Nintendo Switch Tech Speculation discussion

Devs were somewhat happy, because they compared the WiiU CPU to the other last gen consoles. Which had no cache prefetch (had to manually prefetch even linear arrays, otherwise 600+ cycle stalls), no store forwarding (40+ cycle stalls when writing to same memory location and reading it... e.g. every function call), no direct path between int<->float<->vector register files (making it even harder to avoid store forwarding stalls), extremely long SIMD pipelines (had to unroll loops heavily in order to fill the pipelines). I am not even going to be talking about branches... In-order execution is unable to hide any of these stalls. It's all hard manual work.

But WiiU didn't fare well in SIMD heavy code, as it only had 2-wide paired math vs 4-wide SIMD (with single cycle multiply-add) on Xbox One and SPUs on Cell. Modern ARM chips have 4-wide SIMD (NEON). NEON is actually a pretty good instruction set. Better than SSE3 for sure (most PC games are still limited to SSE3).

 

Yeah but you know in a lot of games 7 cores are not use at 100% at the same time, often bottlenecked by the slowest thread... Quad with better single thread performance could have been nice ?

 

Yes, quad with 2x clocks (or quad with 40% higher IPC & 40% clock boost) is always faster than 8 core (as fast or faster).

But twice as many simple CPU cores with lower clock = much better perf/watt. More small cores is preferable for games/engines that are well optimized for the architecture and scale to large amount of cores. All work is split to small independent tasks -> there's no hard-coded threads -> no single thread can be the bottleneck. Now modern PC rendering APIs such as DirectX 12 and Vulkan also allow submitting GPU work simultaneously from any amount of CPU cores, eliminating the biggest traditional single thread bottleneck (rendering). Of course it takes time for engines to evolve. Many engines are still designed around the DirectX 9/10/11 threading model. Single render thread is often the bottleneck.

 

I assume Tegra X1 but it could be X2, I don't really expect it, but it could be a pleasant suprise, the clock speed sound legit really, why are people complaining about having a really good handheld console from Nintendo which doubles as a home console ?
I like the idea and the hardware isn't laughable, just not as good as some crazy enthusiasts wet dreams...
(and I assume those people dislike the XB1 and PS4 because they are really crap compared to high-end PC components.)

 

it's pretty easy to see why people are complaining

for a home console those specs are not really acceptable in 2017. they are good for a portable though. this is just nintendo way of exiting the home console race and focusing on handheld while trying to keep it's home console fans happy.

 

https://www.khronos.org/conformance/adopters/conformant-products#vulkan

Nintendo Co., Ltd. 2016-12-18 Vulkan_1_0 129
Nintendo Switch™ CTS Version: 1.0.1.0
CPU: ARM
OS: Nintendo OS

 

One of the interesting thing is that it is being listed after NVIDIA products like TK1 and TX1. Is NVIDIA doing the submission or Nintendo since the dates are very close? It looks like NVIDIA is working a lot closer than I thought with Nintendo for Switch.

 

To me it looks like nVidia is working as close as possible to be able to launch its own console, like Sony did to Nintendo once already, and like MS did to SEGA on the Dreamcast.

 

Nvidia is preparing the presentation of the 2017 version of android tv.
Last version was tegra X1 with 2GHz for cpu and 1GHz for gpu, so next version will be ouch for switch's cpu and please no for switch's gpu

 

I think because of the future viability of the platform and Nintendo as a company. Nintendo's market is always shrinking. They needed (to some of our minds) a platform that'd grow their market share by appealing to a wider audience. A console that could pander to the COD/FIFA crowd as well as the Nintendo Portable crowd could have done that, whereas a new portable is only going to appeal to the (ever shrinking) Nintendo portable audience in all likelihood.

I suppose the good news here really is, if these specs are true, Nintendo is probably a step closer to releasing their games on other platforms. They'll be developing skills using nVidia tools and GPU that'll be portable to other consoles, instead of their own esoteric hardware. Switch comes out end of 2017; a couple years after that of lousy sales and no software because 3rd party avoid it*; maybe first PS/XB games from Nintendo in 2020?

* Any chance of Nintendo having an open platform so indies can target this without jumping through hoops? Probably not seeing as its Nintendo, so likely not even a PSN/XBL type indie library that Vita offers.

 

If these specs are true, Switch is roughly equivalent to last gen consoles. Pretty good specs for a handheld gaming device, but not impressive compared to home consoles. Scorpio will be out next Christmas (~4x faster than XBox One), meaning that Switch would be already 2 gens behind competing home consoles next Christmas. As a handheld, Switch however has zero competition. Huge jump over Nintendo 3DS and PS Vita.

 

My next smartphone will probably be a xiaomi mi 5, cheaper than switch and in the same range.
I don't have benchmark at the moment, but the SD821 must be faster than 1/3 maxwell.

 

An off-topic (not clocks related ) question - is it known if the console can be connected to TV without the dock?

I mean if it's selling point is that it's portable, it would be great if you could take it travelling and then connect it to whatever TV you have available at your destination, even if it'd only stretch the 720p image to the native res of the screen. Also, can you even charge the thing without the dock?

 

But we know Parker is 2 Denver cores and 4 A57 cores. Even if the 16nm node helps with perf/watt, it makes no sense for Nvidia to use A57 for 16nm FinFet when A72 is much smaller and already old by now. It must be because automotive validation is behind the mobile scene. So im not sure if the next Shield TV is an upgrade, it could very well be a cost effective version for 99 dollars. Im not sure what Nvidia could do to make the next Shield tv more desirable , it already has 4K and HDR support, it chews through all games easily.

 

do you go by the name Thraktor on neogaf by any chance, i'm sorry you find these specs so hard to accept and are really reaching for straws, i still remember the same thing happened to you when wiiu was shown to be 176 gflops, you wouldn't accept it.

shield 2 is not in competition with switch, the shield 1 destroys the 3ds, and the didn't stop the 3ds from destroying it in sales.

 

There is also the SmachZ

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/smach-z-the-handheld-gaming-pc-games#/

They claim to be using an AMD RX-421BD with 8 GCN 1.2 CUs at 800 MHz and 4 x86 excavator cores at 2.1GHz.

I personally doubt the final product will be that powerful, they will probably have to underclock the GPU or disable some CUs.

 

Im not saying Parker is not an improvement. We already know its specs, im saying it was an odd decision to include 4 A57 cores if they were planning on using it for Shield, A72 is much smaller and could have saved them some space.