Nintendo DX GPU?

[Headfoot]

FYI, Wii U does not use an SoC.

 

[NTMBK]

AMD have already designed memory controllers compatible with both ARM and GCN.

The CPU core is a separate matter from the memory controller. Jaguar had never shipped with a quad channel GDDR5 controller, until it did.

 

[monstercameron]

Not necessarily stopping, but creating additional barriers.

1. It would need a custom integrated design. More cost, more risk vs. already proven X86 APU designs which are least risky, and least costly from R&D perspective.

2. This point had me thinking about it too. "Die size dictates memory interface width, so the 256-bit interface remains but Microsoft chose to go for DDR3 memory instead." Would ARM CPU+GCN vs. X86 CPU + GCN create a die size constraint for a 256-bit GDDR5 pin layout? Prob. not but it was something that had me questioning it to an extent that it might not be as easy as integrating the components like LEGO together.

3. Prob. my biggest reason was AMD's ARM execution. AMD is having a lot of issues with volume production and overall success of 64-bit ARMv8-A-based Opteron microprocessor code-named “Seattle." If they can't even get this right, what are the chances they can get 20 million units of NX with a custom ARM + GCN + 256-bit GDDR5 design? Sounds wayyyyyyy more complex and costly.

Of course I am just outlining my thinking but I could be wrong, way wrong.

My biggest fear is that when I remove all constraints and I ask myself what console could Nintendo build that would get them back in the game, I don't have a good answer since I think their timing to re-enter the market is all wrong. I think they should have coasted on the Wii U for 1-2 more years and not abandon it this quickly, just made more games for it while lowering the price. Right now they are following the Sega business model -- if their hardware/console gen fails (Saturn), they'll just ditch it and move on (Dreamcast). The problem with this is you undermine consumer confidence for your next console, your 'next gen' console could be too advanced compared to PS4 which means most developers wouldn't be taking advantage of the extra hardware but at the same time it's not fast enough to compete with XB2/PS5. The timing issue makes me question almost any NX console in 2016. What do you guys think about this entire strategy?

In this context, even if they put a Fury inside the console and sell it for $249, would it matter? This point makes me nervous about the success of the next gen NX. I think while they have to at least match XB1, going with a very powerful GPU seems like a point of diminishing returns since they are entering in the mid-cycle of the current gen.

I dont think they need to match the xbone, they just need 720p performance and cost sensitivity on the hardware side and exclusives and 3RD PARTY SUPPORT on the software side. Nintendo still has brand cache but its dangerous to go alone...(<--- I feel really proud of that)

 

[Techhog]

What's up with that? It's true. The CPU and GPU are separate.

EDIT: Nevermind, I had some bad info. You could have just shown me that I was wrong instead of being an ass about it though.

 

[Headfoot]

what?

 

[poofyhairguy]

Cost. They might be able to reuse some of the existing plumbing but why bother? This problem has already been solved on X86.

Isn't AMD using ARM for servers? Isn't ARM a part of their long term plans? If that is the case then this is a problem they need to solve, Nintendo or not. Maybe they can get Nintendo to pay for some it this way.

As for the folks who says it's trivial to recompile code from one architecture to the next.... Sure middleware exists and the big studios use it to release shovlelware for porting games to iPhone and Android OS. I would imagine a porting a AAA title like for like would require more than simply recompiling the code.

If the quality of PC ports show us anything then good enough would be good enough.

 

[Exophase]

All you guys talking about how it'd be this big new challenge for AMD to have high bandwidth external memory in an ARM-based SoC must not even realize that most of the bandwidth in PS4 isn't available to the CPU cores. They could literally reuse the same GPU external memory design in another console. CPU ISA has nothing to do with this.

The WiiU Wii mode is really very elegant. They built in identical resources from the Wii into the WiiU main SoC. There was one CPU core that ran at the Wii's speed and 2 others (iirc) that ran at a higher WiiU speed, but in WiiU mode it would use all available resources. In Wii mode it would only light up the parts of the hardware that were identical to the Wii. In essence, it was both a WiiU and a Wii on a single chip with the Wii resources available to the Wii U. Say what you want about Nintendo, their chip designers are resourceful as hell given their small die size and power budgets. They got native (or near native) Wii mode without having it be idle cost-adding silicon like the original PS3 w/ PS2 chip.

And all it cost them was an overall relatively poor design manufactured by two relatively unreliable foundries.

This isn't really any different from what they did with Wii, GBA and DS to achieve backwards compatibility either.

 

[NTMBK]

Also, remember that AMD has improved their memory compression tech since the PS4- a 256 bit R9 380 can match a 384 bit R9 280 in performance. I suspect Nintendo could match PS4 performance with 6GB of DDR4 on a 192 bit bus, if they use GCN 1.2.

 

[byteman99]

A couple of things if I may chime in.

