Yeah, that's pretty much spot. The only thing worth clarifying is that "NX handheld" is my wording. Charlie refers simply to "NX", while elsewhere calling it a handheld and claiming that reports of AMD getting the deal are WRONG. IHS also says an independently operable handheld is on the way and that suppliers are expecting a small surge in 3"-5" LCDs in part due to NX. This doesn't mesh with what we've been hearing about the CPU (lcgeek) and overall performance (Emily Rogers). There's definitely a console portion according the the WSJ as well.
NX will clearly be a family of products, I agree with you there. Or a joined ecosystem between different hardware and software, and form factors. PC, mobile, QOL will be there but I definitely see a semi-traditional handheld and console being part of the equation too.That's basically my point: Nintendo more often than not has talked about NX using the term platform. I believe they've been doing that on purpose, the reason being NX will actually turn out to be a family of products.
10th Nintendo console?NX.......what is an NX.
What exactly is pixel switching time and how does it factor into gaming? If I'm thinking of what you're thinking of (what manufacturers market as "response time") don't most IPS displays have pixel switching time at or under 5ms?
You use a market limitation to justify a hardware limitation. You know why you don't see a game like Zelda on mobile and you won't see it in a long time from now on? Because you can't sell a mobile game for $50-60. So nobody is crazy to spend millions for developing a mobile game when you can spend much less and earn more.
The handheld is much further into 2017, or even 2018 for what we know; So maybe it will not be a problem after all.
But, assuming there is a strong push on the "shared library" selling point, you make another assumption that Zelda UNX is their flagship title:
We don't know that. Twilight Princess comparison? Quickly after the Nintendo fans/gamers/early adopters bought their Wii, TP wasn't anymore Wii's flagship title. It was Wii Sports.
In fact, because Kimishima decided to delay the NX in 2017 for software reasons, it is very likely the true NX flagship title won't be that crossgen game who was built for another hardware.
A miserable little pile of secrets.NX.......what is an NX.
So mobile is as powerful as the Wii U as we speak and has a massively massive install base and yet no big western publisher will even port a 360 game to mobile?
They ported quite a few PS2-era games.
And btw they do spend millions developing mobile games nowadays. It's not all Flappy Bird.
@Fourth Storm:
I havn't read all your posts, so I don't know if you've thinked of this already.
Also I don't believe myself in this theory, at least not before another couple years (they are definitely doing hardware themselves at first again).
Thanks to NX platform, Nintendo could agree to let other constructors build NX consoles.
Just like Samsung and Panasonic makes Android phones. I don't cite Matsushita/Panasonic randomly.
Panasonic made the Q. Thanks to some another kind of partnership, Nintendo could let them doing a NX console with extended media functionalities, but the game OS is still the same NX platform.
Same with other companies, if you prefer a more powerfull NX console and/or Samsung design (example), go for a Samsung unit.
Nintendo already barely never do money on the hardware. And we can imagine they will still keep control on the accessories/controllers somehow.
Ah thanks! Rereading that quote in context it actually seems like less of a confirmation (to me) that there will be a new input "gimmick" even if I might want one. Seems that quote specifically is more focused on user interface than actual input mechanics, and how the user interface may be shared between multiple devices.
There's going to be quite a lot of confusion and disappointment when the NX device comes out and it's just one device at first with no shared library or ecosystem. Talking about a specific code name (NX) and the general direction their hardware business is going in together in the same briefings is awfully confusing, and add onto that the translation barrier and we here are absolutely clueless about what exactly is coming next March.
Edit:
Ah, I was wondering exactly how it was worded in the article, thanks. Honestly, the CPU range and overall performance rumors don't necessarily mean the NX isn't just a handheld. Nintendo could be coming out with a surprisingly high end handheld device which can output visuals similar to PS4/XB1 for all we know, maybe a tablet competitor. And as for that WSJ article we can't be sure how accurate it is, since it was last October I believe, which is going to end up being about a year and a half from when the NX releases.
The NX could totally be a handheld and console, but I think you and I agree that Nintendo themselves seem to be referring to it as a single system/console/platform, while a lot of the rumors seem to take for granted that it will be both, which lines up with Nintendo's pre-NX discussions about their future hardware.
It's really all semantics at this point, but again it highlights how much we are assuming and how little we actually have confirmed directly from Nintendo.
A miserable little pile of secrets.
