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SemiAccurate: Nintendo NX handheld to use Nvidia Tegra-based Soc

Nanashrew

Banned
The prestigious honour to have their chip in a shrinking/declining market segment?



What third party support? They'd have to be there in the first place to say goodbye.

Er... We're talking about the handheld though. They get plenty of support there unless all those JP publishers just don't exist.
 
This needs to be repeated apparently.

Architecture really doesn't mean much when it comes to multiplatform support. Supporting the development and middleware tools is far more important. If it can't run something like Frostbite, Unity, Unreal Engine, etc then it's not going to get the support.

Not if the ps4k and Xbox 1.5 rumors are true.
Developers will likely have to spend resources to also support those two.

A weak Nintendo console like the Wii and wiiu
Is something im waiting for.
 

Metalmarc

Member
Exciting times, I cant wait to find out everything, every last detail about the NX, when it officially gets announced/released.

Come on 2017 hurry up

Nintendo NX
New ps4
New xbox one
Star wars episode 8
 
ChJmHK5W4AEf4Vk.jpg:large


https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/library/events/130131/05.html


NX is basically nintendo's back-end (i guess you can think of it as an operating system, but it's not really) that unifies all their consoles going forward.
So NX is basically Nintendo's UWP for their devices.

That's really interesting, didn't know that was their goal.

Very interesting times ahead.

Edit: Imagine if they can bring the NX platform to mobile devices like iOs and Android. Things would get REALLY interesting.
 

Mivey

Member
That made for a nice laugh. Hopefully no one is taking this story alone as evidence for anything. But I like the silly way it is written. "console win". "pride was hurt" Brilliant.
Only the salt meme is missing, really.
 

usmanusb

Member
Why wouldn't Nintendo go for one soc vendor and make the overall process easier (technology, api, supply chain, integration etc)?
 

Eolz

Member
Is all this NX being an ecosystem thing fact or "fact"?

From the start, Iwata talked about multiple NX devices, working together "like brothers", using comparisons with Android.
Take from that what you will.

Why wouldn't Nintendo go for one soc vendor and make the overall process easier (technology, api, supply chain, integration etc)?

They're going for the best deal, not the one that necessarily makes the most sense. Have to think about custom chips and who would allow this too.
 

Durante

Member
If this was true (broken clock, twice a day, etc), it would be a good thing for Nintendo. One of their biggest issues is tool support, and NV has pretty good development tools -- and easily the best GL drivers out of any graphics manufacturer on mobile.

Though Nvidia downplayed console margins, their pride was hurt by the loss in console contracts. All the talk about "focusing on Shield" was a cover for the fact that MS and Sony had soured on them and would not enter negotiations.
That sounds like SemiAccurate fanfiction alright!

(Everyone unfamiliar should really check the history of that site. I think they traditionally predict the death of NV once per year -- usually followed by another record earnings report)

That made for a nice laugh. Hopefully no one is taking this story alone as evidence for anything. But I like the silly way it is written. "console win". "pride was hurt" Brilliant.
Only the salt meme is missing, really.
It's SemiAccurate. This is how they actually think companies operate.
 
Calling bullshit on this.

It's not an unknown tactic. Taking a loss on an initial sale/contract to either hook the client or to deny your competitors the sale. It's an incredibly common tactic in retail, and it's something that Pepsi/Coke do all the time (They will in some cases give their product for free under the condition that a vendor does not stock the competing product)

But only time will tell!
 
Well that's actually promising - might be first Nintendo handheld with good hardware inside.

And I wouldn't take rest of Charlie analysis too seriously - his hate for Nvidia is well known ;)
 
Well that's actually promising - might be first Nintendo handheld with good hardware inside.

And I wouldn't take rest of Charlie analysis too seriously - his hate for Nvidia is well known ;)

Problem is though that for the games to be seamless between handheld and console, the specs will have to have equivalence as well.

If this Tegra is compared to the PS4 Neo with Polaris - the most powerful APU in the world by a some distance - it looks extremely underpowered.
 

blu

Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
Nice OP, Fourth Storm.

