Hardware Specifications of Nintendo Switch Reveal

[McHuj]

Surprise, Surprise

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-nintendo-switch-spec-analysis


CPU: 1GHz both docked and undocked
GPU: 768MHz docked, 307 MHz portable

 

[BRiT]

We had an actual technology thread before with the DevKit but too much polution by the diehard wishful thinking fanboys reverted it back into speculation mode. We will be issuing reply-bans if this thread devolves into blind wishful thinking by those unwilling to accept reality.

 

[BRiT]

The final retail hardware is pretty much a copy of the dev kit but with downclocks when in mobile form. What remains unknown is the extent of hardware modifications (if any) that were done.

From the artical, and summary of info so far:

• CPU: Four ARM Cortex A57 cores, 1020 MHz
• GPU: 256 CUDA cores, 768/307.2 MHz (docked, undocked)
• Architecture: Nvidia second generation Maxwell, Tegra X1
• Texture: 16 pixels/cycle
• Fill: 14.4 pixels/cycle
• Memory: 4GB
• Memory Bandwidth: 25.6GB/s (1331/1600 MHz)
• VRAM: shared
• System memory: 32GB, max transfer rate: 400MB/s
• USB: USB 2.0/3.0
• Video output: 1080p60/4K30
• Display: 6.2-inch IPS LCD, 1280x720 pixels, 10-point multi-touch support

 

[Lalaland]

Hey back in the Tech forum!
So with the basics known it seems the remaining questions are around
1) Process i.e 16nm FF, 20 nm or 28nm HPC+ (pretty sure I got that TLA wrong)
2) Detailed customisation info, e.g.how many of the Pascal improvements came back to this chip

What else remains?

 

[AlNom]

Hopefully Chipworks will decap a chip and release a photo of it ala WiiU. Would be curious to see.

 

[Kaotik]

Hey back in the Tech forum!
So with the basics known it seems the remaining questions are around
1) Process i.e 16nm FF, 20 nm or 28nm HPC+ (pretty sure I got that TLA wrong)

It's Tegra X1, it's TSMC 20nm

2) Detailed customisation info, e.g.how many of the Pascal improvements came back to this chip

It's Tegra X1, none (unless you count 2:1 rate FP16 support as one, but it's been in X1 since day 1)

Only thing I'd question at the moment is "are the CPU specs right", or should it be 4+4 cores like standard X1

 

[BRiT]

The talk is the other 4 cores were removed since they were hardly used or not used at all in scenarios of gaming.

 

[MrFox]

Only thing I'd question at the moment is "are the CPU specs right", or should it be 4+4 cores like standard X1

The small cores exist only as a power management trick. Only 4 cores are active at a time, so might as well remove the small ones? Or did that change and they can use all 8 at a time? If so, they could have kept them for the OS.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

• Texture: 16 pixels/cycle

• Fill: 14.4 pixels/cycle

There are 14.4 ROPs in the GPU?

 

[Rikimaru]

The small cores exist only as a power management trick. Only 4 cores are active at a time, so might as well remove the small ones? Or did that change and they can use all 8 at a time? If so, they could have kept them for the OS.

It's Nintendo. They could use stock chip

the tegra X1 is not a mobile chip. it is a burning dumpster fire that uses as much power as a half dozen iPhones

random side note: the tegra X1 is an 8-core chip. it has never shipped with more than 4 cores actually enabled; the others were fused off (apparently, among other things, they didn't put in a cache-coherent interconnect between the A57s and A53s........)

the GPU is the bigger power problem than the CPUs -- and ironically, the tegra X1 has never shipped with working A53s

it's a 15W TDP chip; I'm not sure how low it *can* go (don't know the static/dynamic leakage breakdown obviously)

https://twitter.com/fioraaeterna/status/757955789503868928

 

[BRiT]

There are 14.4 ROPs in the GPU?

Some suspect some sort of hardware bubbles and conflicts since 14.4 is exactly 0.9 of 16. Maybe like the Xbox One ES-Ram where not all clock cycles can run in R/W Dual mode.

 

[Arwin]

Almost uncannily characteristically Nintendo-like choice of hardware.

 

[MrFox]

Suppose their downclock to 768MHz instead of 1GHz allows them to downvolt by at least 10%.
80% from voltage, 75% from clock, so it's only 60% the wattage. That's a much smaller dumpster fire.

And if they could downvolt by 20% it's half the wattage.

Add to this that the screen is off when docked.

 

[mpg1]

So 157 GFlops in portable mode and 393 GFlops in docked mode.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Some suspect some sort of hardware bubbles and conflicts since 14.4 is exactly 0.9 of 16. Maybe like the Xbox One ES-Ram where not all clock cycles can run in R/W Dual mode.

The same leak says it's unified RAM ("VRAM: shared") and there's no R/W dual mode on LPDDR4.
This is the first time ever that I've seen fillrate/cycle being presented as lower than the amount of ROPs.

Also, the specs you described in this post don't appear anywhere in eurogamer's article.
The twitter leak says 2GHz CPU clocks and 1GHz on the GPU.

Is that spec list a lowest common denominator between the twitter leak and eurogamer's clock values from today's article?

 

[BRiT]

@ToTTenTranz The actual clock speeds from DF have been put into that post as a summary.

 

[AlNom]

This is the first time ever that I've seen fillrate/cycle being presented as lower than the amount of ROPs.

I had thought it'd be something wonky like the GTX 970 situation (64 ROPs, but only 56 because deactivated bits), but I can't do math today.

THE NUMBERS, MASON. WHAT DO THEY MEAN?

 

[Esrever]

300mhz makes no sense to me but if they really want to force 720p and 1080p, then I guess it makes some sense. With specs like this, I guess it's a portable Wii-u and a 1080p Wii-u when docked.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I had thought it'd be something wonky like the GTX 970 situation (64 ROPs, but only 56 because deactivated bits), but I can't do math.

Yeah you can deactivate 16 ROPs but you can't deactivate 0.6 ROPs AFAIK.

THE NUMBERS, MASON. WHAT DO THEY MEAN?

Occam's Razor says the specs are wrong and shouldn't be taken literally at this point.

 

[AlNom]

Yes, obviously something is amiss.

Also, jokes.