Switch 2 Speculation

With the TDP modes for Orin could we see very low clocks for both modes (lower than the Switch's) and disabled SMs with a minor downclock for handheld mode rather than a big clock difference? 15W TDP mode for both the 14 SM/32GB and 16 SM/64GB models have 420.75MHz GPU core max with 3 TPCs/6 SMs active (646 Gflops), CPU is 1113.6MHz max with 4 cores active (down from 8/12) with RAM down to 4266MT/s RAM which is 34, 68, or 136.5GB/s (64/128/256 bit bus). TDP is generally higher than actual power consumption of course but I can't imagine they're disabling SMs/cores and downclocking for no reason plus Nintendo claim the Switch uses 4W handheld, 7W docked old, 6W OLED which seems accurate.

Given those concessions to hit Orin's 15W TDP, 6 SM @250-300MHz (384-461Gflops) for handheld (4W) and 12 SM (768-922Gflops) for docked mode (7W), 1GHz CPU? It does sound incredibly low but Orin's TDP increases rapidly - 30W TDP is 8 SM @624.75MHz, 40W TDP is 14 SM @828.75MHz. Originally I was thinking 12 SMs active at all times with 300MHz handheld/750MHz docked but that doesn't look remotely possible looking at the power modes, even on TSMC 5/4N. Thoughts?
 
With the TDP modes for Orin could we see very low clocks for both modes (lower than the Switch's) and disabled SMs with a minor downclock for handheld mode rather than a big clock difference? 15W TDP mode for both the 14 SM/32GB and 16 SM/64GB models have 420.75MHz GPU core max with 3 TPCs/6 SMs active (646 Gflops), CPU is 1113.6MHz max with 4 cores active (down from 8/12) with RAM down to 4266MT/s RAM which is 34, 68, or 136.5GB/s (64/128/256 bit bus). TDP is generally higher than actual power consumption of course but I can't imagine they're disabling SMs/cores and downclocking for no reason plus Nintendo claim the Switch uses 4W handheld, 7W docked old, 6W OLED which seems accurate.

Given those concessions to hit Orin's 15W TDP, 6 SM @250-300MHz (384-461Gflops) for handheld (4W) and 12 SM (768-922Gflops) for docked mode (7W), 1GHz CPU? It does sound incredibly low but Orin's TDP increases rapidly - 30W TDP is 8 SM @624.75MHz, 40W TDP is 14 SM @828.75MHz. Originally I was thinking 12 SMs active at all times with 300MHz handheld/750MHz docked but that doesn't look remotely possible looking at the power modes, even on TSMC 5/4N. Thoughts?

Are you considering everything that is consuming power and won't be on a console like a switch 2?


People from another forum messes with a Jetson tool (on nvidia's website) called PowerEstimator. Here a some results that, maybe, can give us a better picture for CPU and GPU power consumption (this one was posted by Saferz I believe)

Orin_power_estimations.png
 
Not 100% related, but do you think nVidia will use the soc destined to the switch 2, in a new shield tv ? or vice versa. Same SoC, lower clock, more ram, like the switch is vs the present shield tv ?
 
Are you considering everything that is consuming power and won't be on a console like a switch 2?


People from another forum messes with a Jetson tool (on nvidia's website) called PowerEstimator. Here a some results that, maybe, can give us a better picture for CPU and GPU power consumption (this one was posted by Saferz I believe)
That's good info but is still looks high for portable mode. For demanding online games 6 TPC 420MHz is 5.7W for the GPU, 1.4-2W CPU, then the rest of the system like screen at medium brightness, wifi, storage etc is probably 2-3W so that's about 9-10W total. GPU power consumption from 420 to 522MHz is +0.8W, going down to 250-300MHz probably scales similarly, say -1-1.5W which puts it on the edge. I'm more optimistic but not 100% convinced about 6 TPC for portable, 3TPC 420MHz is 3.3W, 2.4W less so about 6.5-7.5W total which sounds much more realistic

6 TPC 624MHz is 8.6W, again 1.4-2W CPU, docked doesn't use the screen which saves power so 1-1.5W (excluding USB ports and other docked features), 11-12W docked sounds plausible. Wishlist would be 6 TPC 250MHz portable, 600MHz docked, 1GHz CPU but definitely not expecting it
 
