Hardware Dock extra CPU/GPU?

[osaka35]

From a computer engineering perspective that makes sense, but the designer in me wants to scream if that's the case because of all the wasted space/plastic that's going into the dock. If that is the case they should have just had it laying horizontally and with thinner front/back pieces ;-;

You should pop open a Wii mini. Or rather, don't. There's so much empty space in there. They could have shrunk the size wii mini so much more but chose not to for some weird reason.

 

[TotalInsanity4]

You should pop open a Wii mini. Or rather, don't. There's so much empty space in there. They could have shrunk the size wii mini so much more but chose not to for some weird reason.

As far as I can tell it's that big because the discs still need to fit in it

 

[FAST6191]

At this point I can think of two perspectives I would wish to consider.
1) Bus induced latency. Intel quite famously ditched the standalone northbridge controller at least partially because the speeds and bandwidth between the CPU and it (which governs memory and some other things) were getting to be a problem. To that end anything especially high bandwidth would probably want to be properly considered here. I have not looked at proper 360 pictures yet but I assume there is no laptop style docking connector worth speaking of. No chance of wireless from where I sit, though some of the things I saw in patents makes me wonder if they are not going to try for some kind of cluster network of some form, even if I can't think of how that is going to really boost the kind of loads we see in games (very random/unpredictable, very latency sensitive and very interrelated, compared to say encoding a video where you can segment it in 20 pieces, nobody cares if piece 14 appears after the final piece 20, nobody cares if different threads finish 3000ms apart and anybody that has ever done video encoding will happily tell you it is not a low demand endeavour).

2) Docking lifetime. I was kind of worried a year or two back as the end of the capacitor plague meant I lacked somewhat cheap and cheerful repairs to do for random electronics. I needn't have worried for the mobile phone/tablet boom means I am always replacing charge ports and things like it. Dozens of cycles a day is not only possible but plausible for this. You add a high bandwidth feature to the mix and the reliability drops like a stone.

With that said I do agree with the others and would expect it features some kind of power saving disable mode, and possibly some low bandwidth applications like USB. I guess they could repeat the Wii U and have the tablet thing being basically a screen but going by what some others have said they said that is not it here.

 

[Yil]

My theory: There is a complete gp106(gtx 1060) inside the nx with less than half of typical clock as a portable and achieve its true potential in the dock with proper power supply

 

[Yil]

This allow the nx to avoid using insuffcient egpu solutions that's worse with arm and really expansive.
I believe Amd talks about extreme scalability with Navi (hey, listen!! So practically the zen+ with navi apu will range from 10w to 90w, using almost identical chips), and I believe Nvidia is doing the same. With 7nm, both xbox two and ps5 might incorporate similar design, but more mainstream, and Nintendo moving further ahead.

 

[Yil]

I actually think there will be a surface box some time in the future with a similar design, which also ties into Microsoft shifting from xbox one to pc (I think metro is more secure than a typical program). For sony though, well I wish them good luck..

 

[Supercool330]

Based on Nintendo's statements, I'm pretty sure all the chips will be in the Switch itself (this is how I have decided to refer to the tablet unit thing). The rumors I've heard put the Switch screen at somewhere between 720p and 900p (HD and HD+), so I suspect that when the Switch is being used in portable mode, it will run in a lower power mode and render at a lower internal resolution. Once it is docked, it will switch the internal rendering resolution to full, and draw as much power as it wants from the line.

 

[Yil]

Based on Nintendo's statements, I'm pretty sure all the chips will be in the Switch itself (this is how I have decided to refer to the tablet unit thing). The rumors I've heard put the Switch screen at somewhere between 720p and 900p (HD and HD+), so I suspect that when the Switch is being used in portable mode, it will run in a lower power mode and render at a lower internal resolution. Once it is docked, it will switch the internal rendering resolution to full, and draw as much power as it wants from the line.

I just heard that switch will have about 3 hours of portability? I know there might even be a huge gpu in there, but Nintendo should manage better.

