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The Curious Case of the Switch Foxconn Leak (Now a hardware fanfiction thread)

Cerium

Member
Okay I've decided to make this thread to keep the discussion from derailing the NIS Switch thread. I present to you the information as completely as I can discern:

A month ago some guy whose IP was apparently confirmed to originate from Foxconn posted in Chinese about the Switch production. This rumor can be found on Reddit (with some apparently inaccurate translations, more on that later.)

Now at the official Switch presentation we got some technical details which turned out to vindicate large and significant portions of this leak. In the words of z0m3le, who brought this to our attention...

-leaks that the shoulder buttons on the joycons are called SL and SR. Which is confirmed and can be seen in pictures and video of the device.

-leak also says that the device will be bundled with an "orange" and blue joycon, which was confirmed friday with the neon bundle. (his assumption was that it was a splatoon bundle)

-leak also says the battery capacity is 4310mah, which is pretty much impossible to guess, and was confirmed friday.

-leak confirmed 4GB

-leak confirmed 1600mhz ram

-leak confirmed no fan in dock

-leak confirmed USB-C and all ports of the dock correctly (including those hidden by the back panel)

-leaked the very complex joycons.

There are some lucky guesses in there if the supposed leaker is indeed full of shit. Now, why do we care? Because Foxconn guy also made some other rather explosive claims:

Says the CPU is clocked at 1.78ghz and assumes it is A73 (it could also be A72, but wouldn't be A57 because power draw would be too high) (this also makes sense because the 20nm A57 4 core @ 1ghz consumes the same power as A72 at 1.7ghz.

Says the GPU is 921mhz instead of Eurogamer's 768ghz.

Nate was saying pascal, and it looks like it is 16nm SoC.

I'd say this rumor is far more believable than the Eurogamer one simply because of all the above confirmed info. There is simply no way this person didn't see the device at foxconn and the location he originally posted from was foxconn, so it is all but accepted at this point.

Well that sounds rather good! But what is the case against this leak, and how do supporters rebut the arguments?

We know the clocks in the leak are bullshit along with the screen resolution, so as Emily Rogers would say, saying the leak is confirmed is stretching it a tiny bit.
No, I can read Chinese original post. The resolution is the signal's resolution sent to the TV, not the screen on the device. And the translator mixed leak and speculation.

It also claims a inaccurate things like 1080p screen and a 4g version, neither of which panned out. Not to mention the crazy stuff about a high spec switch with > PS4 Pro performance.
My point is, other things might finally come true, like 4g edition.

Okay well I have to say that a 4G Switch sounds like total bullshit but aside from that there's enough here that people won't stop talking about it.

So, discuss away.
 

z0m3le

Banned
Wasn't going to be me who posted this thread. Switch has too much mud thrown at it for this to go well IMO.

The 4G device could be devkits so that developers can use online play.

The Devkit ultra power box could be the SCD we saw patents for. They would only be testing this at that time as Nintendo was checking in on that unit? There is probably a lot of prototype stuff for the Switch.

It's also important to note that 20k of these high clocked devices were being made a day, so it doesn't look like these were prototypes at all.
 

Zedark

Member
Well, that's very interesting at least. If I read this graph correctly, an A73 core configuration would mean both a per-cycle improvement combined with a higher frequency, so a sizeable increase from the A57, right? Please correct me if I'm wrong.
2_575px.PNG
 

Eolz

Member
Sounds good to me.
4G could have been an experiment until they went with that smartphone app (or just remembered the vita).
 

sonto340

Member
The fact that they nailed down SL and SR buttons makes it seem legit, but they could have gotten that nugget of truth and the rest could be tales from their ass.
 

Mokujin

Member
I was thinking about that the other day, and at the very least half the stuff seems like it was a legit leak way beyond the realm of guessing (colored joycons confirmation clearly pointing to that)

Now some of the wrong stuff can be explained by misjudging.-

* Judging micro sd slot as a sim port.
* Reporting 1080 tv output as the screen resolution.

The Pascal / A73 were already speculation on his behalf, so that wasn't even an intended leak.

The only thing that really seems wrong to me was the clocks looking at Eurogamer report.
 
Can't wait to see this thing torn down..

If this configuration is true, what would it's power be? Interesting that he got everything right except the 1080p screen..maybe the Switch was more powerful at one point and Nintendo wanted things running on a 1080p screen in portable mode but backed off and downgraded? I don't know how possible that is..
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
There is a huge difference between things that can be seen with the naked eye (like joycons colour and button names) and the CPU and GPU clocks and such. Even the battery capacity is probably printed on the back of the Switch.
 

z0m3le

Banned
The fact that they nailed down SL and SR buttons makes it seem legit, but they could have gotten that nugget of truth and the rest could be tales from their ass.