That's good info but is still looks high for portable mode. For demanding online games 6 TPC 420MHz is 5.7W for the GPU, 1.4-2W CPU, then the rest of the system like screen at medium brightness, wifi, storage etc is probably 2-3W so that's about 9-10W total. GPU power consumption from 420 to 522MHz is +0.8W, going down to 250-300MHz probably scales similarly, say -1-1.5W which puts it on the edge. I'm more optimistic but not 100% convinced about 6 TPC for portable, 3TPC 420MHz is 3.3W, 2.4W less so about 6.5-7.5W total which sounds much more realistic

6 TPC 624MHz is 8.6W, again 1.4-2W CPU, docked doesn't use the screen which saves power so 1-1.5W (excluding USB ports and other docked features), 11-12W docked sounds plausible. Wishlist would be 6 TPC 250MHz portable, 600MHz docked, 1GHz CPU but definitely not expecting it

This sounds right-ish for power. There's no reason to think it'll be anywhere other than near 7w again. They've got size, weight, battery life, and cost considerations all weighing them down, as well as making sure it appeals to kids and adults like while being cheap enough to be mainstream.

However I'd doubt anything like those clockspeeds will show up, simply because it'd be a waste of silicon. Some sort of smaller chip than assumed here seems more likely. Exponential power to performance also means at very low speed increasing clockspeed takes incredibly little power. We've not seen any major hardware release, CPU or GPU, sub 1ghz for a very long time outside stuff like rasberry pis. I don't see Nintendo wasting money on silicon just to get half a watt, especially not with their preference for profit margins on hardware from the beginning.

Will game streaming handheld devices provide competition to the Switch or Switch 2?
We just saw Stadia shut down, I've been trying MS's cloud for a lark and man story games are unplayable, you can't have totally incoherent glitch frames that take a slow scanline to fix after every camera cut and have a good time.
 
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I've been trying MS's cloud for a lark and man story games are unplayable, you can't have totally incoherent glitch frames that take a slow scanline to fix after every camera cut and have a good time.

My last two weeks of xCloud has been great. Mostly glitch free and responsive when playing stuff like AC: Odyssey (again, heaven help me. It's like an action adventure clicker game).

One of the issue with cloud gaming is that we can have such wildly different experiences. Based on my last few weeks I'd say streaming handhelds are a fantastic idea, especially when the small screen hides compression artefacts. In periods where it's been more like your experience, I'd always want something that could run things locally.
 
And the Switch's battery life notably kinda sucks, there's a very large percentage of customers that would really prefer another hour of battery life over "moar pixels" if there's a tradeoff,
What revision of Switch are you referring to? Switch units with the X1 Mariko revision get 5-6 hours of battery life, and I think that is well within expectations for consumers. I would bet most Deck users playing with settings that drain the battery in less than 3 hours, so for Switch 2 I think anything north of 4 hours would be good and north of 3 would be adequate.
 
That's good info but is still looks high for portable mode. For demanding online games 6 TPC 420MHz is 5.7W for the GPU, 1.4-2W CPU, then the rest of the system like screen at medium brightness, wifi, storage etc is probably 2-3W so that's about 9-10W total. GPU power consumption from 420 to 522MHz is +0.8W, going down to 250-300MHz probably scales similarly, say -1-1.5W which puts it on the edge. I'm more optimistic but not 100% convinced about 6 TPC for portable, 3TPC 420MHz is 3.3W, 2.4W less so about 6.5-7.5W total which sounds much more realistic

6 TPC 624MHz is 8.6W, again 1.4-2W CPU, docked doesn't use the screen which saves power so 1-1.5W (excluding USB ports and other docked features), 11-12W docked sounds plausible. Wishlist would be 6 TPC 250MHz portable, 600MHz docked, 1GHz CPU but definitely not expecting it
Yeah this is my chart, it's important to remember that these numbers are at high load, when comparing to Zelda botw at launch (Erista 20nm), that is why I made a medium load to the right for each number. This better reflects the comparison with Zelda botw's power draw in portable mode and docked mode as those numbers were widely reported.

On Erista launch Switch models, with everything at minimum/off, portable mode during gameplay was 7.1w and with everything on/max brightness, it was 9w. Nintendo said that gameplay during Zelda was about 3 hours, and with a 7.1w power consumption on a 21.5wh battery, yeah 3 hours is about right. We know from the above power draw that during Zelda gameplay, the SoC drew a little over 5w.

We also know now that LPDDR5 uses 1.5w for 128bit @ 102GB/s, which is the likely RAM configuration for Drake, also from the hack earlier this year, we know that all SMs are active at all times, there is no configuration in the NVN2 API for fewer than 12SM.

