We reported a few weeks back that the recent Nintendo Switch update had a reference to a new SoC. Now more information has been dissected by enthusiast, Mike Heskin. He suggests that there’s now strong evidence which points towards a hardware refresh which would feature the new T214 chip and could also come with a new PCB and 8GB RAM. The current Nintendo Switch mode has 4GB of RAM.
Rumour: Potential Nintendo Switch Hardware Refresh May Feature Updated PCB, 8GB RAM
I’m annoyed already. It’s a YEAR old..
It’s making millions, bro. Smart move.
IT WONT COME OUT YET DOFY it will be year 3 at the earliest
It’s the SCD
That wouldn’t be a PCB and SOC revision.
I don’t see a new powerful Switch now
Yea, they needed it to be more powerful from the beginning. A newer, more powerful chip even two years out wouldn’t fix much unless the original Switch is no longer supported which would be highly unlikely.
Even then, using a TX2 might have a noticeable increase in performance but it would still would struggle to get ports from other systems especially once successors to the PS4 and XBO come out.
Personally, the Switch is fine now, if Nintendo will do an upgrade it will be in 2020
That’s probably true. I’m just saying that I think it’ll struggle more and more as time goes on because of the decisions they already made.
Nintendo just said that they don’t want to focus on upgrading specs on the Switch for awhile, so I doubt we will see 8GB of RAM before they pack in a Tegra X2 or X3.
There is no TX3. They already announced the TX2 successor and its really not well suited for a portable game system at all.
erm yes there is its called tegra Xavier its 16nm and has 8 cpu cores a doubled new gen shader count a all new soc its the direct replacement to x2
NVIDIA ARM SoCs
Xavier Parker Erista (Tegra X1)
CPU 8x NVIDIA Custom ARM 2x NVIDIA Denver +
4x ARM Cortex-A57 4x ARM Cortex-A57 +
4x ARM Cortex-A53
GPU Volta, 512 CUDA Cores Pascal, 256 CUDA Cores Maxwell, 256 CUDA Cores
Memory ? LPDDR4, 128-bit Bus LPDDR3, 64-bit Bus
Video Processing 7680×4320 Encode & Decode 3840x2160p60 Decode
3840x2160p60 Encode 3840x2160p60 Decode
3840x2160p30 Encode
Transistors 7B ? ?
Manufacturing Process TSMC 16nm FinFET+ TSMC 16nm FinFET+ TSMC 20nm Planar
So what’s Xavier? In a nutshell, it’s the next generation of Tegra, done bigger and badder. NVIDIA is essentially aiming to capture much of the complete Drive PX 2 system’s computational power (2x SoC + 2x dGPU) on a single SoC. This SoC will have 7 billion transistors – about as many as a GP104 GPU – and will be built on TSMC’s 16nm FinFET+ process. (To put this in perspective, at GP104-like transistor density, we’d be looking at an SoC nearly 300mm2 big)
Under the hood NVIDIA has revealed just a bit of information of what to expect. The CPU will be composed of 8 custom ARM cores. The name “Denver” wasn’t used in this presentation, so at this point it’s anyone’s guess whether this is Denver 3 or another new design altogether. Meanwhile on the GPU side, we’ll be looking at a Volta-generation design with 512 CUDA Cores. Unfortunately we don’t know anything substantial about Volta at this time; the architecture was bumped further down NVIDIA’s previous roadmaps for Pascal, and as Pascal just launched in the last few months, NVIDIA hasn’t said anything further about it.
Meanwhile NVIDIA’s performance expectations for Xavier are significant. As mentioned before, the company wants to condense much of Drive PX 2 into a single chip. With Xavier, NVIDIA wants to get to 20 Deep Learning Tera-Ops (DL TOPS), which is a metric for measuring 8-bit Integer operations. 20 DL TOPS happens to be what Drive PX 2 can hit, and about 43% of what NVIDIA’s flagship Tesla P40 can offer in a 250W card. And perhaps more surprising still, NVIDIA wants to do this all at 20W, or 1 DL TOPS-per-watt, which is one-quarter of the power consumption of Drive PX 2, a lofty goal given that this is based on the same 16nm process as Pascal and all of the Drive PX 2’s various processors.
NVIDIA’s envisioned application for Xavier, as you might expect, is focused on further ramping up their automotive business. They are pitching Xavier as an “AI Supercomputer” in relation to its planned high INT8 performance, which in turn is a key component of fast neural network inferencing. What NVIDIA is essentially proposing then is a beast of an inference processor, one that unlike their Tesla discrete GPUs can function on a stand-alone basis. Coupled with this will be some new computer vision hardware to feed Xavier, including a pair of 8K video processors and what NVIDIA is calling a “new computer vision accelerator.”