They nailed the battery capacity @ 4310mah too.
That the joycons were really complex inside, and everything else in the OP from my posts. It certainly isn't a guess.

Also Eurogamer said themselves that the clocks were "a few months old" and we did learn about final hardware being more powerful vs the july dev kits.
 
If it has A72 Cores and Pascal, the price point is valid. But with the current state of A53s and Maxwell it is not, so I will be waiting for confirmation.
 

TunaLover

Member
Interesting, there's some hard info that couldn't be guessed like the SL/SR buttons, and the battery specification. If Switch indeed got this bump on specs I would totally see BotW in 1080p on TV.
 

NSESN

Member
I will believe in DF for now, but it will be sure interesting to see the thing teared down in March 3rd.
 
If it was 4G don't you think Nintendo would have mentioned that when preorders went live?

If it was more powerful don't you think we'd be seeing the flagship game run at 1080p?
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
They nailed the battery capacity @ 4310mah too.
That the joycons were really complex inside, and everything else in the OP from my posts. It certainly isn't a guess.

Also Eurogamer said themselves that the clocks were "a few months old" and we did learn about final hardware being more powerful vs the july dev kits.

The fact that the joycons are complex was already leaked by Laura by that point (IR camera, next gen rumble, motion controls etc).

Battery capacity could be printed on the label on the back.

And 4G is clearly a false info.
 

jdstorm

Banned
Something to add. Cant do it myself as im on mobile. However the source speculated that TSMC was responsible for the chips inside it(Switch). This is a big deal if true because TSMC were tied into the rumours about the deal Nvidia gave Nintendo on the chips/hardware support.

It could be another way all these crazy NX/Switch rumours tie together
 
If it was 4G don't you think Nintendo would have mentioned that when preorders went live?

If it was more powerful don't you think we'd be seeing the flagship game run at 1080p?

Its possible that these versions of the games were programmed on the old dev kits, which is why the demo versions of these games are running at lower res.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
Something to add. Cant do it myself as im on mobile. However the source speculated that TSMC was responsible for the chips inside it(Switch). This is a big deal if true because TSMC were tied into the rumours about the deal Nvidia gave Nintendo on the chips/hardware support.

It could be another way all these crazy NX/Switch rumours tie together

The TSMC is the most likely manufacturer anyhow. The supposed deal is not a leak, it's a speculation from Thraktor.
 

z0m3le

Banned
Can't wait to see this thing torn down..

If this configuration is true, what would it's power be? Interesting that he got everything right except the 1080p screen..maybe the Switch was more powerful at one point and Nintendo wanted things running on a 1080p screen in portable mode but backed off and downgraded? I don't know how possible that is..

They were producing 20k of these a day, that is a lot of devices to scrap...

Also the GPU performance is only 20% greater, nothing that is going to transform what we knew about the graphics capabilities.

The CPU on the other hand would move from being about equal to 4 PS4 CPU cores to faster than all 8 PS4 CPU cores. I'd like to add that this makes sense with michael pachter's dev info, where he was told by a developer working with Switch that it is the easiest of the 3 to develop for, that would lead me to believe that it has more CPU power in fewer cores, since that is the biggest headache with hardware.

There is a huge difference between things that can be seen with the naked eye (like joycons colour and button names) and the CPU and GPU clocks and such. Even the battery capacity is probably printed on the back of the Switch.

He saw the clocks on the screen.

He also got the weight right as well, so he physically touched them and weighed them too.
 

Malakai

Member
The neon colors does make me wonder if the Splatoon pack in bundle was true at some point internally at Nintendo. The neon colors of the Joy-Cons seem very random when I think about it.
 
Its possible that these versions of the games were programmed on the old dev kits, which is why the demo versions of these games are running at lower res.

The launch games are releasing in 6 weeks. They'll be gold in under 3, especially with Nintendo not being about that post release patch life.
 

ElTorro

I wanted to dominate the living room. Then I took an ESRAM in the knee.
I think we'll have to wait until after march for some truth

Yeah. It would be cool if this turned out to be true. But I'd remain cautious until hackers and chip decappers manage to find out more about the system.
 

Seronei

Member
How could he know what CPU/GPU it has as a Foxconn worker? It's not exactly visible from the outside.

EDIT: I guess he assumed that because he saw clock speed in a demo? OP is pretty hard to understand, who is Nate?
 

jonno394

Member
if there's a 4G version eventually then Nintendo best release something that allows launch day models to utilise 4G too, and not just expect early adopters to upgrade.
 