I think we should take into account increased battery density, which increases about 5% per year, now I'm not saying that we will see a ~6000mah battery, but given entry level smart phones use 5000Mah, and Switch had a 4315Mah battery which at 5v was 21.5wh, 5000Mah @5v is 25wh, so the SoC could draw around 7watts considering that the original Switch's screen was a huge power waster, and with OLED, you'd consume a lot less, giving you up to 9w for the whole system at minimum spec would be very similar battery life for a Drake exclusive. It's worth noting that power draw should be much lower for Switch games, and with TotK being a likely launch target, they could probably advertise over 5 hours in that game.

Anyways, with everything taken into account, I think something around the 420MHz GPU (5.1w) ~1.3TFLOPs, and ~1.5GHz CPU (2.1w) would be fine (especially because the OS core could be minimum clocked, offering a ~1.85w). It's worth noting that botw is not the most demanding game on Switch, and launch units can see ~2hours of game play on the most demanding titles, suggesting that the original SoC can draw around 7w total.

All the estimates are on Samsung 8nm, which is currently the worst case scenario, it's possible that they are actually using a more advance node, that being Samsung 5nm, TSMC 6nm or TSMC's 4N (Nvidia's custom 5nm process node). All of which would allow for much higher clocks.

As for docked clocks, I think the CPU will remain at the same clock just like with the current Switch, but the GPU will probably ~double it's clock speed, suggesting a ~2.5TFLOPs docked performance on 8nm.
 
Here's what they've had to say recently with respect to backwards compatibility ...

For comparison, the leading current generation console vendor confirmed backwards compatibility for the new system when they were nearly 18 months in advance of launch ...
 
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This sounds right-ish for power. There's no reason to think it'll be anywhere other than near 7w again. They've got size, weight, battery life, and cost considerations all weighing them down, as well as making sure it appeals to kids and adults like while being cheap enough to be mainstream.

However I'd doubt anything like those clockspeeds will show up, simply because it'd be a waste of silicon. Some sort of smaller chip than assumed here seems more likely. Exponential power to performance also means at very low speed increasing clockspeed takes incredibly little power. We've not seen any major hardware release, CPU or GPU, sub 1ghz for a very long time outside stuff like rasberry pis. I don't see Nintendo wasting money on silicon just to get half a watt, especially not with their preference for profit margins on hardware from the beginning.


We just saw Stadia shut down, I've been trying MS's cloud for a lark and man story games are unplayable, you can't have totally incoherent glitch frames that take a slow scanline to fix after every camera cut and have a good time.

We could see larger silicon than normal in order to improve the docked experience. Assuming Nintendo sticks with a 720p screen, the GPU clocks could be very low keeping thermals/energy consumption very low. Meanwhile in docked mode it can bump up to 700-800Mhz in to get the rendering resolution at 1080p so that the DLSS can take it to 4K with good results. We have seen the AMD 5560U used in many of the AYANEO units and that is a 180mm2 processor so its perfectly feasible for the next Switch to use a processor that large. The Tegra X1 is far smaller, but its not a requirement to be that small to fit within the Switch form factor. The extra silicon doesnt come free of course, but I suspect Nintendo feels comfortable releasing the next Switch at $399 after seeing the Switch OLED model becoming the most popular model at $350.

Here's what they've had to say recently with respect to backwards compatibility ...

For comparison, the leading current generation console vendor confirmed backwards compatibility for the new system when they were nearly 18 months in advance of launch ...

I fully expect the next Switch to include backwards compatibility, but I do think it will be separated from the Switch 2 eshop. They will want to be able to have a clean break from the OG Switch on the digital store front. I wouldn't be surprised if they handled it similar to how the Wii U included a Virtual Wii application. It would be great if the new hardware could play old games with improved resolution and performance, but Nintendo being Nintendo I doubt that will happen.
 
Everything is apparently possible if you want to pay for it. I see no reason why they wouldn't go for the increased fidelity you would be getting by going 1080p internally. There should still be a lot of performance headroom going from the 2015 SoC to a modern one.

The 5nm Apple M2 in the MacBook Air have less of a heatsink than the Nintendo Switch.
 
My mind is exploding at the idea that switch will be on the same level as Xbox one and PS4.

The fact that it will be in that ballpark regardless of Nintendo likely going cheap and ultra conservative on the components(due to being Nintendo) and power draw(to account for being a handheld and a small form factor) truly shows the power of how efficient technology has become since 2013.

