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Switch SCD to potentially have 8GB ram, 3.5 teraflop 1060 class gpu, will s your d

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Proelite

Member
Revelations were made in this thead:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1334549
about a potential SCD. As stated the leaker was mostly right.

Analysis by Thraktor...

The bit regarding the "dev kit" is perhaps the most interesting, though, if it's true (which is again a big if). Nintendo's dev kits are usually made by Intelligent Systems (it's actually what the company was founded to do, Fire Emblem was just a side project originally), but I suppose it's theoretically possible that they've outsourced that to Foxconn instead. If it is true, we're looking at the following:


  • Producing 2000x units for now - This sounds like the kind of numbers you'd expect for a dev-kit. I don't know whether you'd expect a batch of 2000 units for an early dev kit or a late dev kit, though.
  • The core is 1x times bigger than the one above,200m㎡, looking it looks like 12x18 - This is obviously quite a bit larger than above, and pretty much exactly the size of GP106 (the GPU die in the GTX1060). If it's an SoC, then there also has to be space in there for the CPU, etc, but it would still be quite a bit more powerful than the regular Switch (perhaps 4x as powerful for 4K games?). If it's not an SoC, but rather a separate GPU, then it should be a similar config to the GTX1060, but probably with a lower clock.
  • Extra ram, this version is 8GB - Makes sense for a more powerful device.
  • No dock for this version for now. Can be plugged into TV without docking, power is inside - Of course it doesn't need the dock, if it is the dock ;)
  • Speculated provided the core is only include GPU, it would be even more powerful than PS4 pro - If it actually was the GP106 (or similar), then yeah, it would potentially be more powerful than the PS4 Pro, although I'd imagine that they would clock it down a bit.
  • Screen is the same size as the normal one
  • It's much more powerful, but also much heavier, not feeling great in hand, speculated for 4K gaming - This could be because it's early hardware, or it's just a dev kit, but it could also be because it's not actually a portable device.
  • Haven't seen such a huge core, and it's 16nm + 100mm2 main core - This is the bit to focus on right here. What he's saying is that this "dev kit" has both the standard 100mm² SoC used in the regular Switch and a separate 200mm² chip. This means the 200mm² chip isn't a replacement for the Switch's SoC, it's an addition to it. That is, it's a GPU.
  • There's no battery inside this version - No need for one of these, if this is what I assume it is.
So, I'm about to use a phrase that I've tried to avoid using for the past year or so since it came into gaf's vernacular, because I've consistently believed that, even though it's technically feasible, I don't see the business case for it. I still don't see the business case for it, but frankly it fits the supposed leak above too well for me to ignore it, so here goes:

SCD

What he's describing above matches pretty much exactly what we would expect from a "supplementary computing device", or SCD, which Nintendo patented a few years ago. The SCD would be an add-on unit to Switch (let's say a special version of the dock) which has extra computational hardware inside (i.e. a GPU).

In this particular case what we'd be looking at is a dev kit that is designed to provide the functionality of both devices combined (as it's simpler to make than a dev kit with actual detachable parts). Hence why both the Switch SoC and the new GPU are in the same unit, and why there's a screen (same size as Switch's) and why it's so heavy and doesn't include a battery. For the actual SCD, though, it would likely be a dock with the GPU and RAM, but not the Switch's SoC or the screen.

Regarding the specifics of the leak, when I said the dev kit's chip was "pretty much exactly the size of GP106", I wasn't kidding. According to this (which is the best source I could find), the GP106 measures approximately 11.67mm x 17.13mm, which is extremely close both in size and shape to the leaker's claim that it "looks like" 12mm x 18mm. It's worth noting that the die size of GP106 would have been common knowledge when this was posted (so if the leaker is screwing with us they could have found this out), but if they're not screwing with us then it would seem too close to be a co-incidence.