There hasn't been much talk about the form of medium these games will come in. It was my understanding that Wii U uses some sort of proprietary optical drive. But those are limited to only 25gb. With game sizes getting astronomically larger, what would make most sense? I'm thinking they gotta go with blue ray or something with that similar type of capacity. But there was a link on the previous page that suggested that it may not have an optical drive. How crazy would that be?

I agree with the sentiment that the hardware has to be at least on par or close in terms of performance vs the competition. As much as I like my Wii U, that system has terrible 3rd party support. Even worse than the Wii had. At least 3rd party games were being made for that system even though they were mostly shovelware ports. They need to make it very easy for devs to port all their games to the system. If they can do that they can get 3rd party devs to develop for the system. They will need to be at least on par with the Xbox that much is for certain. But having extra power over the other consoles may help it out quite a bit 5-6 years down the line when all 3 consoles are at or near eol and the games can use any extra edge towards its advantage. The NX version could become the definitive version of a game.

And finally more than anything, but this is not related to the gpu, it needs marketing. They had that shit down back in the 80s, 90s, and even 2000s. But with the Wii U it seems to have disappeared. Even the Wii had those 2 asian dudes going around peoples houses and playing games.

 

[Techhog]

A couple of things if I may chime in.

There hasn't been much talk about the form of medium these games will come in. It was my understanding that Wii U uses some sort of proprietary optical drive. But those are limited to only 25gb. With game sizes getting astronomically larger, what would make most sense? I'm thinking they gotta go with blue ray or something with that similar type of capacity. But there was a link on the previous page that suggested that it may not have an optical drive. How crazy would that be?

I agree with the sentiment that the hardware has to be at least on par or close in terms of performance vs the competition. As much as I like my Wii U, that system has terrible 3rd party support. Even worse than the Wii had. At least 3rd party games were being made for that system even though they were mostly shovelware ports. They need to make it very easy for devs to port all their games to the system. If they can do that they can get 3rd party devs to develop for the system. They will need to be at least on par with the Xbox that much is for certain. But having extra power over the other consoles may help it out quite a bit 5-6 years down the line when all 3 consoles are at or near eol and the games can use any extra edge towards its advantage. The NX version could become the definitive version of a game.

And finally more than anything, but this is not related to the gpu, it needs marketing. They had that shit down back in the 80s, 90s, and even 2000s. But with the Wii U it seems to have disappeared. Even the Wii had those 2 asian dudes going around peoples houses and playing games.

The Wii U disks are based on Blu-Ray technology, but only have one layer. They can easily use the same tech and add more. However, it's likely that NX will use cartridges or be fully digital.

 

[lamedude]

If its using cartridges we can end this thread now. They won't even get 3rd party shovelware.

If the quality of PC ports show us anything then good enough would be good enough.

Zing!
Writing a GX renderer on top our DX/GNM renderer we got this, but rewriting a few x86 math routines for ARM that's just too much work? Everyone says trust your compiler these days and there is only one Abrash and he's working on Oculus now.

 

[swilli89]

If its using cartridges we can end this thread now. They won't even get 3rd party shovelware.
Zing!
Writing a GX renderer on top our DX/GNM renderer we got this, but rewriting a few x86 math routines for ARM that's just too much work? Everyone says trust your compiler these days and there is only one Abrash and he's working on Oculus now.

Huh? The storage medium doesn't matter at all to developers. An image file is an image file whether its on a disc or a compact flash storage.

I think it would be nice to have the return of near indestructible cartridges.

On a side note its awesome to see that the NX can generate as much buzz as this thread is showing! Here's hoping that we ALL get what we want wherein Nintendo releases a decently powerful, easy to develop for console without gimmicks!

 

[Exophase]

If its using cartridges we can end this thread now. They won't even get 3rd party shovelware.

It's possible it'll have both a cartridge port and optical drive, where the cartridge port is used for games that run on both the handheld and the console. This is just speculation though...

Solid state pricing per GB has gone down and continues to go down rapidly. Today you can buy 16GB SD cards for under $8. That price will go continue to go down over the next couple years, and with the pricing Nintendo could arrange I imagine they could get the end-user premium over 25GB Bluray to under $5, although this would still be taking somewhat of a storage hit. If it really does support both media types it's possible we'll see some games released on both, where users pay slightly more for higher load times and smaller physical footprint while still keeping a physical copy.

Zing!
Writing a GX renderer on top our DX/GNM renderer we got this, but rewriting a few x86 math routines for ARM that's just too much work? Everyone says trust your compiler these days and there is only one Abrash and he's working on Oculus now.

Whoever wrote those x86 (hopefully x86-64) routines in the first place should be able to handle writing a decent equivalent in ARMv8. If they're relying on code that no one understands anymore that in itself is a big problem.

 

[monstercameron]

Cartridges would be interesting but does anyone still make worm style memory chips vs nand or other rewritable chips. Also does anyone know the difference in lifespan between flash and optical?

