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A Nintendo Switch has been taken apart
- Thread starter Dystify
- Start date
You'd put out final Devkits before a trial production run, since you have final hardware and want to get the software done ASAP.
What was the source for Summer production run?
Well yeah because they've received that unit with specific provisos (you can have this unit but its only to be used for this specific purpose). If they bought a retail unit separately they could do what they wanted with it.
NingenJanai
Member
Yes, sorry, that's what I meant.
SomedayTheFire
Member
Would this be large enough?
bezel is too big.
Silurus
Member
And be taken off Nintendos Christmas card list for good. They wouldn't do it.
JonnyDBrit
Member
So thanks to another thread showing some German reviewers unboxing the Switch, it turns out the backplate of the dock doesn' actually cover the whole back.
Which going way, way back to the discussions on how exactly the Switch would be able to draw in sufficient air for cooling while docked, I think that's how.
Which going way, way back to the discussions on how exactly the Switch would be able to draw in sufficient air for cooling while docked, I think that's how.
Ok, so sometime after August 5th, up to September 30th? the FCC approval was August 3rd, so the prototype they used wasn't from the initial batch then. I'd speculate mid September for the initial run, with final devkits being sent internally to Nintendo's developers, and October seeing them go out to 3rd parties.
Its very possible Nintendo and Nvidia future proofed their development enviroment. This will give Nintendo much more flexibility than they had in the past to release revisions / new form factors that incorperates Nvidias latest tech.
I personally think Switch is the final traditional Nintendo generation for the foreseeable future. They will only release revisions / incremental upgrades from now on.
frankie_baby
Member
So thanks to another thread showing some German reviewers unboxing the Switch, it turns out the backplate of the dock doesn' actually cover the whole back.
Which going way, way back to the discussions on how exactly the Switch would be able to draw in sufficient air for cooling while docked, I think that's how.
We already knew that, although cant you lay it horizontal so that would negage your airflow idea? I assume they just did it to make it easy to open
Maybe it was cheaper to use 2 chips?
My dream is to hear about Sega / M2 bringing remastered versions of 90s Model 3 arcade games to Switch (and PS4). Maybe 2018.
JonnyDBrit
Member
Especially considering that this is a system explicitly built around the premise of scaling performance. Just as the system understands when its docked and undocked, it could be made to recognise when it's operating on better hardware.
Well, just because something can be done doesn't mean it's the ideal way to do something - I mainly brought it up because yeah, didn't realise the backplate was that short, and one of the people I discussed it with earlier assumed that the backplate would cover it up too much. Otherwise, there are holes in the back of the dock presumably for the sake of said airflow, so there was presumably at least some concern there. Then again, maybe just the opening for the cables is enough?
It certainly needs a quick charge - at least for the joy cons. Nintendo were so damned keen to milk the accessory prices that you can't actually charge the controllers and play when you have the system docked. So, when you finally run out of charge, how long do you have to then put your controllers the system for, and wait to play again? 3 hours?
Of course if they'd just packaged the charging grip with the system (what would that cost them, 50c more?) then we wouldn't need the fast charge,
In a vacuum, there is a slight possibility of this, but when you actually look at all the sacrifices made for 2 chips, including space on the board and power consumption, I can't believe that is possible. It isn't like they are stopping production today either, they are building it for at least another year in this configuration when the prices of 64bit chips should fall even further.
Also like I said, the timing doesn't line up with the Q3 report, the chip was done over a month prior, the likeliest timeframe for the initial production run would be mid September, and would be the only time Final Devkits being sent out internally makes any sense as well... It's much more likely that these chips were ready for a late july devkit and that this was a prototype unit that was sent to FCC, I mean they would send a prototype rather than a devkit, it even lists the unit as a prototype in the filing.
Frankfurter
Member
Does it really matter with a battery life of ~20 hours? Even if it took 8 hours, you gotta sleep for a couple hours at some point.
Return of The King?
I don't understand your timeframe assumptions. Nintendo has shown that its quite a normal corporation with not very fast supply chains, with not too big flexibility. Having a full supply and production cycle taking some months is not that out of the ordinary. Especially since there wasn't any pressing deadline to meet. There's practically no reason for Nintendo to speed up the production and supply in Summer 2016 and I rather see them taking their time and make it efficient from the supply point of view.
This from the same company who take months to react to any kind of shortages.
The article was written August 5th, so it was already not at the beginning of the quarter, internal devkits would go out before initial production runs, and we know 3rd parties got them in October. Q3 is July 1st to September 30th, with full production in October, and initial production being sometime mid august to late september, I'd say the 2nd to 3rd week makes sense, either way the FCC didn't get an initial product days before the article was written as the original source is digitimes (from the gonintendo article linked) stating that it was original suppose to start it's production run in Q2 but was delayed later into Q3, with that article written Friday August 5th as well.
Can you link to what exactly FCC device are you talking about here, because looking through the articles I don't find one matching your timeline.