Wrapping things up, as we mentioned before, Xavier is a far future product for NVIDIA. While the company is teasing it today, the SoC won’t begin sampling until Q4 of 2017, and that in turn implies that volume shipments won’t even be until 2018. But with that said, with their new focus on the automotive market, NVIDIA has shifted from an industry of agile competitors and cut-throat competition, to one where their customers would like as much of a heads up as possible. So these kinds of early announcements are likely going to become par for the course for NVIDIA.
oh lok the tegra x2 replacement
complete horse shit x2 is smaller than x1 and uses less watts and produces less heat it would allow a 2x switch in power and a upgraded batary life
were do you get your bull info
Holy shit, you are not great at understanding this stuff.
I never said anything about the size of the TX2 but just because it’s 16nm Finfet doesn’t mean it’s smaller chip. It’s got a memory controller that’s twice as wide, the high performance cores of the TX1 became the lower performance cores of the TX2 but are still a lot bigger than A53s would be, plus the TX2 adds additional blocks like Ethernet, a safety engine, expands the amount of CSI lanes from 6 to 12, and supports a third 4k60 display. So yea, it’s not a direct shrink of the TX1 by any means.
The TX2 also likely doesn’t increase performance over the TX1 by 2x, at least not in GPU prowess. Since the TX1 is already bandwidth constrained. It’s essentially the same GPU but clocked 30% faster and all the other changes in the SoC cause it to use just as much power as the TX1 at max performance. Both use a max of 15 watts though if it were clocked the same as a TX1, it would use less power. I never said anything to contradict this. The 15 W spec only describes the GPU though, it doesn’t include the power usage of the memory and with a 128-bit bus, it requires using twice as many LPDDR4 chips which will obviously use more power than just two. All this info is from Nvidia’s actual documentation.
As for the Xavier, good job copying and pasting an entire article, not understanding it’s context, still posting outdated information, and misunderstanding my original statement. I never said that Xavier wasn’t a TX2 successor, I said it’s not well suited for a portable game system. It targets up to a 30 watt power usage and is completely geared toward computer vision, deep-learning, and AI workloads in self-driving cars where power isn’t as much of a issue and cooling is a non-issue.
According to updated info released by Nvidia this month, Xavier has a 256-bit memory bus which means, you guessed it, twice as many LPDDR4 chips. It’s also not 16nm Finfet chips, it’s 12nm (a branch of the 16nm process) and is 350mm2, which is roughly the same size as the base PS4’s APU from 2013. It has new hardware blocks like 10Gb ethernet, an updated camera interface with way more lanes (MIPI-CSI 3 with 16 lanes vs MIPI-CSI 2 with 12 lanes), and a programmable vision accelerator unit.
The CPU, isn’t a big.Little configuration, it’s eight custom high powered “Carmel” cores running at the same time. There are no cores used for power efficiency.
The GPU, besides having twice as many cores, is a Volta-based GPU which would perform better than the a base XBO but integrates Tensor cores which are designed around computer vision and AI and are a complete waste of power and silicon when it comes to gaming.
This is a very smart move if true. The switch is wonderful but underpower. If it can be pushed to a 1080p screen and match PS4 power, remove docked and undocked differences, maybe squeeze a 7 inch screen in with less bezel then you have a machine set for the next 4 years. Ps4 will still get every major AAA game for the next 3 years so give developers an easy port to switch at the same performance level. Nintendo is not getting into 4k any time soon so this would cover all they need for years. They could then patch all current games to run 1080p handheld. People will think this would need to push the price but 1080p screens and ps4 power is 5 year old tech. Still support the original switch obviously.
It will never remove docked/undocked differences. There’s a reason phones come underclocked most of the time: heat and battery. No matter how strong it is, it’ll create heat. And as long as it’s using all that power and creating heat, it’ll only last for an hour.
Now I feel like they can definitely upgrade it so that the docked now can be the undocked later.
That will only fragment Switch development though and it won’t fix the issue of devs having to support the original Switch’s handheld mode. In fact, it could make ports worse on the original Switch if the updated Switch becomes a priority.
This is an outrageously moronic move if true. The Switch is not remotely underpowered for what it is, a portable machine. Paul, what’s the point of getting the handheld screen to 1080 when the human eye is not capable of seeing the difference on that small of a screen? Meanwhile they would alienate the millions of people who already bought their now second rate version of the Switch, which is precisely why no company releases a hardware revision this early on in a cycle. We won’t see any such hardware revision until at least 2020. They have no interest in investing that kind of money in a new model when the old model is selling like it is.
Cronotose
For gaming tablet meant to get ports of PS4 and XBO, the Switch is absolutely underpowered. Mobile chips have been more capable than the Switch’s handheld more for years now and there have been tablet chips more powerful than it’s docked mode.