 

[Techhog]

Cartridges would be interesting but does anyone still make worm style memory chips vs nand or other rewritable chips. Also does anyone know the difference in lifespan between flash and optical?

I mean cartridges like what they use for 3DS today (and the DS previously), but in higher capacities.

 

[monstercameron]

I mean cartridges like what they use for 3DS today (and the DS previously), but in higher capacities.

The DS chips are 1gb but who will have 8gb or even 64gb worm style memory chips? I mean do you guys know if it is Toshiba etc?

 

[MrTeal]

The DS chips are 1gb but who will have 8gb or even 64gb worm style memory chips? I mean do you guys know if it is Toshiba etc?

Micron sells 512Gb (and 1Tb) flash chips, which would be comparable to BR. They're not exactly cheap though, even in bulk.

Edit: Sorry, you were asking about one time writeable. I'm not sure anyone makes a device like that anymore.

 

[Techhog]

The DS chips are 1gb but who will have 8gb or even 64gb worm style memory chips? I mean do you guys know if it is Toshiba etc?

Maximum 3DS (again, it's a different system...) capacity is 8GB. That released in 2011. They can find ways to increase the capacity for 2017 hardware, surely.

 

[Exophase]

The DS chips are 1gb but who will have 8gb or even 64gb worm style memory chips? I mean do you guys know if it is Toshiba etc?

3DS cartridge size is supposed to go up to 8GB and there are three year old games that are at least 4GB like Resident Evil Revelations and Metal Gear Solid 3D.

I don't think you need a very exotic technology or manufacturer for write-once flash. It can probably be done with otherwise normal flash with an integrated fuse somewhere in the write path and a command to blow it. I'm sure one of the major flash suppliers could provide something like this to a customer with Nintendo-like volume.

 

[byteman99]

The thing is cartridges are more expensive to mass produce vs blue ray (I am not 100% sure, someone please correct me if i'm wrong). I just don't see them going with the more expensive medium. As much as I would love to see some of return of something similar to cartridges, I just don't see them going with it. Which leaves them with 2 bad options which are digital distribution and online streaming. Both are terrible in my opinion since we are still a very long ways away from streaming and because any internal HD they put in the system will just fill up. Not to mention that people that play on consoles prefer to have some sort of physical medium.

I do like the idea of them expanding upon the 3ds cartridges. Surely by now they can improve the technology to accommodate modern game consoles. They should be aiming for 50gb minimum storage capacity on these cartridges. Would it be asking for too much for these devices to have super fast loading as well? But in all honesty I can't see them going with cartridges ever again simply because it would be more expensive.

Another thing that just came to mind, what are the chances of Nintendo going with a bigger console this time around? I know they been going smaller since the gamecube but I don't think there's anything that holds them back into designing these really small consoles. A bigger console does gives them room to add more powerful hardware. And both consoles still manage to look aesthetically pleasing.

 

[MrTeal]

3DS cartridge size is supposed to go up to 8GB and there are three year old games that are at least 4GB like Resident Evil Revelations and Metal Gear Solid 3D.

I don't think you need a very exotic technology or manufacturer for write-once flash. It can probably be done with otherwise normal flash with an integrated fuse somewhere in the write path and a command to blow it. I'm sure one of the major flash suppliers could provide something like this to a customer with Nintendo-like volume.

You could always use flash as a one time writable medium, though long term durability without a refresh might be a concern. The problem with that is you still have to pay the price for that NAND flash. Even in Nintendo levels of quantity your cost for a 64GB Nand chip is going to be a couple orders of magnitude more than the cost of printing a 50GB Blu Ray disk. Even an 8GB cartridge will cost a couple bucks to produce, which is way more than a disk.

 

[Techhog]

Another thing that just came to mind, what are the chances of Nintendo going with a bigger console this time around? I know they been going smaller since the gamecube but I don't think there's anything that holds them back into designing these really small consoles. A bigger console does gives them room to add more powerful hardware. And both consoles still manage to look aesthetically pleasing.

Zero. They design all of their hardware for the Japanese market, so they make the consoles as small as possible.

 

[Snafuh]

Zero. They design all of their hardware for the Japanese market, so they make the consoles as small as possible.

Why would they design the consoles for the Japanese market? Both the Wii U and 3Ds sell more software and hardware in North America than in Japan

 

[therealnickdanger]

Why would they design the consoles for the Japanese market?

You may be new to video games, so I will refrain from LOLing in your face. This has been the focus of Nintendo for 30+ years. It will not change now.

Both the Wii U and 3Ds sell more software and hardware in North America than in Japan

Irrelevant. Nintendo's loyalty to its homeland has been its bedrock.

 

[Techhog]

Why would they design the consoles for the Japanese market? Both the Wii U and 3Ds sell more software and hardware in North America than in Japan

Because Nintendo. It's what they've always done. Also, 3DS is doing better in Japan than in the US. Hell, even Wii U was doing better in Japan for a few months due to Splatoon.