I don't see how plugging something in that either bypasses certain things or adds onto (like additional memory) is that prohibitive at all. It's been done in much older technology. And I don't have any clue/idea what the "boost" would be or to what end. For all I know, just being able to have the additional memory the handheld can bring added onto the console's could provide a lot of help. I have no idea what they entail with their SCD patent; I'm basing it off of that. This is just a simple incarnation of that idea which has been done in the past multiple times, is still being done, and has been done by Nintendo themselves (again, Expansion Pack).
And this really isn't creating a third device at all. It's letting you get more out of what you already own.
The Neo wouldn't have been there at all if she was referring to just the PS4 its there because she is specifically referring to the 4tf system.
Emily is very odd when it comes to her writing style, which is why this is considered debatable in the first place. I'm 99% sure that the point of that paragraph is that it's weaker than Xbone and that she was saying that even calling it close to Xbone is a stretch.
She said it's weaker than ps4/closer to the X1.Emily is very odd when it comes to her writing style, which is why this is considered debatable in the first place. I'm 99% sure that the point of that paragraph is that it's weaker than Xbone and that she was saying that even calling it close to Xbone is a stretch.
I can answer this one
Yes it's the same as response time
Few things to keep in mind:
the number the manufacturer reports is just a marketing number, they only count grey to grey response time which is always the lowest number.
For other transitions it can be 20 or 30 ms (that means on a 60 hz monitor it can almost two full frames for a pixel to change to the right color and back again, so it's simply the wrong color for a full frame, that's why fast panning scenes on LCD panels just turn into an unintelligible smear)
On top of that the number is only reported with the highest Overdrive setting , which you'll never use because it makes things look like this:
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/images/asus_rog_swift_pg348q/response_4.jpg
You get these annoying halos on high contrast edges that are very noticable and very distracting and annoying.
I have a "1 ms response time" lcd monitor and it's still a blurry piece of shit in motion (much of it thanks to sample and hold) and has these awful overshoot halos at high contrast edges.
Last thing to keep in mind is that even this marketing bullshit number is still hundreds of times higher than the switching time of an OLED, CRT or plasma panel
Or more accurately: response time isn't really a thing on those types of displays as their pixels work much differently.
And lcd pixel is just a glorified color filter that sits in front of a backlight, and needs to be physically reoriented to filter a different shade or color. This makes it garbage at displaying motion.
Let's not forget the 3ds came out at $250 and Nintendo had to promptly drop it's price to $170.
This gives us an idea of what a next-gen Nintendo handheld is up against.
Keep this in mind if you think a Nintendo handheld will run Zelda Wii U early next year.
She said it's weaker than ps4/closer to the X1.
"Even that's a stretch" is weirdly worded, though.
Let's not forget the 3ds came out at $250 and Nintendo had to promptly drop it's price to $170.
This gives us an idea of what a next-gen Nintendo handheld is up against.
Keep this in mind if you think a Nintendo handheld will run Zelda Wii U early next year.
One of those sentences is presented poorly. We don't know which one. I think it's best to just expect the worst, so I'm sticking with noticeably below Xbone. Like, 4 SMs (512 CUDA cores) from Pascal at 900-1050MHz for the console, 2 SMs (256 CUDA cores) at 300-400MHz for the handheld. It would be nice if she could just give a straight answer, but she seems almost afraid to do so.
One of those sentences is presented poorly. We don't know which one. I think it's best to just expect the worst, so I'm sticking with noticeably below Xbone. Like, 4 SMs (512 CUDA cores) from Pascal at 900-1050MHz for the console, 2 SMs (256 CUDA cores) at 300-400MHz for the handheld. It would be nice if she could just give a straight answer, but she seems almost afraid to do so.
tbh we have a thread for this specific quote so people can discuss it there if they want.This discussion will never end, let's assume that it's around Xbone's power ± 5% and leave it at that.
This discussion will never end, let's assume that it's around Xbone's power ± 5% and leave it at that.
As I said in the previous thread, that's how the information was presented to her. She can't clarify it unless she is given new information to share.
A miserable little pile of secrets.
tbh we have a thread for this specific quote so people can discuss it there if they want.
The discussion is somewhat related though, since the choices for the handheld and console go hand-in-hand. We'd need to find a performance level where scaling works well between the two. We also have an issue in that there hasn't been a mobile device with the Tegra X1 up until now. Basically, to find out where the handheld might be, we'd have to look at where the console might be and work backwards.
TSMC says that 16nmFF+ can either be 40% faster or consume 60% less power. Shield TV uses up to 20W. 60% less than that is 8W, which is still way too high. That's whole system though. I'd say that it would need to be cut down to a third of that in the best case, since we have to account for screens. That's 170 GFLOPS, or 2 SMMs running at 332MHz. We can't realistically expect the console to be more than 5-6x as fast as that. Why is all of this important? It all assumes that we're looking at Pascal. Knowing where the console is provides context on that as well as telling us where a Pascal Tegra could end up.
