6 ms·

Specs haven't been released, but nvidia has a press release claiming it is powered by a custom tegra processor: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/10/20/nintend

by deelowe 10y ago

Specs haven't been released, but nvidia has a press release claiming it is powered by a custom tegra processor: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/10/20/nintendo-switch/ https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/10/20/nintendo-switch/ It's probably safe to assume it will be a customized version the latest or an upcoming model. I believe this puts the system in the PS4/Xbone ballpark.

cdash 10y ago
Unless there is a separate GPU contained within that docking station that is extremely unlikely to have the processing power of a PS4/Xbox One and especially so the PS4+ and Xbox One+. That would mean that either some games could not be played while in mobile mode or they will be degraded significantly performance/graphics wise when in mobile mode. There is just no way they could pack the hardware/cooling/battery into a mobile device.
- dharma1 10y ago
  Nvidia X1 already is 1 tflops GPU and the X2 (which is likely to be in the nintendo) is going to be around 1.5 tflops. Those are mobile SoC's with CUDA cores, fit OK in tablets (Pixel C has one), X1 peak power consumption is about 10 watts. Xbox one GPU is 1.3 tflops and PS4 is 1.8 tflops. So in the same ballpark
  - fullofit 10y ago
    1. tflops is pretty meaningless, especially between different GPU architectures. 2. Both Xbox and PS4 consume around 100W. Unless the Switch has 10x the perf/watt, it seems like performance won't be comparable. 3. Both Xbox and PS4 have massive heat sinks and fans, so they'll be able to sustain higher perf for longer.
    - msbarnett 10y ago
      The X1/X2 are big.LITTLE setups. Between that and various other leaks, it seems that the Switch is designed to run on the low-power LITTLE CPU/GPU in mobile mode and on the beefier Watt-burning big cores when docked. Not clear on how they're cooling it, though
  - Narishma 10y ago
    That 1 TFLOPS on the Tegra is for 16-bit floats I believe while the TFLOPS on the Xbox One and PS4 are for 32-bit floats.
    - dharma1 10y ago
      That is a good catch, double speed FP16, so FP32 perf should be half that on the X1. While useful for some things (like neural network inference and I guess some shaders) it's not directly comparable - NVidia style marketing
      - banachtarski 10y ago
        This was the same deal with how CPUs were (mis)marketed for years. Higher clockspeeds don't mean anything unless the pipelines are identical. A much smarter chip with larger cache sizes, branch prediction, SIMT, ultra-wide registers, better instruction caching, etc might have half the clockspeed of a dumber chip and outperform it by a huge margin. GPUs are no different in that texture caches, vertex buffer sizes, warp sizes, etc all play a big part and you really can't compare flops unless comparing two GPUs of the same product line.
- greendragon 10y ago
  I was thinking before the blog post confirmed the Tegra (and I had already known of the Tegra rumors from months ago) that by March 2017 it ought to be possible to stick one and maybe two GTX 1080s in that form factor... There's already a laptop that crammed two of them inside. That would make for a killer powerhouse. Of course it's modern Nintendo, they don't care about technical capability...
- ndesaulniers 10y ago
  maybe by having a smaller rendering target (lower res) on mobile they can run just fine.
adrusi 10y ago
Very unlikely that this has performance that competes with Sony and Microsoft. This is an integrated GPU on a battery-powered device with limited thermal regulation. The PS4 and Xbox One are always plugged in to AC and have plenty of space for a proper cooling system. That's OK, this time the console actually takes advantage of weaker performance to offer a better form-factor. Whether that tradeoff satisfies consumers is yet to be seen.
- monk_e_boy 10y ago
  Agreed. They show off Skyrim which is an xbox 360 game.
  - favorited 10y ago
    Presumably it is the upcoming remaster, which is Xbox One & PS4.
  - pwthornton 10y ago
    It appears to the the upcoming definitive edition remaster. It looks like the power is somewhere between Xbox 360 and Xbox One. The specs I saw showed it with 4 GBs of ram, which would put it clearly above Xbox 360/PS3 power and even a bit above the Wii U, which can do way better looking games than Xbox 360/PS3. We shall see what the final specs and games look like, but what they showed off looked pretty good. It won't be PS4 Pro or Xbox One Scorpio powerful, but it's a device you can use on the go (or for second-screen gaming, which might be the killer app here).
- ben174 10y ago
  There is a lot of speculation in the community that when docked, additional video processing will be available in the hardware within the dock. When undocked, they can scale down resolution and frame rate for the smaller screen.
  - macspoofing 10y ago
    >There is a lot of speculation in the community that when docked, additional video processing will be available in the hardware within the dock. Doubt it. Not a trivial problem to solve technically and console pricing is inflexible - they need to sell this thing for under $400, and Nintendo hates subsidizing hardware.
criddell 10y ago
> I believe this puts the system in the PS4/Xbone ballpark That's it? The PS4 is three years old now. They should be able to make something significantly better at this point.
- Xixi 10y ago
  The PS4 doesn't run on a battery though, so if they can get roughly the same power with a much lower power consumption it's already really good.
  - criddell 10y ago
    That's a good point, hadn't thought of the battery. Apple is claiming that the iPhone 7 has console-level graphics capabilities. If that's true (and I have no idea what that actually means), then Nintendo should be able to come up with something even better since they have so much more room for battery and have lots of expertise in making consoles.
    - cdash 10y ago
      It is purely marketing.
ndesaulniers 10y ago
Good find. I doubt an ARM64 based Tegra can compete just yet with an x86_64 chip, even if made by AMD.
- amaranth 10y ago
  The x86-64 chip in question is AMD's Jaguar design which was meant to be used in tablets. The only reason the consoles had more power than you'd get in a tablet at launch is because they had 8 cores at high clock speeds while an actual tablet using Jaguar would presumably only have 2. It's been a few years and the ARM64 designs are pretty impressive so if this is a quad core part or better it should be competitive.