As I see it, if the leak is true, then the dev kit is one of the following:


  • A dev kit for a Switch 2 portable/hybrid which has a GP106-class GPU (and presumably a 10-15 minute battery life)
  • An early "SCD" dock dev kit which is using GP106 as a stand-in for a custom GPU being developed (which could be less or more powerful than GP106)
  • A near-final "SCD" dock dev kit which is using a custom GPU which is very similar to GP106
  • An "SCD" dock dev kit, where they're just using the GP106 itself in the final product
I don't think there's even the remotest hope of Nintendo releasing a new portable Switch with a GTX1060 for a GPU in the next couple of years, so I think we can rule out the first option pretty safely.

Then it comes down to an SCD GPU add-on (most logically in the form of a dock) with a GP106 GPU or something similar. Even with an SM or two disabled and clocks pulled down a bit from GTX1060, that would still be an obscenely powerful GPU by Nintendo's standards, putting them roughly competitive with the PS4 Pro. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing Nintendo would do, but Nintendo is anything but predictable these days, and given their SCD patent and the fact that the leaker has got other things right, I couldn't really rule it out, either.

It does seem puzzling that they would go with something so powerful, though. If they just wanted to play Switch games in 4K, then a ~1.6Tflop GPU would do the job, whereas this would potentially be twice that. A 1080p/60fps Switch game like MK8 would in theory be able to hit properly native 8K (at 30fps) on that kind of hardware, let alone 4K. It's possible that it's their play to give people an option that's competitive with Sony and MS on power to get western third parties on board, but if the games have to run on the regular Switch as well then the potentially 20-fold power difference between portable Switch and docked super-GPU would be tough to manage without sub-sub-HD resolutions in portable mode. Alternatively, they could let AAA devs design games that only work with the SCD, but then you're making things more complicated for consumers.

Back to my initial issues with SCDs, though, which are that they don't make a whole lot of sense from a business perspective. Console add-ons have a notoriously bad track record, because by their very nature they're only going to be able to sell to a limited audience. If you build a new console, you can potentially sell that to anyone who likes video games, a total audience in the hundreds of millions. If, however, you build an add-on, you can only sell that to people who already own your existing system, which is likely cutting your potential audience down by a factor of ten or more. This is why PS4 Pro and Scorpio are new, standalone devices rather than add-ons to the PS4 and XBO, because if you have the choice of selling to an audience of hundreds of millions rather than tens of millions that's what you do.

The console add-on is also a route that is almost guaranteed to get pretty poor support from developers because, once again, the audience is smaller. If you can target your game to everyone who owns a Switch, or just to the people who own the SCD, the former group is guaranteed to be bigger. I suppose if most of Switch's big games will be made by Nintendo themselves this isn't as big of an issue, but it still means Nintendo devoting resources to accommodate a small subset of their total user base.

It would make more sense to me (although who knows what makes sense to Nintendo) for the SCD not to be a dock per se, but rather a standalone console which also operates as a dock. That is, the SCD includes both the Switch SoC and the new GPU, and comes bundled with a Pro Controller (or pair of joycons). When you turn on the SCD without a Switch docked, it boots up on its internal SoC and operates pretty much as a standard console. If you turn it on with a Switch docked, though, it boots up on the docked Switch's SoC, allowing the Switch to be undocked and the game to continue on the Switch. This wouldn't be that much more expensive than a dock, but would have a substantially larger audience. It would also make more sense, both to developers and to customers, for there to be games which are SCD-only than if it were just a Switch accessory.

There are a few other interesting things to think about if Nintendo went this route:


  • Devs could use the Switch's SoC GPU for compute or other tasks while docked with the SCD
  • Alternatitvely, Nintendo could disable the Switch GPU while docked with the SCD to allow the CPU to clock up higher (say to 1.78GHz)
  • Nintendo's SCD patent talks about the SCD and the gaming hardware (i.e. Switch) communicating over wired or wireless networks, with the SCD performing computational work for Switch. In a simple case, this could be implemented like Wii U, i.e. if you're using Switch as a portable the SCD could stream the game to you. Alternatively, there are potentially more sophisticated uses (even over longer range) where the SCD would perform background tasks while Switch still renders the final frame.
I should end by once again emphasising that this is purely speculation based on supposed leaks from a source which, although right about Switch, may be completely wrong about this device. That said, as they were right about Switch, it is worth discussing, if only for how damn crazy it would be.