It's essentially on the same level as a generation behind despite being less than 1/10th the power draw. And DLSS will allow for them to target 1080p or below while still getting good picture quality for 4k screens.

You may laugh at me for being shocked but its so unbelievable. Atleast in ps4s case even the base model holds up very well 9 years on. So switch getting to that level is insane to think about
 
Everything is apparently possible if you want to pay for it. I see no reason why they wouldn't go for the increased fidelity you would be getting by going 1080p internally. There should still be a lot of performance headroom going from the 2015 SoC to a modern one.

The 5nm Apple M2 in the MacBook Air have less of a heatsink than the Nintendo Switch.
Its not that they couldn't do it but more so I do not see Nintendo investing much into making their new hardware play old games with better results. Nintendo wants to sell you new hardware so you can purchase new games. There isnt a great deal of incentive to sell customers new hardware and have them spending a lot of time playing games they had previously purchased.
My mind is exploding at the idea that switch will be on the same level as Xbox one and PS4.

The fact that it will be in that ballpark regardless of Nintendo likely going cheap and ultra conservative on the components(due to being Nintendo) and power draw(to account for being a handheld and a small form factor) truly shows the power of how efficient technology has become since 2013.

It's essentially on the same level as a generation behind despite being less than 1/10th the power draw. And DLSS will allow for them to target 1080p or below while still getting good picture quality for 4k screens.

You may laugh at me for being shocked but its so unbelievable. Atleast in ps4s case even the base model holds up very well 9 years on. So switch getting to that level is insane to think about

Switch has been in the same boat as it offers similar capabilities to the PS3/360 when in portable mode and in docked mode Switch has been able to bump the resolution of games in that era to 900p-1080p. So really the hardware one ups the previous generation while falling far short of the current gen. DLSS is going to be a big deal for the next Switch. Docked play is often where gamers we a bit disappointed with the image quality when playing their Switch on a big 4K display. We have seen with the Steam Deck that PS4 level visuals look great on a 7" screen leaving no doubt the next Switch will offer an excellent portable experience. In docked mode with raw power matching or surpassing the PS4 coupled DLSS should make for a respectable docked experience, even on a large 4K display.

With products like the Steam Deck and AYANEO, we have plenty of insight on what level of performance to expect with the next Switch. As we have seen with the Switch, a low level API with quality development tools allows a console to punch above its weight compared to similar PC hardware.
 
Switch has been in the same boat as it offers similar capabilities to the PS3/360 when in portable mode and in docked mode Switch has been able to bump the resolution of games in that era to 900p-1080p. So really the hardware one ups the previous generation while falling far short of the current gen. DLSS is going to be a big deal for the next Switch. Docked play is often where gamers we a bit disappointed with the image quality when playing their Switch on a big 4K display. We have seen with the Steam Deck that PS4 level visuals look great on a 7" screen leaving no doubt the next Switch will offer an excellent portable experience. In docked mode with raw power matching or surpassing the PS4 coupled DLSS should make for a respectable docked experience, even on a large 4K display.

With products like the Steam Deck and AYANEO, we have plenty of insight on what level of performance to expect with the next Switch. As we have seen with the Switch, a low level API with quality development tools allows a console to punch above its weight compared to similar PC hardware.
I may actually get the switch 2 at this rate. Haven't seriously played a Nintendo system since the GameCube. I owned a Wii u but got burned on that purchase quick.

Didn't buy a switch because I saw games outside of Nintendo first party have performance issues and really bad resolution when I would want to primarily be using it for tv play.

Despite switch 2 being on the same level as switch was compared to it's counterparts, in reality switch 2 will hold up a lot more on its own terms especially with Nvidia recent advancements that will trickle down to them.
 
@Shifty Geezer thats not how I read it.

Previously, software development for dedicated video game systems was conducted in development environments dedicated to each hardware platform. This meant that those environments could not be brought forward when the hardware changed, and it would become impossible to play software released for previous hardware without making changes. However, the software development environments have recently been gradually integrated. So, generally speaking, it has become easier to implement an environment where software released for past hardware can be played on new hardware. Having said so, Nintendo's strength is in our creation of new entertainment, so when we release new hardware going forward, we plan to continue to offer new and unique gameplay that cannot be realized on existing hardware.

To me this is saying that offering backwards compatibility is more accessible now that it was in the past but dont expect this to be a a top priority. Nintendo has a good track record of offering backwards compatibility on many of their consoles and even more so on their portable hardware. I suspect Nintendo will include the feature but perhaps not to the same level as Sony and Microsoft where you can play previous generation games with better results.
 
