

As for people doubting the NuSwitch ability...handheld mode should be in comparison to the PS4 and it should match the PS4 pro docked easy with out factoring modern techniques and DLSS at it's worst case scenario.
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So...3 hour minimum battery best case scenario, I assume?
 
PS4 docked was my expectation for a Switch II before any kind of rumor or leak, considering the age of the XBO/PS4, how the current Switch performs as >PS3 both handheld and docked, and the advances in mobile tech. Obviously this is not a linear relationship (i.e. I don't suddenly expect Switch 3 to be >PS5 docked) but it seemed like a reasonable guess. Consider the improvements to games resulting from just an overclocked Mariko, doubling framerates and such, and it's not surprising that a proper new chip 8 years post-TX1 would net even greater performance exceeding last-gen consoles.

Basically my personal expectations have remain unchanged.

mariodk18 said:
I feel even more confused now. All I'm getting is that Nintendo did the crazy, unimaginable thing, but that seems to have completely contradicted those test clocks? If Nintendo went in the opposite direction of what we expected on 12 SMs...where are expectations now? Is PS4 in handheld too optimistic now?
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And if I'm off-base with anything I just said please correct me.
 
mariodk18 said:
Ok, so then let's assume 8nm. Why would Nintendo go for 12 SMs. Cons are a big chip, right? What would the pros be of doing such a move?
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Compared to fewer SMs? More GPU power, more tensor cores, more RT cores.

Basically much easier to get current gen ports.

Plus if they're interested in the tensor cores or RT cores for any of their software ideas (like AI Nintendogs or something) then the more the merrier.

The cons of course as you said are big chip and high power draw. Possibly higher cost in the long run but on 8nm probably cheaper up front.
 
wait, we've been over this possibility before...

christ maybe it really is bigger

that's the only dealbreaker for me so it'd be sort of cosmically funny to me if that's the concession they made
 
Skittzo said:
Compared to fewer SMs? More GPU power, more tensor cores, more RT cores.

Basically much easier to get current gen ports.

Plus if they're interested in the tensor cores or RT cores for any of their software ideas (like AI Nintendogs or something) then the more the merrier.

The cons of course as you said are big chip and high power draw. Possibly higher cost in the long run but on 8nm probably cheaper up front.
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Ok cool. So it would disappointing compared to the ultra high end expectations, but still better than the standard "Nintendo gonna Nintendo" expectations?

Like nothing is WUST levels of bad right?
 
mariodk18 said:
Ok cool. So it would disappointing compared to the ultra high end expectations, but still better than the standard "Nintendo gonna Nintendo" expectations?

Like nothing is WUST levels of bad right?
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Exactly my feeling, Nintendo original intentions was for the switch to be a 10 year console but with it's current specs 6 years is long in the tooth for the hardware under it's hood.

If Nintendo wishes to achieve that 10 year life span they'll have to definitely go outside their comfort zone.

Based on what was mentioned above...could it be possible the original testing for the NuSwitch began with 8nm Samsung? The maybe they moved to a different process to get the performance targets their seeking?
 
Man, some guys on this thread can be pretty annoying at times. None of this is confirmed, there is a high chance that the tests posted by LiC simply don't match reality, as well as oldpuck's lines of code being outdated, and even if everything is right Samsung doesn't just have nodes in 8nm. And yet, even if it's Samsung 8nm, Drake is leagues ahead of what anyone here would have guessed even a year ago. Just sit down enjoy Christmas and please stop Nintendooming.
 
mariodk18 said:
Ok, so then let's assume 8nm. Why would Nintendo go for 12 SMs. Cons are a big chip, right? What would the pros be of doing such a move?
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Why? Because it’s the path of least resistance. It’s cheaper to go with one GPC over splitting up a GPC and creating a custom GPU.
 
Raccoon said:
wait, we've been over this possibility before...

christ maybe it really is bigger

that's the only dealbreaker for me so it'd be sort of cosmically funny to me if that's the concession they made
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Raccoon playing his brand new Switch 2 on launch day:
 
mariodk18 said:
Ok cool. So it would disappointing compared to the ultra high end expectations, but still better than the standard "Nintendo gonna Nintendo" expectations?