While I agree that having a 1080p 6.2″ or 7″ screen would be pulling a mobile gaming system too thin, but please don’t claim that the human eye can’t see the difference between 720p and 1080p on a small screen especially on a 7″ display that you’re holding up to you. People have been selling the human eye waaay short since the initial introduction of HDTVs. When talking about 1080p screens, you’re talking about a display with just over 2 million pixels while, even though the human eye doesn’t see in pixels, is said to be able to see at a resolution of 576 million pixels. Because of this, not only can the human eye see the difference between 720p and 1080p on a 7″ or 6.2″ display easily, but it can also see the difference between 1080p and 1440p on a 5″ display. It may not always be as noticeable but with texts and other high frequency patterns, it’s extremely noticeable.
WHY WOULD YOU WATSE A POWER UGRADE ON A 1080P PORTABLE SCREEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
YOUR NOW WATSING THAT POWER ON A MEANINGLESS RES BOOST INSTEAD OF HIGHER IN GAME RES FPS AND GRAPHICS AND PHYSICS AND EVERYTHING ELSE
A 2XSWITCH WITH THE SAME PEAK RES IN PORTABLE MODE WOULD ALOW 2X AS GOOD LOOKING GAMES WITH BETER EFFECTS TEXTURES LIGHTING FILTERING AA ETC
AND MORE 1080P THAN 900P IN TV MODE WITH SOME GAMES BEATING 1080P NATIVE AND HELPING IN THE 4K TV MODE
NO NEED FOR A 1080P PORTABLE SCREEN YET UNTIL SWITCH 2
STOP. FUCKING. YELLING.
It’s because they know I’ll buy it like the mindless sheep I am…
Same.
I don’t think this’ll be coming soon. Maybe next year.
||I don’t calculate at this moment a possible update where they would alienate the majority of those who bought a Switch since launch…||
||Whether SCD or similar, at the least I think they will make something similar to the expansion pack device the N64 had, but better executed…||
The reason the expansion pack was even possible on the N64 was because the system was designs to expose the physical bus of the memory to the expansion slot. That’s not the case on the Switch. The Switch only has the USB-type C port which is way too slow to do any kind of RAM expansion outside of releasing a dock with a better SOC in it that the Switch could communicate with but it will not be the kind of thing that developers could take advantage of in a straight forward way.
||True but machines can always be tweaked, upgraded and changed to a certain degree by specific means, they might have found a solution to this limitation while designing it…||
||There are obviously experts that have found most of its internal structure, but the ones that created it will always know something more…||
Except that Nintendo didn’t create the brains of the system, Nvidia did and it’s just a general purpose tablet SOC. It wasn’t made with an expandability in mind.
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I fuckin hope not!
I put my bets on the new SoC being the Switch Pocket. I don’t see a real upgrade in the next 2 years.
SO NINTENDO WILL FUK OVER THE HYBRID NATURE AND MAKE A HANDHELD stop troling everyne who says switch mini is realy hiding there switch hatred and implying thatswitcha ll along is a handheld nooooo its a hybrid and long may it rain…
who the fuk wants a HALF A SWITCH
I call bull. The only three hardware revisions Nintendo put out that actually upgraded the system’s horsepower were the GBC, DSi, and New 3DS, all of which came out towards their respective system’s twilight years.
BUT TIMES HAVE MOVED ON NINTENDO SAID A I/ANDROID PRODUCT LIKE FAMILY AND THE SWITCH HARDWARE IS SO MUSC EASIER TO UPGRADE EVERY FEW YEARS THAN THE OLDER SYSTEMS
A PRO MODE IS VERY EASY TO DO ON THIS HARDWARE YES YOUR RIGHT BUT NINTENDO WILL NOW GO FURTHER INTO THIS UPGRADING
BUT NOT YET
There seems to be an indication that Nintendo wants to take an iPhone approach to the he Switch lifespan, releasing revisions every two years or so to keep the product fresh and relevant and will only change the hardware permanently after they feel they’ve exhausted gameplay concepts for the current hardware.
AM INDICATOR LOL IWATA SAID THIS YEARS AGO WHEN HE WAS “””BLES HIM””” STILL ALIVE 5 YRS LATWER YOU SAY THIS INDICTATES WHAT IWATA SAID YEARS A AGO
WTF DUDE YOU 5 YRS BEHIND THE CLASS DUDE
I think it’s only a security measure, just like they did on the Wii, they changed the optical disks so it wouldn’t read backups even with mod chips, so yeah, they are patching the hardware with new revisions but nothing else changes on the performance level.
Ok devil’s advocate and all that. would you rather hear “No way we can port monster Hunter world to the switch or ” we can port monster Hunter world but only on the new switch deluxe? You can replace monster Hunter world as an example with new tomb raider, gta6, red dead 2. All those will be on standard ps4 but I doubt they come to the switch.
This will have to wait in another 2 years to update at the right time. Once there, the current games today can be optionally updated for new hardware at their choosing.
NEW HARDWARE GREATER POWER ETC YES BUT NOT YET