Apropos, I suggest we adopt the industry common abbreviations for Tegra K1 and Tegra X1, which are TK1 and TX1, to avoid confusion with xbone and such.
 
I don't buy that Nvidia would sell their chips on a loss.

Why would they have the need to do so? It goes againsts totally how the company operates.


Say goodbye to third party support?

You'll get your Samurai Warriors ports and you'll be happy.

lol

Seriously though, since the shared architecture is making more sense by the day, the chances that all that 3rd party support 3DS had, will transfer to NX as well.

Which mostly amounts to japanese handheld level support.
 
Problem is though that for the games to be seamless between handheld and console, the specs will have to have equivalence as well.

If this Tegra is compared to the PS4 Neo with Polaris - the most powerful APU in the world by a some distance - it looks extremely underpowered.

Good, that they aren't "seamless"

People should just stop trying to push that fandream of buying Nintendo games only once.
 

ozfunghi

Member
That made for a nice laugh. Hopefully no one is taking this story alone as evidence for anything. But I like the silly way it is written. "console win". "pride was hurt" Brilliant.
Only the salt meme is missing, really.

Yup Nvidia doesn't even accept anything less than fat margins.

Calling bullshit on this.

Unless NVIDIA stopped being NVIDIA or Nintendo stopped caring about Profit margins on Hardware this rumours is completely ludicrous.

I still find it hard to beleive nVidia still wants to be part of the console manufacturer race, abeit even if they won't be exactly joining the console spectrum of things.

Sounds like BS.

Why would nVidia not want too take a deal where theres razor thin profit margins so much so that AMD is still bleeding left, right, and center?


You should read Thraktors hypothesis on this on the first or second page. If the chip in question is the Tegra X1 it makes much sense. Basically, Nvidia may be giving Nintendo this deal in order to avoid a large fine if they don't produce enough of these chips.
 

Eolz

Member
Problem is though that for the games to be seamless between handheld and console, the specs will have to have equivalence as well.

If this Tegra is compared to the PS4 Neo with Polaris - the most powerful APU in the world by a some distance - it looks extremely underpowered.

I don't remember it being ever said that transition between both will be "seamless", and we still don't know if PS4K will get Polaris (likely not), which makes your post a bit weird.
 

Nanashrew

Banned
I don't buy that Nvidia would sell their chips on a loss.

Why would they have the need to do so? It goes againsts totally how the company operates.




You'll get your Samurai Warriors ports and you'll be happy.

lol

Seriously though, since the shared architecture is making more sense by the day, the chances that all that 3rd party support 3DS had, will transfer to NX as well.

Which mostly amounts to japanese handheld level support.

I got no issues there if we see some handheld JRPGs playing on the home system. Same for Monster Hunter.
 
They don't require a screen, but they work much better with one. A simple touch panel is nowhere near as intuitive.

I've long been asking for a more intuitive touch interface that can show your thumb locations on your main screen before you touch. Sony's clickable pad was a good start but it's underutilized. Nintendo at least have shown an interest in optical finger tracking via various patent applications.
 

Rafy

Member
So NX is basically Nintendo's UWP for their devices.

That's really interesting, didn't know that was their goal.

Very interesting times ahead.

Edit: Imagine if they can bring the NX platform to mobile devices like iOs and Android. Things would get REALLY interesting.

Considering the rumor says the portable NX console will feature a Tegra SOC (TX1 or Parker), which is still an ARM SOC, it'd be stupid and a massive waste of resources in my opinion, for Nintendo not to fork and use the Android Kernel as a base for their portable NX OS.

Even if they go down that road though, I doubt they will end up straight up porting to smartphones, as that would render their mobile console obsolete. Not even second screen apps make sense, if they keep their two screen clamshell design of their portable console, going forward.

A more social aspect would be perfect though. Apps for stuff like Mii customization, scoreboards, messages, etc...
 

M3d10n

Member
If Nintendo skips the smaller form handheld and sticks to XL-sized ones, it might be possible. Still, unlike a phone the handheld has extra stuff inside that eats away battery space. I'm still unsure if NVidia can break the spell and deliver something usable on such power and thermal envelope (Shield tablets get hot.)