Like nothing is WUST levels of bad right?
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Let's put it this way.

Drake on 8nm is far and away above anyone's wildest expectations one year ago today. Total opposite of WUST.
 
8nm doesn't change the fact that this is much more powerful than we were originally expecting. The battery might resemble Erista than Mariko, but that's fine
 
ILikeFeet said:
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Raccoon said:
how low can clocks go?
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The floor's probably a copy and paste of current clocks for the Switch.
Apparently Ampere can't really go below 300 mhz or something like that? Or so I've read from this thread. Probably from Alovon.

I'm more confident about the CPU not being able to go under... let's go with 800 mhz. A few data points:
From here, one can see a floor of 700 mhz for the A57.
From here, there's a floor of just about 800 mhz for the A75, which is three generations back from the A78. (scroll down to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 670)
From this, I think that I saw a floor of 1000 mhz for the A710, which is one generation ahead of the A78.
At the very least, there's a general trend of the minimum clock heading upward over time.
 
oldpuck said:
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oldpuck said:
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I would like to remind people of this thread in late February, right before the Lapsus$ hack. The most wildly optimistic of us were calling for 8SMs. The... more moderate wing thought that 4SM was as far as it could go power-wise.

When 12SMs hit, it wasn't the optimists who were proved "right", though. The optimists based their theory on the absolute certainty that redesigning Orin's GPC was so costly, that if Nintendo were to have less than Orin, 8 was the only option. The optimists were wrong.

Meanwhile, Orin's power data showed the pessimists to have been correct across the board about Orin power consumption. But very definitive sources said that, despite those accurate predictions, Nintendo were doing something unexpected.

It's Christmas. The unexpected is cool, it's fun to be excited by what's under the tree, and I love to shake every present to see what's inside. But if you were the kid who assumed they were getting a puppy because one of your presents was clearly a soft, squishy dog toy - well, sometimes it's socks. It could be cool Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle socks that say "radical!" and "bodacious" every time you walk! You would have loved that... if you weren't expecting a puppy.

I don't know how much I'm gonna be around between now and the New Year, but I'll keeping poking at what I've got (and another source, as it happens) and if something definitive comes up I'll share it. But I hope this little tidbit satisfies folks who are asking "where are the December leaks?!?!?"

For those of you who celebrate Christmas, I hope you get a puppy. For those of you who don't, well, I hope you're warm, well fed, and loved. Hopefully we get a reveal next month, it will be my birthday after all.

But knowing my luck, I'll hear "you just got presents for Christmas. You loved your socks!" Ah well.
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I'm going to be speculating and making big assumptions below based on LiC's and oldpuck's discoveries (here and here) from the files on the NVN2 folder.
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LiC said:
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So yeah, I very rarely do long speculations. But with LiC's and oldpuck's discoveries, I have to spew out my thoughts before I go crazy. But as I mentioned before, I'm making some big assumptions.
 
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I do disagree slightly on one thing; TSMC's N3B issues with SRAM area and yield issues should be separate from the idea of a given chip's cache size and its impact on yield. It sounds like N3B pushed SRAM scaling too far and that had its intrisic issues, hence when TSMC returned to the drawing board and came up with N3E, SRAM area returned to the last known good (N5). But once things are a go and they become known working nodes that have been around, I think that what restricts a given chip's cache size is back to the more typical area = $$$ considerations.

...actually, Dakhil, do you still have a active wikichip subscription? If so, is there anything interesting of note from this?
 
So the mystery deepens.....

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Concernt said:
It was always going to be pretty damn good at 8nm. I don't know what bug people got that made them think 8nm is some totally unusable, garbage node from the stone age. It isn't. It's perfectly fine. I mean the main concern is really TV mode, since that's where the power will be needed to push 4K. Which isn't a usecase where the power consumption is so much of a concern.

If those targets are anywhere near indicative of final hardware, and I'd say they are given that's what Devs were told to target earlier this year when Samsung and Nvidia would have hammered this processor out years ago, it'll be fine. Launch Switch battery life or better, with Series S-like performance with a higher output res after DLSS. That is more or less the bottom end of what Drake could do. And it's still very, very good.
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The logical conclusion then, is that it's Samsung, but better than 8nm. What Samsung node would be needed to reach that target? 5nm?
 