On that point, there's another thing I should mention. Previously, I criticized Emily's information on where the chips are being fabricated because it doesn't seem likely that she would know that. 16nmFF+, however, would explain how she was able to obtain such information. She wouldn't be able to figure that out for herself, of course, but the point is that 20nm and 16nm are the only possibilities what she said is true, and a Tegra X1 cut down to consume under 3W would be a bit of a joke. It would also be dead-end, since shrinking from a planar process to a FinFET one might be cost prohibitive. Thus, we are certainly looking at Wii U levels of performance with the handheld. The Shield Tablet is currently $200, so Nintendo should be able to hit that if they're willing to take a lower profit margin than usual. That's what's worrying though: would Nintendo be willing to take a lower margin?
IT's prohibitive because of cost.
They wouldn't design a docking feature just to make use of additional memory from a handheld. No point. Just add more memory to the console.
IN both cases it would make more sense just to make the console more powerful. It's a much simpler idea. It wouldn't be any more expensive than adding the capability for the console to work in parallel with the handheld. And it wouldn't create a 3rd device for Nintendo to support.
It isn't that the "docking" idea isn't doable. It just isn't practical.
Thats what I was waiting for )))
It is worth remembering that in order to make money from the mobile market you have to target devices from at least two generations of processor/GPU ago. Because that is by far the bulk of the market.So mobile is as powerful as the Wii U as we speak and has a massively massive install base and yet no big western publisher will even port a 360 game to mobile?
It is worth remembering that in order to make money from the mobile market you have to target devices from at least two generations of processor/GPU ago. Because that is by far the bulk of the market.
This issue is irrelevant for dedicated games machines (although comes into play somewhat when you are doing iterative hardware revisions, but won't be as severe as it is in the mobile market).
The discussion is somewhat related though, since the choices for the handheld and console go hand-in-hand. We'd need to find a performance level where scaling works well between the two. We also have an issue in that there hasn't been a mobile device with the Tegra X1 up until now. Basically, to find out where the handheld might be, we'd have to look at where the console might be and work backwards.
I don't think there are necessarily two systems so I don't need to do such a thing
I think Nvidia will be able to provide something that can outperform the Wii U in a portable form. That might require a handheld chunkier than we're used to, say a large 2 inch+ deep box, like...um... the Shield Portable!
My only doubt is fast RAM performance, idk if they can get something on a par with the 32mb the Wii U had, but it's outside my brainzone.
I don't think there are necessarily two systems so I don't need to do such a thing
I think Nvidia will be able to provide something that can outperform the Wii U in a portable form. That might require a handheld chunkier than we're used to, say a large 2 inch+ deep box, like...um... the Shield Portable!
My only doubt is fast RAM performance, idk if they can get something on a par with the 32mb the Wii U had, but it's outside my brainzone.
Hell, I'll do you one better: in Japanese, the word Kimishima keeps using is "ki," meaning "machine." Singular. One machine.
With these recent revelations, Im beginning to think that NX will be neither a true portable nor home console, but a semi-stationary device in the vein of laptop PCs. This would make sense of many factors, including Nintendos choice of a Tegra processor (since they are optimized for low power and streaming). While it may sound unlikely at first, it makes sense in that its a type of console which has yet to be truly embraced by the Big 3. Wii U almost got there and some folks hook it up when theyre on the go and theres an outlet available, but its hardware choices and software programming were not optimized to handle this style of play. Other facts/rumors which may support this idea:
-Whenever anyone talks about NX, they seem to be speaking of a single system. Theyve even used the word system, which in the context of videogame speak, has always referred to a single console. The only possible evidence we have that the codename: NX refers to a hardware agnostic platform comes from comments made by Iwata over a year before NX was announced! It is quite possible that within that timeframe, the decision was made to (at least initially) focus on a single SKU.
-Iwata answered an investors question about whether NX would abandon the current notion of portable/stationary at a Q&A. One must wonder if some of these questions werent approved by Iwata beforehand. Iwata responded that NX would be taking into consideration various factors, including the playing environments that differ by country. Many of us (including myself) have taken this quote to mean that NX would come in a variety of form factors (and that may still be the case in the future), however if we examine how Wii U was meant to address this and failed we can come to a couple simple conclusions. 1) Wii U was not portable enough for the Japanese market. 2) Wii U was not powerful enough for the western market. With 16nm FF+ process technology, its not outlandish to say that Xbone-caliber performance would fit within ~50w. Some other steps they might take in designing such a device:
- Ditch the optical drive (slimming the console and increasing reliability/convenience)
- Add in a laptop battery, HDD, and NX Gamecard slot
- Have the controller charge via the console (as in the digital console patent)
- Shrink the controller down a bit. IHS sources implied between 3-5 LCD
- Maybe even have the controller fit into the console somewhere ala Famicom
*snip*
I would hope A57 would be swapped out for A72 cores for a 2017 product, but I guess it's within the realm of possibility.