by deelowe 10y ago

cdash 10y ago

Unless there is a separate GPU contained within that docking station that is extremely unlikely to have the processing power of a PS4/Xbox One and especially so the PS4+ and Xbox One+. That would mean that either some games could not be played while in mobile mode or they will be degraded significantly performance/graphics wise when in mobile mode. There is just no way they could pack the hardware/cooling/battery into a mobile device.

dharma1 10y ago
Nvidia X1 already is 1 tflops GPU and the X2 (which is likely to be in the nintendo) is going to be around 1.5 tflops. Those are mobile SoC's with CUDA cores, fit OK in tablets (Pixel C has one), X1 peak power consumption is about 10 watts. Xbox one GPU is 1.3 tflops and PS4 is 1.8 tflops. So in the same ballpark
- fullofit 10y ago
  1. tflops is pretty meaningless, especially between different GPU architectures. 2. Both Xbox and PS4 consume around 100W. Unless the Switch has 10x the perf/watt, it seems like performance won't be comparable. 3. Both Xbox and PS4 have massive heat sinks and fans, so they'll be able to sustain higher perf for longer.
  - msbarnett 10y ago
    The X1/X2 are big.LITTLE setups. Between that and various other leaks, it seems that the Switch is designed to run on the low-power LITTLE CPU/GPU in mobile mode and on the beefier Watt-burning big cores when docked. Not clear on how they're cooling it, though
- Narishma 10y ago
  That 1 TFLOPS on the Tegra is for 16-bit floats I believe while the TFLOPS on the Xbox One and PS4 are for 32-bit floats.
  - dharma1 10y ago
    That is a good catch, double speed FP16, so FP32 perf should be half that on the X1. While useful for some things (like neural network inference and I guess some shaders) it's not directly comparable - NVidia style marketing
    - banachtarski 10y ago
      This was the same deal with how CPUs were (mis)marketed for years. Higher clockspeeds don't mean anything unless the pipelines are identical. A much smarter chip with larger cache sizes, branch prediction, SIMT, ultra-wide registers, better instruction caching, etc might have half the clockspeed of a dumber chip and outperform it by a huge margin. GPUs are no different in that texture caches, vertex buffer sizes, warp sizes, etc all play a big part and you really can't compare flops unless comparing two GPUs of the same product line.
greendragon 10y ago
I was thinking before the blog post confirmed the Tegra (and I had already known of the Tegra rumors from months ago) that by March 2017 it ought to be possible to stick one and maybe two GTX 1080s in that form factor... There's already a laptop that crammed two of them inside. That would make for a killer powerhouse. Of course it's modern Nintendo, they don't care about technical capability...
ndesaulniers 10y ago
maybe by having a smaller rendering target (lower res) on mobile they can run just fine.

adrusi 10y ago

Very unlikely that this has performance that competes with Sony and Microsoft. This is an integrated GPU on a battery-powered device with limited thermal regulation. The PS4 and Xbox One are always plugged in to AC and have plenty of space for a proper cooling system. That's OK, this time the console actually takes advantage of weaker performance to offer a better form-factor. Whether that tradeoff satisfies consumers is yet to be seen.

monk_e_boy 10y ago
Agreed. They show off Skyrim which is an xbox 360 game.
- favorited 10y ago
  Presumably it is the upcoming remaster, which is Xbox One & PS4.
- pwthornton 10y ago
  It appears to the the upcoming definitive edition remaster. It looks like the power is somewhere between Xbox 360 and Xbox One. The specs I saw showed it with 4 GBs of ram, which would put it clearly above Xbox 360/PS3 power and even a bit above the Wii U, which can do way better looking games than Xbox 360/PS3. We shall see what the final specs and games look like, but what they showed off looked pretty good. It won't be PS4 Pro or Xbox One Scorpio powerful, but it's a device you can use on the go (or for second-screen gaming, which might be the killer app here).
ben174 10y ago
There is a lot of speculation in the community that when docked, additional video processing will be available in the hardware within the dock. When undocked, they can scale down resolution and frame rate for the smaller screen.
- macspoofing 10y ago
  >There is a lot of speculation in the community that when docked, additional video processing will be available in the hardware within the dock. Doubt it. Not a trivial problem to solve technically and console pricing is inflexible - they need to sell this thing for under $400, and Nintendo hates subsidizing hardware.

criddell 10y ago

> I believe this puts the system in the PS4/Xbone ballpark That's it? The PS4 is three years old now. They should be able to make something significantly better at this point.

Xixi 10y ago
The PS4 doesn't run on a battery though, so if they can get roughly the same power with a much lower power consumption it's already really good.
- criddell 10y ago
  That's a good point, hadn't thought of the battery. Apple is claiming that the iPhone 7 has console-level graphics capabilities. If that's true (and I have no idea what that actually means), then Nintendo should be able to come up with something even better since they have so much more room for battery and have lots of expertise in making consoles.
  - cdash 10y ago
    It is purely marketing.

ndesaulniers 10y ago

Good find. I doubt an ARM64 based Tegra can compete just yet with an x86_64 chip, even if made by AMD.

amaranth 10y ago
The x86-64 chip in question is AMD's Jaguar design which was meant to be used in tablets. The only reason the consoles had more power than you'd get in a tablet at launch is because they had 8 cores at high clock speeds while an actual tablet using Jaguar would presumably only have 2. It's been a few years and the ARM64 designs are pretty impressive so if this is a quad core part or better it should be competitive.