Uhyve

Member
Come on, that's a kindergarten story.
I'm not saying I believe, but I'm pretty sure we've seen manufacturer modes on consoles before... Vita and Wii I think.

Wouldn't be surprised to see some technical details revealed in that sort of mode.

Edit: In the Wii U test mode, maybe you would've found it in the inspection menu... if real, never seen this before.
 

z0m3le

Banned
That's what I think.

Even PS4 Slim / Pro leaker only leaked the form of them.

He might just assume 16nm means pascal, it could be maxwell still, there is no performance difference, just a different node.

As for the internals, he did see the chip itself and gave us a 10x10 die space, which I assume means 100mm^2, but who knows how closely he examined that, as I don't remember him saying that he measured it.
 

ElTorro

I wanted to dominate the living room. Then I took an ESRAM in the knee.
How could he know what CPU/GPU it has as a Foxconn worker? It's not exactly visible from the outside.

The most he could have seen is debug information from the test software. ARMv8 tells us nothing, since A53/7 and A72/3 are all ARMv8 processors. The clock speeds might be the theoretical maximum clock speed the system could request and not the stable clocks that chip is actually running on to to avoid throttling. It's impossible to be certain at this point.
 

thefro

Member
The TSMC is the most likely manufacturer anyhow. The supposed deal is not a leak, it's a speculation from Thraktor.

That's based on the original semiaccurate.com report of Nintendo picking Nvidia. Basically saying the deal was so good for Nintendo that Nvidia might just be breaking even on it.
 

z0m3le

Banned
if there's a 4G version eventually then Nintendo best release something that allows launch day models to utilise 4G too, and not just expect early adopters to upgrade.

I feel like it's too late for 4G model, it could have been for testing or for developers, so they could use it online remotely? Then again it could end up being region specific and end up only available in Japan since they aren't as strict as FCC.
 

Seronei

Member
They manufacture and put things together at Foxconn. What do you think they do there, clean the cases?

There's usually no info on the SOC that identify it as a specific architecture, it will say NVIDIA and some numbers. It's not going to say Pascal or A72 on the SOC die most likely.
 
I could believe these informations if Eurogamer didn't claimed the reported clocks are the one documented to devs. Those higher clocks are meant for the testing and I wouldn't be surprised if it was to test the stability of the device at higher clocks.
 

z0m3le

Banned
The most he could have seen is debug information from the test software. ARMv8 tells us nothing, since A53/7 and A72/3 are all ARMv8 processors. The clock speeds might be some theoretical maximum instead of the clocks that chip is actually running on. It's impossible to be certain at this point.

There is no ARMv8 chip with a theoretical max of 1.78ghz.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
That's based on the original semiaccurate.com report of Nintendo picking Nvidia. Basically saying the deal was so good for Nintendo that Nvidia might just be breaking even on it.

The TSMC deal refers to something else. A speculation from Thraktor that Nvidia has a big contract with TSMC for a lot of 20nm waffles.
 

jett

D-Member
We've seen what the games look like. We have a good idea of the machine's graphical capability. We know how much the battery lasts.

I don't think it really matters if it's Pascal or Maxwell at this point in time.
 

Bendo

Member
I wouldn't be so quick to assume that the GPU is running at 921MHz. We already knew the GPU was capable of more than 768MHz and it could simply be a case of them stress-testing the system during manufacturing rather than it being clocked at 921MHz ingame.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
He might just assume 16nm means pascal, it could be maxwell still, there is no performance difference, just a different node.

As for the internals, he did see the chip itself and gave us a 10x10 die space, which I assume means 100mm^2, but who knows how closely he examined that, as I don't remember him saying that he measured it.

Occam's Razor. He knows both the fab process of the chips (assuming seeing the chips physically or seeing some other documentation) and the clocks from a demo running on the screen. The security at Foxconn must be very shit.
 
Hmm. The system clock of the Switch/Tegra appears to be 76.8MHz. EG's article stated that the GPU was 307.2MHz for HH-mode which is 4x, and docked mode's 768MHz is 10x. This info's 921.6MHz would be 12x. If this is true, HH-mode would probably be 384MHz (5x system clock). It is a relatively minor boost, so it doesn't seem farfetched. That CPU number is significantly higher than the 1GHz statement from Eurogamer, though. The whole thing would rest on 16nm vs 20nm.

If it was 4G don't you think Nintendo would have mentioned that when preorders went live?

If it was more powerful don't you think we'd be seeing the flagship game run at 1080p?
Not necessarily. These kits are relatively new, and Zelda is obviously not using dock mode to its full capacity either way. Mario and Splatoon currently doesn't seem to use dock mode at all. These demos could have been built before they took advantage of the extra power.
 
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