With the TDP modes for Orin could we see very low clocks for both modes (lower than the Switch's) and disabled SMs with a minor downclock for handheld mode rather than a big clock difference? 15W TDP mode for both the 14 SM/32GB and 16 SM/64GB models have 420.75MHz GPU core max with 3 TPCs/6 SMs active (646 Gflops), CPU is 1113.6MHz max with 4 cores active (down from 8/12) with RAM down to 4266MT/s RAM which is 34, 68, or 136.5GB/s (64/128/256 bit bus). TDP is generally higher than actual power consumption of course but I can't imagine they're disabling SMs/cores and downclocking for no reason plus Nintendo claim the Switch uses 4W handheld, 7W docked old, 6W OLED which seems accurate.

Given those concessions to hit Orin's 15W TDP, 6 SM @250-300MHz (384-461Gflops) for handheld (4W) and 12 SM (768-922Gflops) for docked mode (7W), 1GHz CPU? It does sound incredibly low but Orin's TDP increases rapidly - 30W TDP is 8 SM @624.75MHz, 40W TDP is 14 SM @828.75MHz. Originally I was thinking 12 SMs active at all times with 300MHz handheld/750MHz docked but that doesn't look remotely possible looking at the power modes, even on TSMC 5/4N. Thoughts?

Switch draws 7-9w mobile, and up 15w docked.

Anyway Orin sounded good, but looking at it closer looks just plain too big for Switch 2. They'll go with another 7w ish tdp for any number of reasons, and running clocks that low makes no sense from either a perf/watt perspective or per/$ as you get exponentially less power saving as you cut clockspeeds below about 2.2ghz (on recent nodes). By the time you get that low bumping up clockspeeds is almost free from a power perspective. Might as well cut the chip in half and double the clockspeeds.

A very vaguely "Xbox One" ish performance, which is below the Steamdeck but not dramatically, seems a reasonable target.

As I understand it, they are saying games can be rebuilt for the new system and they themselves aren't interested in maintaining a transparent back-catalogue experience?

Seems just the opposite, Miyamoto heavily implying BC will just work or at the very least be almost free to do for a number of games, maybe all of them, on Switch 2 thanks to the shift in SW development environments.
 
Anyway Orin sounded good, but looking at it closer looks just plain too big for Switch 2.

The full sized Orin chip is certainly to big but there are smaller lower power variants that would work. If you look at the Orin NX and Nano variants we could be looking at a 1024 GPU cores, 6 A78 CPU cores, 32 Tensor cores on 128bit memory bus. There have been rumors/claims that the big Nvidia leak provided proof that there would be 12 SM blocks so 1536 GPU cores, but I haven't ever seen a good proper link to this documentation, so I will remain cautious and still consider that a rumor. The Orin chips have a lot of hardware that does nothing for gaming, so if Nvidia really does have the "Drake" variant, its possible that a lot of die space was freed up for more GPU cores. Nvidia has a history of not providing custom hardware to console manufactures, but instead they sell them off the shelf products. I suspect whatever Nintendo ultimately uses, Nintendo will not have exclusive rights to the SOC and Nvidia could use it in future Shield products.

Switch 2 is coming May 2023. Nintendo delayed Zelda TotK and essentially gave no reason. With Zelda games now taking around 5 years to develop its hard to see a scenario where Nintendo releases Zelda on Switch in 2023 and turns around releases a new Switch in 2024 and wouldn't have a new Zelda ready for 3-4 years into its life cycle. When you look at it historically, Nintendo releases its new consoles every 5-6 years. Nintendo has a track record of releasing new hardware alongside a Zelda title. Wii launched with with Zelda TP, New 3DS launched with Zelda MM and Switch launched with Zelda BoTW. The delay of Zelda TotK makes very little sense, missing the 2022 Christmas season, unless of course that is to launch alongside Switch 2 in May of 2023. I suspect the announcement to happen sometime in January giving 4 months of time to spready awareness.
 
The full fat Nvidia Orin die size is 455mm2
FV1Yz7saMAABcZ2.jpg

That is a lot of die space dedicated to hardware that isnt the GPU cores or the CPU cores compared to something like the PS4 APU.

ps4-reverse-engineered-apu.jpg

I will be interested to see the die photo for the Orin NX variants when they become available, which should be very soon.
 
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