It would indeed be awesome if true, specially if it uses a Vulkan-like API.
 
The article is available to subscribers only, however the gist of it is this:


  • Though Nvidia downplayed console margins, their pride was hurt by the loss in console contracts. All the talk about "focusing on Shield" was a cover for the fact that MS and Sony had soured on them and would not enter negotiations.
  • Nvidia team was told to get a console win or "go home." Enter Nintendo, who apparently made off very well in this deal. This to the point that SemiAccurate questions whether this is a "win" at all for Nvidia.
  • SA has heard that Nvidia are promising software, support, and the whole shebang at a very low cost. According to one source, Nvidia may even be taking a loss on this deal.
  • Not mentioned which generation of Tegra or process node will be used or when the handheld is scheduled for release.
  • No mention of the home console, but we can speculate what that might be and who might provide the chipset for that one.

http://semiaccurate.com/2016/05/12/guess-whos-silicon-is-in-nintendos-nx/

I highly doubt that. Interesting news.
 

blu

Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
If Nintendo skips the smaller form handheld and sticks to XL-sized ones, it might be possible. Still, unlike a phone the handheld has extra stuff inside that eats away battery space. I'm still unsure if NVidia can break the spell and deliver something usable on such power and thermal envelope (Shield tablets get hot.)

It would indeed be awesome if true, specially if it uses a Vulkan-like API.
I think that the days of 'desktop-like' APIs on consoles are done - it will be straight Vulkan with some extensions on the NX, likewise on the next-gen PS, and on the XB it's been DX for some time now.
 

M3d10n

Member
Considering the rumor says the portable NX console will feature a Tegra SOC (TX1 or Parker), which is still an ARM SOC, it'd be stupid and a massive waste of resources in my opinion, for Nintendo not to fork and use the Android Kernel as a base for their portable NX OS.

Even if they go down that road though, I doubt they will end up straight up porting to smartphones, as that would render their mobile console obsolete. Not even second screen apps make sense, if they keep their two screen clamshell design of their portable console, going forward.

A more social aspect would be perfect though. Apps for stuff like Mii customization, scoreboards, messages, etc...

There's one major reason why forking Android sounds unlikely: it's reliance on Java. Google is constantly under attack by Oracle due to that and Nintendo would be quite the juicy target target as well. Nobody writes games for Android using Dalvik, it's always NDK (which is C/C++ and OpenGL ES, nothing really Android specific) or NDK-based engines (Unity, UE4, Cocos, etc), with Java being merely a necessary annoyance to deal with. Also, Google loves to change stuff up on an yearly basis (they just switched to a completely different build system recently, fundamentally changing how you setup your projects) so after two years compatibility would degrade and "getting easy Android ports" would cease to be an advantage.

Google is even rumored to be looking into ways to get rid of Java as Android's "first class language", with Swift being a rumored candidate.
 
It's the idea of them stooping so low to take losses is what I find ridiculous. That and Nintendo would probably want to have 3DS backwards compatibility of some sort.

It's supposedly pretty certain that Nintendo got a bargain on the chips, but I would digest the "Nvidia taking losses" bit with an additional teaspoon of salt. As I wrote in the OP, Charlie only has one source on that. The rest of the info he seems quite confident in, but it is tinted with his trademark anti-Nvidia commentary.
 
I don't remember it being ever said that transition between both will be "seamless", and we still don't know if PS4K will get Polaris (likely not), which makes your post a bit weird.

It's almost a certainty that the PS4 Neo has a Polaris-level GPU going by the almost confirmed specs. Do some research.
 

Rafy

Member
There's one major reason why forking Android sounds unlikely: it's reliance on Java. Google is constantly under attack by Oracle due to that and Nintendo would be quite the juicy target target as well. Nobody writes games for Android using Dalvik, it's always NDK (which is C/C++ and OpenGL ES, nothing really Android specific) or NDK-based engines (Unity, UE4, Cocos, etc), with Java being merely a necessary annoyance to deal with. Also, Google loves to change stuff up on an yearly basis (they just switched to a completely different build system recently, fundamentally changing how you setup your projects) so after two years compatibility would degrade and "getting easy Android ports" would cease to be an advantage.