If they want to include some Denver cores, I would hope Nvidia has improved their hardware ARM decoder to raise the floor on Denver's general purpose code execution. One of the knocks on it since inception has been the unpredictable performance swings due to the overhead of code optimization. Dynamic thread allocation would be ideal, but would they need a separate hardware scheduler for that? Perhaps it's as simple as running sample code and determining which threads have lowest code optimization overhead. If that has been improved, or Nintendo has some ideas for workloads that would be ideal for those cores, in my ideal world they'd have 2 x Denver, 4 x A72, and 2 x A35 for Background OS Tasks and Low Power Mode.
Yeah, I understood your point but then again, I dont feel like Nintendo will ever think again power is essential to their vision. Especially when Kimishima keeps braging about the future gimmick so amazing they cant show it yet.
The thing is, they might have a minimum target for their ecosystem but I dont see them going higher. Especially if the goal is to end up with more powerful refresh.
In fact, I can even see them lower their vision just for the sake of cost. Wii U has prove two things:
1) Their struggle with HD (and even then a lot of their games were lesser than PS3 games in term of visuals)
2) Their struggle to sustain two platforms
What I see NX fixing is basically not making another graphic leap and get used to simple HD graphics which would look great on handheld thanks to small screen and great on TV thanks to amazing IQ and making games for one platform.
We don't know when the handheld is coming. Some (WSJ) even suggested that one may come with the console.
The point is not what the flagship title is, but what the most iconic titles represent. Zelda, Mario etc all need to incorporate any major selling point Nintendo put forward for the NX. Having caveats that may preclude use of one of the most popular titles with it is not going to help them market it. The system sellers all need to be 100% in line with the console's feature set.
If they wait for a shared library - assuming a handheld doesn't arrive until late 2017 at the earliest - when do they announce it? It's not a feature for the console until there's a handheld, so they risk once again seeing a home console lose momentum as a USP isn't shown working at launch.
They wouldn't need to replicate the EDRAM if they use LPDDR4 with a wide enough bus. Framebuffer is smaller at what we're assuming the resolution will be (540p)
Nvidia Shield is at $199.
IT's not a handheld.
And the portable version needs a pc. It only plays streamed games afaik.
The 2x Denver and 4x A57 are actually some of the only specs Nvidia have confirmed about Parker. Which is the primary reason I wouldn't see Nintendo using an off-the-shelf version of the chip. Why Nvidia is using A57s as opposed to A72s is anyone's guess, perhaps with A72s on board the proportion of tasks where Denver has the performance advantage is just too small. Otherwise it might be the case that the chip was taped-out quite a while ago, and they've simply been waiting for 16FF+ to mature and customers (or even a single customer) to come along. If I were designing the NX SoC (for a home console) I'd just stick with A72s and a couple of A35s for those background OS duties. Keep the CPU arch homogenous for developers and avoid the optimisation headaches which would come with Denver.
Regarding allocating threads between Denver and A57, I'm sure it would be doable in software with some kind of heuristics to determine which threads to send to which cores (similar to HMP-based big.little ARM arrangements). My guess is that they could run a wide variety of real-world code in a laboratory setting on both Denver and A57, and use the results of that to develop heuristics which could be applied in the task scheduler, either proactively (i.e. anticipating threads which perform poorly on Denver before even running any code) or reactively (i.e. knowing when a performance drop is due to code optimisation overhead and migrating to an A57) or more likely a combination of both. Of course the latter presents another problem; is Denver register-compatible with ARMv8? If not then thread migration just presents another headache to deal with.
I don't think a shared library is, in a direct sense, a selling point for the home console, though. I don't think Nintendo would attempt to sell people an NX home console primarily on the basis that they'll also be able to buy a handheld which plays the same games. I think the benefit of the shared library is indirect, that is it massively increases the number of first-party releases which will be available for each device, and I don't believe that is particularly diminished by separating the release of the two devices by even as much as a year. More games means more games, even if the technological justification behind it isn't immediately obvious.
