Charlietus
Regular
Aside from faster loading, which is always nice, Switch 2 is going to run most multiplatform games, so they needed fast storage.
Switch 2 Speculation
- Thread starter Goodtwin
- Start date
I wonder if this Patent could be used. They mention it can be used to upscale Textures to save space on the storage medium.
I would guess it upscales the textures into RAM? Possibly taking advantage of the extra space there.
Their peers have SSDs. They need to match that at a relative performance level. Of course, an internal SSD would do that, but I doubt Nintendo want their users faffing with migrating games from external to internal storage.
Personally I think a 2230 m2 would be better as faster and cheaper and still upgradeable.
If it's just game loading and game saves, then it doesn't seem to use storage enough for faster IO to matter as much.
If they're streaming textures or something, maybe it makes more sense?
If the slots are compatible with slower cards, most or many users will just use the cards they have or are cheaper to buy.
Presumably it won't degrade the experience too much beyond longer load times.
If they're streaming textures or something, maybe it makes more sense?
If the slots are compatible with slower cards, most or many users will just use the cards they have or are cheaper to buy.
Presumably it won't degrade the experience too much beyond longer load times.
If they are getting ports form PS5XBS, the games are expecting 2GB/s transfer speeds and very low latency access. Streaming is standard practice now.
Charlietus
Regular
The low latency shouldn't be a problem, but are there any games that don't work well enough on 500 mb/s sata ssd's? 800mb/s sounds pretty good.
Dominik D
Regular
Games purchased from online store could be allowed to be installed on the memory card so it makes sense to have good IO performance.
Do we know how fast the gamecards themselves will be?
no, but there's no reason they would be any slower than internal storage or external memory
Except cost.
What would a high speed game card cost to make versus a slow one you can copy to fast 'internal' storage?What are the options for ROM carts?
Dominik D
Regular
Cost would be a valid reason. ;-) But I hope Nintendo won't go that route.
// sniped by Shifty
//edit
Nintendo will probably continue working with Macronix. They're already a customer, Macronix did some customization for Ninny in the past and their tech is pretty good in terms of bit rot (supposedly 20 years w/o failure).
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cheapchips
Veteran
I think they'll go with low capacity SD Express for carts, if that's possible, in a Switch cart sized shell.
Charlietus
Regular
There is also the possibility that all games need to be installed on the internal storage-fast SD card.
Dominik D
Regular
That would be more expensive than ROM and volatile. SD cards suffer bit rot before a 10 year checkmark. This would be hard to justify to the consumers where flash keeping data consistency for 20-40 years exists.
cheapchips
Veteran
Is that lifespan a given whatever circumstances? The data's only being written once and read many. It's not a normal use case. Which maybe a disbenefit as much as a benefit of course.
I'm making that assumption that Switch 2 carts are performant enough to keep up with their internal storage. Mass produced, low capacity SD express would tick the speed and cost box vs the current Macronix solution.
Maybe they'll just stick with that. It would hamper bandwidth and capacity. A very Nintendo thing to do though!
There would be no reason to go with SD Express in that case.
That's kind of the point I had been bringing up for a long time - if Switch was going to continue to use standard SD cards, it would either mean forcing mandatory installs onto the faster internal/embedded storage and without any good storage upgrade potential, OR, they'd simply have to give up trying to chase 3rd party games with stronger I/O demands that the new gen consoles have opened up.
For me, both these options would be massive problems for Nintendo. Hence why I guessed that SD Express could well be the answer quite a while back. Alleviates all these issues in one stroke, along with ensuring no fuss backwards compatibility for physical and digital with just the one SD slot. And it helps Nintendo save on needing to include lots of internal storage as stock while helping consumers need less expanded storage. It'll also hopefully mean many games, like with Switch 1, are very playable Day 1 even without an internet connection.
The other option could have been to go with something like an internal 2230 NVMe drive like Steam Deck, while having the SD slot for BC and to slot Switch 2 games in for mandatory installation. Thing is, storage expansion is then an issue, cuz Nintendo is not the sort of company that would want you opening up the system to upgrade it, and I'm not sure there'd be any elegant way to offer an external expansion port in a smaller portable device like this.
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And unfortunately whichever has the slowest speed (internal, cart vs SD card) will be the baseline speed developers can code for.
I have doubts they'd force installs to internal storage or make people's existing Switch SD cards useless on the Switch 2.
I think they'll allow all speeds meaning the only benefit to each storage will be load times. Developers won't be able to depend on a high stream rate from storage.
I have doubts they'd force installs to internal storage or make people's existing Switch SD cards useless on the Switch 2.
I think they'll allow all speeds meaning the only benefit to each storage will be load times. Developers won't be able to depend on a high stream rate from storage.
Dominik D
Regular
There's very little you can do to match data integrity of NAND ROM with a r/w NVM. It only degrades further with temperature. There's a nominal temperature window in which memory operates (say: 0-80C) but if you even get close to the extremes (10C close) for a longer period of time, you're risking losing data. This is true for flash ROM as well but if you can use cheaper storage with 20-40 years of integrity or more expensive one with 10 years of integrity, why would you?
As a side note - Macronix patented memory with search and basic compute on data for AI solutions. Nintendo has some patents around DLSS-like solutions with smart memory usage. Coincidence? Probably.
I/O is scalable. Switch isn't gonna be running the same sort of textures and draw distances and whatnot that XSX/PS5 will, so you can get pretty drastic cuts to streaming bandwidth here. Not so much that'd it work on a 100MB/s SD card, but certainly below 1000MB/s like SD Express can handle.
So no, this wont become some lowering of the baseline. As usual, Switch 2 games will simply have scaled down assets/rendering. Switch 2 doesn't need to keep up with XSX/PS5's I/O demands, only stay within a safe enough distance that it doesn't get left behind. SD Express offers that. While internal storage is gonna be plenty fast enough.
To be clear, you're suggesting games are published on SD Express as the tech in Switch2 game carts? is that hardware compatible with Switch carts? What's the BOM cost of an SD Express? One notable difference between this potential format and consumer options is consumer cards are many GBs, whereas a cart would only need to fit the game. That's going to be <50 GB. But then does smaller capacity result in lower transfer rates?
