Not at launch though. Maybe It's emulation or compatibility layer(wine-like).
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Does Nvidia have any chip that we know of that would be ideal for Switch 2 whenever it releases?
- Thread starter Hero of Legend
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In all the cases, it was the CPU in the consoles preventing easy BC (X86 to PowerPc to X86). A Qualcomm chip will share the same CPU micro-architecture as the Tegra, making BC trivial.
I think we're all going to have to wait till 2020 to see if Nvidia announce a new Tegra chipset "going into a next generation Nvidia Shield, and future mobile devices."
That for sure will be whatever goes into the Switch 2.
That for sure will be whatever goes into the Switch 2.
Qualcomm doesn't have graphics which is as good as what NV has and is unlikely to provide the s/w support Nintendo got from NV for Switch. But its possible because a) its one of the clear benefits of going with an ARM platform in the first place and b) Nintendo being Nintendo is likely to look for a cheaper option despite it being less powerful and/or advanced.
Eh? I'd imagine the latest snapdragons GPU easily outpower the Tegra X1 GPU. And AFAIK it's not like there's a Tegra X2
Latest Qualcomm GPU outperform a Nvidia GPU back from 2015? You don't say...
And there is a Tegra X2. But it's an old SoC too now, with Xavier being the current one and Orin being the next gen one.
Xavier is using Volta GPU, Orin will likely use either Turing or Ampere. And by the time of Switch 2 launch Nv will probably move to whatever will come after Ampere already.
You don't suppose they would "force" Nintendo on their bleeding edge line, do you? I could see them "taking Tegra X2 scraps" and making something out of it on the cheap. Ampere might be a little too recent to make it cost effective.
They will do whatever Nintendo will be willing to pay them for. They may "force" them if they'll, say, set similar prices on the old and new options available but I don't know if they'll see any benefit in this.
Designing a SoC from tech which is already used in other products will likely have a similar cost no matter if you'll use "Tegra X2" parts or newer parts like an Ampere GPU. The difference will come mostly from the production process which they'll target (designing a chip for a more advanced one is considerably more expensive than for an older one) and this in turn may limit their choices of GPUs and possibly CPUs even as newer ones may be a bad fit on an older process due to their overall complexity.
you said qualcomm doesnt have as good graphics (in mobile?) as nvidia. that's incorrect.
I guess you're basically assuming Nvidia can just leapfrog QC in mobile anytime they want, but I think that's highly doubtful. Mobile is what qualcomm does, and they're well funded too.
There were reasons tegra failed in Mobile. It wasn't as good. Would you assume QC could just challenge Nvidia on the desktop anytime? Them why assume the reverse.
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Anywhere. Nv is leagues ahead of Qualcomm in graphics.
They can but there's no real money to be made for them there so they don't.
The reason Tegra "failed" was because of the pricing - same reason why they've decided to abandon mobile market completely. It had nothing to do with Tegra being anything in comparison to other SoCs but it certainly wasn't "not as good", especially in its GPU part. If you'd pay attention to what crap some Mediatek is - successfully - pushing onto the market these days you'd see this.
I'm not an expert in this field, maybe you are, but I sure dont recall Tegra being thought of as leaps and bounds better than what was available in 2015 in performance in any area. I also seem to recall it couldn't compete on heat and power draw.
Mediatek has nothing to do with this debate, they're just a low end chip maker. There's a market for low end cheap SOC's, on thin margins western and korean players dont want to touch, that they serve.
mobile has reached the stage where it can almost challenge desktop CPU's in size and complexity. Apple's stuff is like Core i5's and i7's almost, in freaking Ipad's.
Also you better believe Nvidia wanted in the mobile market. It's obviously the future. They just failed. Their chip saw little adoption. I guess they cut their losses.
A simpler SoC with weaker h/w generally tend to have lower heat and power draw, yeah. Again, it is a question of price and price/performance more than anything else here really.
Qualcomm which you've mentioned makes low end chips too so Mediatek is completely relevant to this debate.
Inside mobile power draw ceiling, sure. Desktops aren't limited by them though, and scaling a mobile only design from its 10-15W to 300W can be just as challenging as squishing a 300W only design into mobile's 10-15W. Point is, Nv has done and is doing both while Qualcomm can only do mobile.
GPU is Nvidia's field, they are very good at it. Google Pixel C used the X1 chip and was faster than anything on the market at that time by a large margin when the GPU was being benchmarked. Faster than Apple's chip, faster than anything which was available for Android devices. Even when they released the predecessor, the K1, it was also the fastest mobile GPU on the market.
Anandtech said:
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Then Nvidia should have known the field was more about heat and power draw. Seems they did poor engineering if that's the case.
Mediatek makes REALLY junk chips. They're in those Amazon 7" tablets for like $29. That kind of low end. They're a chinese corp, I'm sure they can do margins lower than anybody, let alone a Intel, Nvidia, Samsung, anything like that. That's the market niche they serve. QC's lowest end is surely charging more than mediatek, and probably performs better, that's why low end devices might use mediatek instead.
Squishing desktop chips into mobile wont be easy at all, or maybe even possible. If anything Tegra proves it.
QC may not be in desktop for a lot of reasons. Companies that specialize in something can succeed, look at netflix, Roku, etc. It could be all the patents AMD and Nvidia have. It could be because they make tons of money in mobile (hundreds of millions of devices) and desktop GPU's is small fries.
I would have to check if Tegra was beating anything in 2015. That will take some time.
Again, Tegra is the story of Nvidia trying to break into that mobile pie and failing. Cant be read any other way.
by creating a per-game emulation. which Nintendo has never been for
Even if you could get better hardware from QC, which is unlikely, it would be ultimately pointless. The reason AMD and Nvidia are/have been gaming vendors is because the have the expertise in providing software tools, support, API, etc., expected out of dedicated gaming hardware.
Ask Nintendo. They have a 10-20 year contract with them.
Unless Nintendo sticks to two year old hardware to save costs... then we'll get ampere 7nm+ or 5nm in the best case scenario. I think ampere will stay for while.
No, the board(!) is the same size as the Jetson Nano. The chip is the same size as the normal Xavier (as you can see in this very slide)
Edit: Did some pixel counting on this slide and the chip packages are 12x12 (nano) compared to 24x18 (Xavier NX), so exactly 3 times the size.
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