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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Looking At Tegra Xavier -- The Next-Gen Switch Chip

Soundwave on 18 April 2017
Bofferbrauer said:
Soundwave said:

Now Xavier (Tegra X3) is reportedly supposed to do close to Drive PX2 performance .... at only 20 watts! The current Switch for reference runs at 15 watts in docked mode. Nvidia uses a different terms to grade these chips on performance .... DLTOPS (learning FLOPS basically), so Drive PX2 does 24 DLTOPS, Xavier does 20 DLTOPS. Doing some basic math that works out to about 6.6 TFLOPS for the Nvidia Xavier. 

That's insane performance for a 20 watt part! Now the Xavier at just under 300mm is a pretty big chip (512 CUDA cores). The current Switch Tegra X1 SoC is only a bit over 121mm. So that Xavier chip is very big.  However lets say we slash that in half ... to 256 CUDA cores, you could have 3.3 TFLOP performance docked at only 10 watts, and 1.65 TFLOP if you cut it again in half for a undocked mode at 5 watts for the chip. Basically PS4 level performance in portable mode, and almost PS4 Pro in docked mode. 

Not too shabby huh? And this chip will be done by the end of this year, so by 2019/2020, if Ninendo wants to use it as a mid-gen refresh ... it should be more than mature enough to go into a mass produced $300 device. Lets remember the current Tegra X1 is a 2015-era chip, that Nintendo is using in 2017.

Some caveats though:

1. 20W is the TDP, not the consumption, which is likely higher than that.

2. The TFLOPS are in half precision, so cut the numbers by 2 to get single precision.

3. Needs good cooling to keep the chip from throttling down.

4. cutting the CUDA cores down doesn't exactly halve the consumption of the chip. Also, lowering clock speed might be a better way to gain on efficiency.

5. Considering what the Chip is made for, it (sadly) probably comes at a premium price, especially if it needs the platform built around it to actually work.

All in all, what I could see with an X3 based Chip in an upcoming Switch would be twice the performance at most, as too much has to be cut to fit into the handheld.

X3 would still be way beyond double an X1. The Tegra X2 already doubles the X1. 

Xavier would basically be a PS4 portable. 



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zorg1000 on 18 April 2017
Soundwave said:
zorg1000 said:

ya ive been saying for awhile that Nintendo will release two skus like those along with a home only microconsole over the next 2-3 years.

Could be more than two. The 3DS has 5 models in 6 years, I think Switch will have even more because it's the only Nintendo hardware product line basically. That and because hardware refreshes quite frankly make these companies money. 

I think you'll see new models next year and the current 20nm Tegra X1 Switch will be phased out by the end of 2018 if not sooner. 

For sure, GBA, DS & 3DS each had their first revisions about 1.5 years after launch so i expect a revision sometime between Fall 2018-Spring 2019.

A revision/upgrade every 1.5-2 years seems likely.



When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.

Jizz_Beard_thePirate on 18 April 2017

I'd be careful when guessing what the next SoC will be when it comes to Switch and Nvidia. Different SoCs are meant for different things and not everything is meant for gaming regardless of whether or not it can do X amount of Teraflops.



                  

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bigtakilla on 18 April 2017
Soundwave said:
zorg1000 said:

whats the other performance mode option for X2?

so Switch is essentially a souped up PS3/360/Wii U and Switch 2 in 5 or so years could be a souped up PS4/XBO? sounds about right.

The other performance mode for Tegra X2 is double the processing power of Tegra X1 at 15 watts. So for Switch that'd effectively be 384 GFLOPS or whatever x2 at 15 watts (768 GFLOPS). So that would be performance that destroys a PS3/360/Wii U. It'd be effectively quadruple a Wii U. 

And that chip is available right now, today. 

Wouldn't even quadruple the Wii U still be less than PS4? Do correct me if I'm wrong though.



Bofferbrauer on 18 April 2017
Soundwave said:
Bofferbrauer said:

Some caveats though:

1. 20W is the TDP, not the consumption, which is likely higher than that.

2. The TFLOPS are in half precision, so cut the numbers by 2 to get single precision.

3. Needs good cooling to keep the chip from throttling down.

4. cutting the CUDA cores down doesn't exactly halve the consumption of the chip. Also, lowering clock speed might be a better way to gain on efficiency.

5. Considering what the Chip is made for, it (sadly) probably comes at a premium price, especially if it needs the platform built around it to actually work.

All in all, what I could see with an X3 based Chip in an upcoming Switch would be twice the performance at most, as too much has to be cut to fit into the handheld.

X3 would still be way beyond double an X1. The Tegra X2 already doubles the X1. 

Xavier would basically be a PS4 portable. 

The X2 is far away from reaching twice the power of the X1. First, the increase is only 50%, and second, that's the best case scenario. In real life, 30% is more probable cause it won't keep it's high clock speed - from which 90% of the performance increase actually stems.

Xavier in Switch would be a PS4 portable - if it would be allowed to run at full speed with full specs outside of the dock. Which the switch probably could... for 10 minutes before recharging!



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bonzobanana on 18 April 2017

I don't think Nintendo will fragment the userbase for many years so any later tech probably until 2020 will be utilised purely to improve battery life, dimensions etc without affecting core compatibility. However I guess with an improved 1080p screen a newer revision could offer docked performance on the move and eliminate the original portable performance level possibly.

In fact I think this will probably be how this is worked out. First a Switch mini that can only operate in the two portable performance modes of 157 and 200 gflops and later a higher performance Switch that can mainly operates at full docked performance because it has a 1080p screen built in. I just can't see it doing any different than that because it will fragment the market but lets face it docked performance on the move will be a good upgrade anyway.



HoloDust on 18 April 2017

I honestly have no idea how you got to 6.6TFLOPS with 512 cores...if you're talking FP32. That must be either some epic cores or epic clock at which they're running.



UnderstatedCornHole on 18 April 2017

Unproven bullshit.
Good god provide some supporting evidence. Talk about confirmation bias.



haxxiy on 18 April 2017
HoloDust said:
I honestly have no idea how you got to 6.6TFLOPS with 512 cores...if you're talking FP32. That must be either some epic cores or epic clock at which they're running.

DLTOPS is the PMPO of the computer industry. It can be calculated on a variety of ways and there is no doubt in my mind that Nvidia is talking up their own future product by making it seem like the equivalent of 6.6 TFLOPS for deep learning. It's only a logical conclusion if Volta is better than Pascal or Maxwell at that, specially given their dismal FP64 performance other than the Titan chips.



 

 

 

 

 

Ljink96 on 18 April 2017

Why else would Nvidia make such a bold claim that they're working with Nintendo for the next 2 decades or so... Switch 2 or 1.5 should be an interesting console.