Google is even rumored to be looking into ways to get rid of Java as Android's "first class language", with Swift being a rumored candidate.

Very good points, I completely forgot about java. But does it go all the way down to the Kernel of Android? I thought that was more C/C++ than java. Even then, the issue with the Kernel being fucked with by Google persists.
 

Eolz

Member
It's almost a certainty that the PS4 Neo has a Polaris-level GPU going by the almost confirmed specs. Do some research.

Noy really, it's one of the main possibilities but people are jumping way too quickly to conclusions as usual.
Close to Polaris on paper doesn't confirm Polaris.
Anyway, that's not really the topic there.
 

AmyS

Member
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/52119/nintendo-nx-powered-nvidia-tegra-processor-amd-chip/index.html

Nintendo NX will powered by an NVIDIA Tegra processor, not an AMD chip

Exclusive: Up until now, everything we've heard on the next-gen consoles is that AMD will have APUs inside all of them. The Nintendo NX was meant to be powered by an AMD design, but according to our sources, Nintendo is working with NVIDIA and will use a Pascal-based Tegra chip inside of their next-gen Nintendo NX console.

I've been sitting on this story for a little while now, but it has been backed up by another source - who has said that NVIDIA will be providing a Pascal-based Tegra processor for Nintendo's next-gen console. First, Nintendo working with NVIDIA is a big, big deal. The GameCube was powered by the Flipper GPU provided by ATI at the time, after which the insanely popular Wii console was powered by another ATI design: "Hollywood". Hollywood was a 90nm chip, with two dies powering it.

Moving onto the Wii U, where Nintendo used a custom multi-chip module (MCM) developed by AMD, IBM and Renesas (as well as Nintendo IRD and Nintendo Technology Development). The GPU itself is the GX2, which was designed by AMD, and is based on the older R600/R700 architecture and clocked at 550MHz. It's older in the tooth now, so the use of a Pascal-based Tegra processor is interesting, and exciting. NVIDIA's current Maxwell-powered Tegra X1 processor can handle 4K output, and 1080p 60FPS gaming without a problem.

Nintendo's NX console using a NVIDIA design is also a huge win for NVIDIA over AMD, and symbolizes the shift from a much bigger CPU/APU or GPU design, to a mobile SoC design. It could also mean that the rumors of a portable Nintendo console, were right after all.
 

yoonshik

Member
It would be nice to see a powerful handheld, but not at the expense of the battery life. Hopefully, i'm not the only one with this opinion.
 

Eradicate

Member
Suddenly the codename "NX" would make more sense. NVidia X1.

But that's just me throwing some funny ideas in there...

Whoa!

What's in it for nVidia if they're taking a loss on this deal?

Jen-Hsun Huang said:
And at the core, NVIDIA is an IP company. We don't make steel. We don't make concrete, and we don't really even make wafers. We're an IP company at our core. And so we're comfortable making our innovations and our work products available, whether it's in a service or a GPU or an add-in card or even in IP form. So our expectation is that, one, we have to defend it. Two, the return on that investment should be very, very high because the exposure of the inventions that we've made in the industries that I mentioned just a moment ago are quite large.

(From Q1 2016 Earnings Call...yeah, I'm totally looking through these.)

I don't know about that whole "NVIDIA is sorry" and groveling to Nintendo things with free everything. But, they could certainly cut a deal. Say, for the extra NVIDIA recognition on their handheld, boxes, in ads, etc. that they have to allow their streaming game service to be available/usable on the system?

I don't know about that whole "it's not Android" thing being true. Where did that rumor come from? If Nintendo built their own NintendOS on top of Android, it could play nice with that whole ecosystem if they wanted. Plus, it definitely would address the "no games Nintendo" argument that they've had to face for a long time.

With no NVIDIA in this space, there's really no play like it!
 
I don't really believe that nvidia would ever sign a contract at a loss.

Unless the really expect what they make to lead to other Android device contracts. Or maybe a stepping stone to show don't and Microsoft they are back to playing ball?

I wonder what mobile GPUs will eveb look like by late 2017
 
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