Gaming how long will switch cartridges last?

blueagent004

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do switch game cartridges use NAND flash memory to store its game data? does that mean the estimated lifespan of these cartridges should only be around 10+ years or so, before data-rot occurs?

thanks for letting me know!
 
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driverdis

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might be a long time considering my gba games work just fine after all these years

GBA games use maskrom, that is read only memory that has a really high lifespan, and as such should last a lifetime.

newer games such as 3DS and Switch games use Flash memory. that has a limited lifespan of a few decades and will probably not last long but the console itself will fail before then as it also uses programmable memory. The 3DS for example can be fully dumped and re-flashed every 10 or 15 years to "refresh" the data so it does not die of "bit-rot"
 

jefffisher

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GBA games use maskrom, that is read only memory that has a really high lifespan, and as such should last a lifetime.

newer games such as 3DS and Switch games use Flash memory. that has a limited lifespan of a few decades and will probably not last long but the console itself will fail before then as it also uses programmable memory. The 3DS for example can be fully dumped and re-flashed every 10 or 15 years to "refresh" the data so it does not die of "bit-rot"
That's not true switch uses macronix mask ROMs it was confirmed by macronix before the switch even came out.

The games should last nearly forever as long as they aren't damaged.
 

jefffisher

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i found a good article on it here there are at least three other entirely different articles all pointing to the fact nintendo uses some sort of maskrom
they definitely use macronix XtraROM for switch games but what exactly that means is unknown as it is completely a macronix trade secret
it seems like it's some sort of proprietary upgrade to maskrom possibly but maybe not related to nitriderom
quote from the article "According to Kilguss, Macronix has conducted repeated reading of three sets of XtraROM's single page at 25 degrees centigrade with Vcc set at 3.6V and a data rate at 1MByte per second to test whether the data in XtraROM is affected. After more than 109 tests lasting for 168 hours, 80 units of each of the three sets of XtraROM were randomly sampled (a total of 240 units sampled), and no error was found. According to Kilguss, testing of general SLC/MLC NAND flash under the same settings would show errors of disturbance within one hour."
the kind in the switch is not hybrid flash that was used for saves in 3ds games switch is pure ROM so yeah i'd think it's safe to say that switch games will last very close to forever

http://www.digitimes.com/supply_chain_window/story.asp?datepublish=2012/07/13&pages=PR&seq=201
 
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blueagent004

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i found a good article on it here there are at least three other entirely different articles all pointing to the fact nintendo uses some sort of maskrom

this is the exact information i've been looking for, thank you so much for sharing this with us!
 

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