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> The SoC also contains a cluster of four A53 cores for power efficient processing, but Nintendo has chosen not to use them. The rumor I've heard is that there
by monocasa 3y ago
> The SoC also contains a cluster of four A53 cores for power efficient processing, but Nintendo has chosen not to use them.
The rumor I've heard is that there's a bug in the system crossbar which makes which core CCX you enable after reset the only choice you can make until the system is fully reset. That is, if you enable the A57 CCX, later enabling the A53 CCX triggers the bug and vis versa, even with the first CCX disabled when enabling the second.
- moffkalast 3y agoReally weird for Nintendo to have picked such a completely broken SoC.
- monocasa 3y agoProbably got a really good deal on it.
- gjsman-1000 3y agoThe Tegra X1 was also originally, rumoredly, not meant for Nintendo. https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-launches-tegra-x1-mobile-super-chip https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-launches-tegra-x1-... It was going to be for "Deep Learning," "Computer Vision Applications," "NVIDIA DRIVE car computers," and robots. As we know, outside of some Tesla models, that didn't really happen. Rumoredly, according to people who have read the leaked Nintendo documents (Modern Vintage Gamer has implied it in replies to comments on his videos), NVIDIA had found the bug with the recovery mode before the Switch's launch; but Nintendo couldn't just move the announced Switch launch date to wait for a chip revision, especially after the Wii U financial performance. So, off it went and they just had to cross fingers and hope nobody found it. Nintendo probably got a good discount for that mistake too.
- parl_match 3y ago> As we know, outside of some Tesla models, that didn't really happen. As YOU know. The Tegra X1 (which the switch used) was never used in any production automotive application, correct. But you mentioned Tesla, so let's talk about other Tegra generations. Other Tegra generations were used in Teslas in varying quantities (Tegra 2, 3, and K1). Mercedes has been shipping Tegra in their "MBUX" cars for a few years now as well. A couple of Chinese companies are shipping Tegra via NVD. Volvo, Land Rover, and Jaguar are also going to be shipping it shortly as well.
- gjsman-1000 3y agoI don't know why you accuse me as though I said something wrong, and then immediately admit that, yes, the Tegra X1 was never used in any production automotive application. That's what I was talking about - not Tegra as a whole. The only mistake I made was that the Tegra X1 wasn't used in any Tesla models.
- mbf1 3y agoThis is news for nerds. Precision is important! So they fixed your statement. I found it interesting.
- xattt 3y agoPrecision may be important, but is accuracy? ;)
- parl_match 3y agoSorry, I said you were correct, when in fact you weren't.
- extraduder_ire 3y agoA whole lot of the switch's design was about driving down costs as much as they could. That's why it has no mic, camera, and didn't get bluetooth headphone support for years after launch. Plus chipmakers really want those console contracts, even if they make a loss on the first few hundred thousand sold, they're assured sales as long as the console sticks around. AMD made out like bandits with the ps4/xbone.
- m-p-3 3y agoAnd they're likely making a killing with the Steam Deck.
- entropicdrifter 3y agoand soon will be with the PS5 and XBS(S/X) as well, if they aren't already
- Grazester 3y agoSony has broken even with the PS5 in 2021 so I wouldn't be too surprised if on the AMD end of things they are profitable.
- Rapzid 3y agoBluetooth audio is kinda ass for gaming anyway unless you have low latency codec support on your source and consumer which is almost never the case. Sony has their own such codec which is why the audio jack on the PS controllers works so well..
- whynotminot 3y agoI actually use my AirPods with my Switch all the time, and latency isn’t really noticeable. I’m really glad they added the feature.
- mmis1000 3y agoI think its fine unless you are playing something like Taiko no Tatsujin. (And you don't really use hit sound when playing hardest level anyway, it's already too late when you hear it) Most games don't really need such immediate response.
- rkangel 3y agoThey were probably in on it when it was pre-production. This is something that you often want to do as a large customer so that you are as close to the state-of-the-art as possible, but it comes with downsides! I am doing a similar thing on a project at work at the moment.
- phonon 3y agoThe chip shipped 2 years earlier than the Switch in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_Shield_TV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_Shield_TV More likely Nintendo got a really good deal on it.
- rkangel 3y agoYeah, but how long was the Nintendo Switch in development? And bear in mind that we're comparing it to a much simpler bit of Nvidia electronics. It is entirely possible that it was just price based and they didn't care about the chip bug, but given the timings I still think they would have selected the chip before it was complete and in consumer products.