Maybe at 540p, but I've ditched that assumption.
Maybe at 540p, but I've ditched that assumption.
IT's not a handheld.
And the portable version needs a pc. It only plays streamed games afaik.
It is worth remembering that in order to make money from the mobile market you have to target devices from at least two generations of processor/GPU ago. Because that is by far the bulk of the market.
This issue is irrelevant for dedicated games machines (although comes into play somewhat when you are doing iterative hardware revisions, but won't be as severe as it is in the mobile market).
It is a handheld running Android. There is also a tablet. Both at $199. Check them:
https://shield.nvidia.com/store/portable
https://shield.nvidia.com/tablet/k1
The 2x Denver and 4x A57 are actually some of the only specs Nvidia have confirmed about Parker. Which is the primary reason I wouldn't see Nintendo using an off-the-shelf version of the chip. Why Nvidia is using A57s as opposed to A72s is anyone's guess, perhaps with A72s on board the proportion of tasks where Denver has the performance advantage is just too small. Otherwise it might be the case that the chip was taped-out quite a while ago, and they've simply been waiting for 16FF+ to mature and customers (or even a single customer) to come along. If I were designing the NX SoC (for a home console) I'd just stick with A72s and a couple of A35s for those background OS duties. Keep the CPU arch homogenous for developers and avoid the optimisation headaches which would come with Denver.
Regarding allocating threads between Denver and A57, I'm sure it would be doable in software with some kind of heuristics to determine which threads to send to which cores (similar to HMP-based big.little ARM arrangements). My guess is that they could run a wide variety of real-world code in a laboratory setting on both Denver and A57, and use the results of that to develop heuristics which could be applied in the task scheduler, either proactively (i.e. anticipating threads which perform poorly on Denver before even running any code) or reactively (i.e. knowing when a performance drop is due to code optimisation overhead and migrating to an A57) or more likely a combination of both. Of course the latter presents another problem; is Denver register-compatible with ARMv8? If not then thread migration just presents another headache to deal with.
I'v seen them. What's your point? That it can play Flappy Bird?
Nintendo makes a $200 handheld called the 3ds XL.
There's different levels of dedicated machines. We are talking about Nintendo. The company that had to lower the price of their 3ds to $170 a few months after it launched at $250.
They aren't going to release a $500 handheld.
I'v seen them. What's your point? That it can play Flappy Bird?
Nintendo makes a $200 handheld called the 3ds XL.
But I don't see why/how this would be more costly? The idea I was running with is that the console would be near the same as the handheld in parts but cheaper because there is no screen and other extras, as the entry point into gaming on NX. When you add in extra memory and things like you're suggesting to make the console more powerful, THAT will drive up the price more than a simple port providing a connection to the handheld.
Now, the above hinges on the idea that Nintendo will want to provide different entry points. They've done this with the 3DS line, but I'm just conjecturing if/how they could do this with NX as a platform instead, both console and handheld. But, why wouldn't they? If you could provide a cheap console capable of running all the engines/middleware of the other consoles, but with Nintendo games and all on it, that's a great sell in and of itself. There's nothing stopping them from a premium super unit later, just that between the handheld and console, you have the iPad and the Mac Mini scenario. Letting them interact is a given and there will definitely be connectivity between them. (Lots of things come to mind, like a plug to use headphones but play on the TV screen, another controller input, providing a microphone, etc.) But, why not provide extra incentives to those who own both? The console could charge the handheld's battery, get an extra boost from the handheld, provide a sturdy place for the camera (only on the handheld) for doing special AR things at home on the big screen or even act like a Kinect, provide ambient lighting under your TV (I don't know?! The gaming version of the Phillips Hue!), provide a physical Navi to shout at you and give you hints while you're playing a game, and lots of other things. There's lots of practical things the connection could do. And none of this again is creating some third device for Nintendo to support!
They definitely could make the console much stronger than the handheld...but why when they can get fairly close to the others in the handheld itself? (It's possible the console could naturally be better just by being able to draw more power since there's no concern over a battery, but I'm definitely not the one to prove that!) There's no incentive for just trying to blow the other guys out of the water with the console, especially when their own games and development haven't reached some amazing technical heights or anything anyways. It also helps a ton with scalability in their library. They could just try to make both fairly close and use the savings from the things removed from the handheld to provide a cheaper alternative for those wanting just the console and (hopefully) make bank on volume.
Emily is very odd when it comes to her writing style, which is why this is considered debatable in the first place. I'm 99% sure that the point of that paragraph is that it's weaker than Xbone and that she was saying that even calling it close to Xbone is a stretch.