 

[Supercool330]

I just heard that switch will have about 3 hours of portability? I know there might even be a huge gpu in there, but Nintendo should manage better.

The rumors I've heard are also in the 3-5 hour range, which isn't that unreasonable as the Wii U gamepad and the orginal 3DS also have 3-5 hour battery life. Also the GPU wont be huge (the X2 is actually a single SoC), it will just use a decent amount of power (which has more to do with nvidia than it does with Nintendo). It is also worth pointing out that all of this is speculation based on rumors, and should be taken with a HUGE grain of salt.

 

[Yil]

The rumors I've heard are also in the 3-5 hour range, which isn't that unreasonable as the Wii U gamepad and the orginal 3DS also have 3-5 hour battery life. Also the GPU wont be huge (the X2 is actually a single SoC), it will just use a decent amount of power (which has more to do with nvidia than it does with Nintendo). It is also worth pointing out that all of this is speculation based on rumors, and should be taken with a HUGE grain of salt.

You don't even know if this is tegra x2 or something more custom. Both AMD and Nvidia are working on scalability on the same physical setup.

 

[JoostinOnline]

Kinda disappointing. Basically switch is a handheld on steroids.. If all the horsepower is coming from the display unit then I don't see this thing running many, if any modern AAA games. If may run cute Nintendo games nicely but just off logic alone of what kind of hardware they can cram in that display unit I don't see this thing pushing anything like Rise Of The Tomb Raider etc without severe crippling of visuals.

It looked like it was running Skyrim Special Edition.

 

[yodamerlin]

To me, it looks like the dock is going to be fairly inexpensive. I think this because in the reveal it shows someone at home and traveling somewhere, presumably a hotel. Therefore I think that Nintendo will want to sell docks to hotels so that people can play on a big screen there.
It sounds fairly ridiculous though. I doubt that most people will want to use a Switch in a hotel, so I am either wrong, or Nintendo is aiming very big.

 

[Rudelof]

Obviously it won't add extra CPU. However, I do think the Switch on dock will run in 1080p at 60fps because Nintendo said themselves that the dock is gonna add more power to the Switch.
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Source: http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/10...nintendo-switch-clarifies-additional-features

 

[froggestspirit]

Power can mean electricity. I for one think it's just for display and charging. You have to think of it from a technical standpoint, they shown the transition with basically no pause. If anything, maybe a better frame rate, but I'm still leaning towards no change.

 

[TotalInsanity4]

Power can mean electricity. I for one think it's just for display and charging. You have to think of it from a technical standpoint, they shown the transition with basically no pause. If anything, maybe a better frame rate, but I'm still leaning towards no change.

I'm fairly certain the transition was glorified, especially since game screens were superimposed post-production

 

[froggestspirit]

I'm fairly certain the transition was glorified, especially since game screens were superimposed post-production

I still don't think they would show something outlandishly fake. I could still see it blacking out for a second or two. My main point is that with extra RAM, it would have to do some major memory reorginization on the fly if it's docked/undocked. Imagine a level loading in HD in the dock, and SD on the screen. It would have to unload the assests, and re-load the other one when switching. It is also known that this system is easy to develop for, so I don't think that will be the case.

 

[Yil]

Power can mean electricity. I for one think it's just for display and charging. You have to think of it from a technical standpoint, they shown the transition with basically no pause. If anything, maybe a better frame rate, but I'm still leaning towards no change.

This can massive powerscaling, which is easier to pull off. GTX 1060 is still faster at 400MHz compared to tegra x2.

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I still don't think they would show something outlandishly fake. I could still see it blacking out for a second or two. My main point is that with extra RAM, it would have to do some major memory reorginization on the fly if it's docked/undocked. Imagine a level loading in HD in the dock, and SD on the screen. It would have to unload the assests, and re-load the other one when switching. It is also known that this system is easy to develop for, so I don't think that will be the case.

But post processing is easier to pull off as most connections are one-way.