- gjsman-1000 3y agoWell, I think it's important to consider the competition in 2017 was not great. The comparable competitive Android chip, also launched in late 2015, was the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820. That chip was widely known as being one of the worst Qualcomm chips ever made; for mediocre power efficiency, lots of heat generation, thermal throttling, and a buggy first attempt at 64-bit instructions. All that for a GPU that is, on paper, significantly weaker [1] (though, maybe the Switch's cooling could've helped close that gap a bit). But even then, you're dealing with Qualcomm, and everyone knows they are just the worst. First, because Qualcomm loves royalties based on the device's MSRP, rather than a flat charge per chip. Nintendo probably wouldn't like that. Secondly, while NVIDIA GPU drivers are a proprietary blob, that's of little concern to Nintendo, and that blob can be easily adapted to run on any OS under the sun, including their own. Qualcomm - enjoy a hackneyed Linux fork, that's the best you'll get. From our perspective they're both pretty bad, but from Nintendo's perspective trying to add support to their custom microkernel Switch OS, one's clearly garbage. Outside of Qualcomm... what else do you have for 2017? Exynos and MediaTek? I think it goes without saying... there are no upsides to passing on the Tegra X1 for a MediaTek from that era. [1] Edit: I previously said 50% and 100% weaker, but that's very grammatically ambiguous; and FLOPs are a very bad metric of performance, because there are 3 different kinds of FLOP metrics floating around that aren't comparable (due to different levels of precision). Combined with the Tegra being designed for cooling and the Qualcomm designed for no cooling, it's hard to tell specifically how large the gap is, even though a gap is almost certainly there. I think my point still stands.
- hypercube33 3y agoRumor was nVidia was selling them at a discounted price since the only other thing (I am aware of) is the Nvidia shield using these chips so they went with them on that factor.
- polpo 3y agoGunpei Yokoi's ethos of "lateral thinking with withered technology" [1] has been an guiding principle within Nintendo since the Game & Watch days: to use "seasoned" or otherwise imperfect technology in creative ways. Using a broken SoC that they probably got a great deal on that still fits their needs fits perfectly in that mindset. [1] https://medium.com/@adamagb/nintendo-s-little-known-product-philosophy-lateral-thinking-with-withered-technology-bac7257d8f4 https://medium.com/@adamagb/nintendo-s-little-known-product-...
- ycombinatrix 3y agoyou are misunderstanding his quote. who the hell aspires to utilize "imperfect technology"?
- KennyBlanken 3y ago"little known" "lateral thinking with withered technolgoy" Oh, please. Nintendo is infamous for being cheapasses with their hardware design decisions, working to boost profit margins over all else. The N64 is a great example. Top notch graphics which they spent a small mint on...that was then hobbled by a storage format they could exploit more control over, resulting in ported games having to be chopped up.
- mattl 3y agoI think using CDs for N64 games would have sucked. More FMV but crappier games for sure.
- eru 3y agoThe graphics were good for the time, but the memory was super slow.
- monocasa 3y agoThe memory is actually very fast, it just also has large latency, particularly coming from SNES where you essentially had single cycle access to anywhere in memory.
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- gjsman-1000 3y agoThis is additionally odd because according to Wikipedia, citing the Technical manual (wherever you can find that), the A53 cores were so borked that later versions of the manual removed all references of their existence. The Tegra X1+ shipping in all Switches since 2018-2019 might, possibly, not even have the cores.
- colejohnson66 3y agoDoes anyone know what this "bug" manifests as? Your first sentence implies it's a lockout created at reset, but your second implies it manifests post-reset through user/programmer action.
- toast0 3y agoI think they're saying you get to run one CCX at a time; either the A57 cores or the A53 cores and you can only change that once after a reset. Presumably the boot time CCX is selected by selection pins. Depending on exactly what reset means, this might be something like the i286 that couldn't leave protected mode without a reset, so systems were built for OSes that entered protected mode where they could set up a reset vector and then cause a reset and jump back to their real mode kernel. Or, it might be a very intrusive reset that results in memory contents being reset --- that's not going to be something worth engineering around. Either way, it's easier to just only use the A57 cores to begin with, and especially if switching between the two is problematic.
- colejohnson66 3y agoAssuming it is some "at reset" selection, Nvidia advertising it as an eight-core chip would be deceptive, so I'm reluctant to believe such a theory. I wouldn't put it past marketing to do such a thing, but later revisions of the manual don't mention the A53 cores, so I'm inclined to believe it's a hardware bug. Unfortunately, without someone from inside Nvidia telling us, all we have are rumors and no evidence.
- toast0 3y agoARM big.LITTLE systems started out as use one or the other, but not both simultaneously. Advertising those as 8 core when it's really big 4 or LITTLE 4, or later incantations where you could use the big or LITTLE of each of the four paired processors, is sketchy, but was common. If the plan was to allow big 4 or LITTLE 4, and then a hardware bug became apparent that you could switch to LITTLE cores but not back to big cores, well you notify customers and stop advertising the LITTLE cores. archive.org has them mentioned Jun 1 2016 [1], and then removed Jun 14, 2016 [2]; the A53 cores aren't mentioned but are shown in the die map on the current page [3]. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20160601063237/http://www.nvidia.com:80/object/tegra-x1-processor.html https://web.archive.org/web/20160601063237/http://www.nvidia... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20160614200203/http://www.nvidia.com:80/object/tegra-x1-processor.html https://web.archive.org/web/20160614200203/http://www.nvidia... [3] https://developer.nvidia.com/content/tegra-x1 https://developer.nvidia.com/content/tegra-x1