Z0m3le said:
LiC's info is far more important than the process node. Over 2tflops handheld, that's much faster than the Steam Deck, and has DLSS and Ray Tracing hardware. It's not a let down, regardless of whatever the process node is, that doesn't actually mean anything to us. It was always the clock that was important, also docked it would exceed the series s thanks to DLSS, 3.456tflops is really good.
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I mean, the process node was important only in deriving estimates based on what each process node could theoretically achieve at a certain thermal envelope and SoC die size (which we assumed would be similar to Erista). If you have the clocks and the TFLOPs and the number of SMs and cores, the only thing the process node will tell you at that point is how big the chip is and how power-hungry it is, which means nothing to compute performance. It's only relevant when talking about how they'll cram everything into the chassis based on how large the SoC die is and how big the battery will have to be to power it all. Good questions, sure, but nothing that impacts compute performance.
 
Dakhil said:
I'm going to be speculating and making big assumptions below based on LiC's and oldpuck's discoveries (here and here) from the files on the NVN2 folder.
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So yeah, I very rarely do long speculations. But with LiC's and oldpuck's discoveries, I have to spew out my thoughts before I go crazy. But as I mentioned before, I'm making some big assumptions.
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I'm just going to poke one big hole in this. Those frequencies that you are discussing, like thermal throttling and ignore the 660mhz clock altogether, those wouldn't be in a test for DLSS, those are targeted frequencies for use, that's why they come with power consumption results.

If we are being scientific about this, your logic just is working backwards. 1.38mhz being the max frequency is the only thing that makes sense here, these other clocks are targeted performance clocks, with estimated power draws. This is obvious because they have power consumption results.

I also don't think these numbers can change much because software is being developed right now for these clocks, changing them much would break a lot of work. Also Drake has a clock multiplier of 15mhz, half steps or whatever, docked is 75 half steps (75x15mhz) portable is 44 half steps (44x15mhz) this is about the ratio between the two modes that should be expected, slightly less than double performance when docked, this is because of power curves. 4.2w portable and 9.3w docked, if they are looking at 7-8w portable, they can get 3+ hours out of a 25wh battery, and docked the curve moves to 9.3w for the system that should be 12.5w-13.5w not including charging the battery, right in line with the form factor and launch model of the original Switch.
 
For me nothing has changed in what I'm expecting IF it is using SEC 8nm (which would be having similar clocks - and battery life - to the Switch OG, even considering all the things they will remove from the 'standard' Orin)

I'm ok with 1.4TF max in handheld. Just the CPU that would be a bit sad being at ~1GHz, but whatever. There's still the rest of the package to be good too (personally I would love better motion controls...), and the retail price... so I'll be ok with such performance for a 2023 Nintendo product (if it's coming in 2023... =P)

Anyway, merry xmas everyone
 
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Raccoon said:
I think it would be cool if any bad news on this forum was accompanied by "Merry Christmas, everyone."

e.g.
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Samsung by itself really isn't bad news. Sure, not as efficient as tsmc, but we don't know which Samsung node.

If the perf/ watt ratio lic posted earlier is near accurate, that's extremely good anyway. Doesn't matter to much how they got there. But I will bet all the famicoins I'm ever going to make that it doesn't have that efficiency on 8nm.
 
Z0m3le said:
LiC's info is far more important than the process node. Over 2tflops handheld, that's much faster than the Steam Deck, and has DLSS and Ray Tracing hardware. It's not a let down, regardless of whatever the process node is, that doesn't actually mean anything to us. It was always the clock that was important, also docked it would exceed the series s thanks to DLSS, 3.456tflops is really good.
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It would be truly incredible if it supported DLSS/FSR 3 on top.


DLSS 2: 3.45TFs -> 6TFs

DLSS 3 (50% to 70% frame increase) then makes the performance equivalent in the range of 9 to 10.5 TFs.
 
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9CDB8890-C795-48D3-A332-4D449B3E1575.jpeg


Me when the Drake doesn't have enough nms or whatever
 
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