Pemalite said:
Soundwave said:
LPDDR4 is pretty decent as main RAM IMO. It is energy efficient and can get up to 50GB/sec these days which isn't bad considering.
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Not sure if you know how memory works. But 50GB/sec isn't happening, not in a mobile device or small form factor.
clock speed * (bits per clock/8)
3200mhz * 64/8.
You will likely get about 25GB/s on a 64bit LPDDR4 interface.
The reason why the Xbox One has such an advantage is because it can afford to have a much larger memory controller and drive everything on a 256bit bus.
Remember also that memory bandwidth and capacities aren't combined when you combine GPU's to process a game either.
Soundwave said:
If Nvidia can give Nintendo a way to only need 10MB-16MB of eDRAM instead of 32MB, that wouldn't be bad. It will consume energy, but this is one area Nintendo is likely to splurge on because Nintendo simply loves their fast memory pools.
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If you go with 10Mb-16Mb of eDRAM, you are going to be limited, there is only so many "ways" you can do something effectively.
The Xbox 360 also had 10Mb of eDRAM and relied on a tiled approach, but it still limited developers in many ways.
Soundwave said:
If the 3DS has 10MB as is, it's unlikely the NX will have less.
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Agreed. Not only that, but it would be pointless.
We also need to take into account the resolution and level of fidelity the 3DS is operating at, it's not breaking any records, something more modern with more effects will... Well. Simple require more.
With that said, one of the benefits that eDRAM could be used for is as an L4 cache, Intel has done this successfully and the gains for the CPU isn't to be understated either in some edge cases.
Soundwave said:
Unless Nvidia can provide a different solution or if Nintendo can maybe do something like a very, very, very small pool of HBM (only 10-32MB say), but I don't know if that would work. What consumes more electricity, eDRAM or HBM (out of curiousity)?
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HBM would use more energy than eDRAM.
But it all comes down to how it's implemented and the size of the memory.
One of the advantages of HBM is how large it's capacity is verses eDRAM.
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Doesn't the iPad Pro hit 51GB/sec?
The A9X is paired with 4 GB of LPDDR4 memory in the 12.9" iPad Pro and 2 GB of LPDDR4 memory in the 9.7" iPad Pro with a total bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s. This high bandwidth is necessary to feed the SoC's dodeca-core PowerVR 7 Series GPU cores. The RAM is not included in the A9X package unlike its sibling, the A9.
If eDRAM consumes less power than HBM, that's probably what Nintendo will use again, I think, they will try and work with Nvidia to get that size down from 32MB though.
If I had to guess, I'd say maybe 4-6GB LPDDR4 (1GB reserved for the OS) for the main RAM with 12-24MB of eDRAM.