Edit: TL:DR: If the leak is accurate (which is a big if), then it looks like Nintendo is making dev kits using Nvidia's GTX 1060 GPU. It seems likely that the final product would be a special dock for Switch allowing it to play games with this more powerful GPU. Although it would be clocked lower than the GTX 1060, it would still be very powerful, potentially competitive with PS4 Pro.



Gaming-ish benchmarks tend to favour the A72, but it would depend on a case-to-case basis. If it were a quad-A72 at 1.78GHz where all four cores were fully usable by games then I'd say it'd be in the ballpark of PS4 (perhaps ahead in some cases), but if one or more A72s were used up by the OS then it would fall behind.

In any case, as I said above, I don't expect anything higher than 1GHz in games.



There are so many pieces of power-consuming hardware in Switch it's difficult to calculate too much. Things like the screen, the (various) wireless connections, the hd rumble, etc, will all consume power at varying rates, and unless you can nail down each of them precisely any estimate of what's going on in the SoC is going to have a large margin of error.

There is one thing that's easy to calculate, though: 5.3W

That's the typical power draw of the full system while playing Zelda in portable mode (based on a 4310 mAh battery and a 3 hour battery life).
 

Dystify

Member
Aren't dev kits quite often more powerful than the consumer product? Sorry if that point has been answered anywhere already.
 

Plinko

Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
Whether this is true or not, an SCD IS coming in the near future. Nintendo has referenced Apple's iterative hardware release schedule before, and the patents are there. It's happening.
 
Ugh why did you open this can of worms OP? This is not supported enough to have its own thread yet. It may be happening, sure, but let's wait for a bit more corroboration.
 

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
This is false hope taken to the extreme.

If they bring in an add on or whatever to somehow give the machine a power boost, people are gonna be pissed considering how devs are already required to develop for the handheld aspect in addition to the docked mode and then they would be expected to develop for an optional add on that people may or may not even use?
 
Would be amazing to have something like this. Some people will buy the original Switch, who may end up wanting this "Super Switch" after it's announced. They shouldn't announce this anytime soon, wait 2 years at least.
 

Luigiv

Member
Please don't. Lets just wait until power docks are confirmed to be an actual real thing first, then we can start speculating.
 
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I'm wondering if the Tegra could benefit from extra compute power feom Nvidia's GeForce Now servers.

Nvidia could beam high end GeForce GPU power over the cloud.

Also isn't the SCD just a processing box that facilitates extra bandwidth, the same kind of bandwidth required for cloud compute power boosts?
 

Dives

Neo Member
So you'd be spending another 200-300 dollars and it'd just improve Switch game framerate? Horrible value proposition. Sounds fake.
 
You probably shouldn't put too much stock into something like that without more evidence. Even if said person got some things right.
 
Thraktor's been on FIRE this entire Switch news cycle, its incredible

I'm gonna miss having 2 or 3 Switch analysis threads on GAF when March 3rd rolls around. But then if the SCD stuff IS REAL (I'm still not sure its a direction Nintendo would go), WOOOOO I can't wait, reveals aside, the speculation threads ALONE are worth it.
 

Shpeshal Nick

aka Collingwood
This is false hope taken to the extreme.

If they bring in an add on or whatever to somehow give the machine a power boost, people are gonna be pissed considering how devs are already required to develop for the handheld aspect in addition to the docked mode and then they would be expected to develop for an optional add on that people may or may not even use?

RAM Pak?

Nintendo is no stranger to this.
 
well external graphics via usb-c is possible......its just like thunderbolt


this could be interesting

This was my immediate concern and question. If true it'd very interesting to know what their game plan was in the next 12 months. I like the idea of Switch being portable but a stronger Nintendo system would be great.
 
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