Wrong direction. I'd expect it to be drastically smaller with a smaller screen, but be more portable.
Two gives you a wider bus. Trying to do one chip with higher specs to compensate for the narrower bus is probably more expensive and might limit your supply options.
Also, regarding maybe 4sm... This one looks identical to the shield tv, including the bits and bobs around the soc:
The bits around the soc would have different arrangements if it had more gpu cores.
Also, hopefully the missing small cores aren't just disabled. I could see Nintendo wanting more cache though, so that suggestion seemed like a good, Nintendo, use of that space.
Also I'm on team real!
I'm somewhat in this line of work, and I'm not going to let a typo ruin what I believe... lol. Bash scripts are bashed together, at least the "croe" is consistent across runs. which at least means the script was at least being ran and isn't a complete fabrication made up in mspaint.
And the CPU, It is a string, with two variables passed in, core count and speed. I could see someone calculating the core count using some efi variable that has GPU cores included by accident, or maybe the little cores that are now replaced (speculation) with L3 cache are reporting as cores
512mb L3 confirmed? (+ 4 actual). It's not like it matters when al they care about is a pass/fail for something else. Especially since the scriptwriter put in the next line isolating the quad nature of the CPU..As for the flops and how it doesn't add up... I don't know.. maybe throttling held it back, giving credence to the lower than max shipping frequencies?
This would confirm that the trial production had already started at that time, no?
"production prototype"
"this sample is equivalent to mass-produced items"
Everything falls nicely into pieces. Chips produced in July, trial production started in August.
runnin_blue
Banned
This thread is like a great courtroom drama.
Octavianus
Banned
But then you'd have even more people on Neogaf claiming it's not a real portable because it doesn't fit in their butt pocket.
EhrgeizVII
Member
OLED plz.
Unless they want to create new joycons and make people buy them again they can't change the size of the system itself.
Although of course, business being business, it wouldn't surprise me that much.
I think we'll see 4K docks first if that's even possible.
frankie_baby
Member
No fucking way, might be ok for a phone you replace every 2 years but not for a console
Completely OT, but who uses back pockets?
PuppetSlave
Member
In before obvious average butt size of gaffer joke.
Looking at this teardown there isn't that much space to make it much smaller on the inside either. Unless they compromise a lot on the battery. Maybe when Volta can be used?
Assuming the Switch chipset is 20nm, a die shrink to 16nmff would easily allow them to make a smaller handheld only Switch (or Nintendo pocket) with no joycons.
Note the prototype is listed as August 3rd, which is a Wednesday.This would confirm that the trial production had already started at that time, no?
"production prototype"
"this sample is equivalent to mass-produced items"
Everything falls nicely into pieces. Chips produced in July, trial production started in August.
Digitimes, August 5th: Nintendo will start trial production of its next-generation console, the NX, in the third quarter of 2016 and start volume production in early fourth quarter.
The one source we have doesn't believe it has started yet, certainly their source would have worded it as "production has started" and not "production will start" Also if they have final hardware out at the end of july, why would there be final devkits in October and not the July ones? If it was just a simple clock boost, would they even send you a new devkit too, or just do a firmware upgrade?
On the surface, your time table works, but if you scratch the surface, it doesn't make sense with the devkits and full production starting in October, I mean if they did it in late july, they would be sitting on all the final components 2+ months before final devkits, has that ever happened before? Wii U final devkits came before production started.
The size gap is not that big.
Better efficiency would allow them to remove the fan, and have a smaller battery.
Moving to a clamshell and putting the battery there would give plenty of room to make a smaller device. The tablet itself is smaller than a n3DSXL anyways.
The Hermit
Member
Who is that?
Maybe the info reported by Digitimes was reporting on old news already. Such is a rumour mill that it can happen.
July devkits and October devkits might not be so much different.
And even if the trial production started in August, it's called "trial" for a reason. They wouldn't deliver these prototypes outside Nintendo. The devkit might as well be produced in September-October.
Kawaii
mario_O
Member
Sony is not creative ?
Games like TLG,BB,Nioh or Horizon aren't creative ?
Is creativity limited to cutesy low budget games or tacked on gimmicks by Nintendo ?
I don't think this needs to be debated anymore, we've both decided our explanations make more sense, we will know from a teardown in just a couple weeks what the internals look like at least.
Pretty sure he was talking about hardware. Sony chases power, Nintendo chases unique functionality. Not sure this can be argued beyond maybe the Vita's back touchpad? Still it's one person's opinion, lets not turn it into a list war.
Kissenkopf
Banned
Me. I always tried to live a normal life as a married german guy but it was impossible...my other k-pop girl group members didn't let me live my life!!
Edit: Fuck this shit. Why do I always start a new site?!
Just to understand, you're saying that this is from the FCC prototype and July devkits but the retail units use a different SoC despite the FCC docs stating that the prototype it's equivalent to the mass produced items?
What are you expecting to be in the retail units?