Toadthemushroom
Member
The product page for the new devices, the 16GB Nvidia Shield and 500GB Shield Pro, has gone live. Notice how the product branding of the two devices has changed, Nvidia has dropped the "TV" part, and the only hardware going forward that makes up the Shield product line are these boxes, not the Shield tablet or handheld. Nvidia has also repositioned the devices as streaming boxes - emphasising a games library from your PC and the cloud (Geforce Now), rather than native titles.
From the page itself:
I was expecting it to have a Pascal-based Tegra chip (so not 20nm), and for the Switch to use something similar to what Nvidia would have done there. I wonder if there are any differences to regular X1 then, and whether this changes anything about the Switch. The devices X1 launched in didn't sell particularly well (Shield TV, Google's Pixel-C).
Back when the Nvidia-Nintendo deal emerged from SemiAccurate's (presumably) Nvidia source, Thraktor theorised that Nvidia should be using those old X1 chips in the Switch and Nintendo would have gotten a good price for them:
Does the reappearance of X1 in a brand new flagship Nvidia Shield device change this theory?
From the page itself:
Get the fastest, highest-quality streaming for movies, shows, and games. It's all powered by NVIDIA Tegra® X1, the most advanced mobile processor NVIDIA has ever built.
I was expecting it to have a Pascal-based Tegra chip (so not 20nm), and for the Switch to use something similar to what Nvidia would have done there. I wonder if there are any differences to regular X1 then, and whether this changes anything about the Switch. The devices X1 launched in didn't sell particularly well (Shield TV, Google's Pixel-C).
Back when the Nvidia-Nintendo deal emerged from SemiAccurate's (presumably) Nvidia source, Thraktor theorised that Nvidia should be using those old X1 chips in the Switch and Nintendo would have gotten a good price for them:
Thraktor said:Well, for all we know Nvidia could have done Nintendo a deal on the X1 simply to use up a TSMC 20nm wafer purchase commitment (as the X1 is their only 20nm chip, and it's only been used in the Shield TV and the Pixel C, neither are big sellers). It may have been cheaper for them to sell the chips at a loss to Nintendo than to pay a penalty to TSMC for dropping out of their wafer order.
Thraktor said:The reason I was talking about it there is that it would explain why Nvidia would be willing to make a loss on the deal. As a point of reference, AMD was penalised to the tune of $320 million when they pulled out of a wafer order commitment with Global Foundries a few years back. That's the kind of order of magnitude you'd be looking at if (and it's a bit if) Nvidia had committed to large 20nm purchases from TSMC and they had to renege on them due to poor sales of the Nvidia X1. They'd be desperate to make the sale to Nintendo, as Nintendo would be pretty much the only customer buying in the quantity necessary to cover their wafer commitments, so would be willing to offer Nintendo an absurdly good deal, even to the point of making a loss on each chip sold, as it would still be better than paying the penalty to TSMC.
Does the reappearance of X1 in a brand new flagship Nvidia Shield device change this theory?