Wall Street Journal Japan Reports A New Switch Model Will Release In The Second Half Of 2019

[Soundwave]

JEMC said:

Soundwave said:

This is how I would do it.

Switch Lite (launches Spring/Summer 2019)
Die-shrink Tegra X1 chip to 14nm FinFet
Left/right bezels on Switch eliminated, resulting in smaller system (less width)
Less weight
60% increase in battery life

Price reduction to $249.99 for holiday 2019 with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe or Breath of the Wild bundled (user's choice)

Switch Pro (March 2020)
7nm custom Nvidia Tegra (comparable to Apple A12X)
450-500 GFLOP undocked, 1.2 TFLOP docked
8GB RAM with 58GB/sec bandwidth
1080p 7.4 inch display, 128GB onboard flash storage
$349.99 MSRP

All Nintendo games run on both models, only difference if you have a Pro is the resolution will increase to 900p-1080p undocked and 1080p-1440p (4KTV required) docked. Same with the bulk of indie games.

Nintendo does allow for about 10-12 3rd party games per year that are Switch Pro only. Kingdom Hearts 3, Resident Evil 2 Remake, Call of Duty, GTAV, Dark Souls III, Fallout 76 in 2020. Goal is not to get every 3rd party PS4/XB1 title, just a few of the bigger ticket ones. Eventually this number will rise and Switch will transition over to Switch Pro as main model and Nintendo will start making some of their own games Switch Pro only (around holiday 2021). 

Why would Nintendo pay for the redesign of the X1 on a smaller node when they can get the same result, and cheaper, using a Tegra X2 runing at lower frequencies?

And why would Nintendo pay for a custom designed chip, specially given that they went for an off-the-shelf product for the Switch, when they can get the same or very similar results using a Tegra X2 at full capacity (1.5 TFlops FP16 at 15W)?

They could use the X2 for the slimmer Switch, but it doesn't look like it from the leaked Switch OS hack, there's something called a Tegra Mariko chip which has a model number T214 (Tegra X1 is T210), the Tegra X2 has a completely different model number. 

1.5 TFLOPS at FP16 is only half that at actual FP32, which is what most devs use, so 750 GFLOPS at 15 watts is alright, but Nvidia can likely do better than that for 2020. 15 watts may be a bit too hot as well, the current Switch runs at 11 watts docked. 

I don't think Nintendo necessarily wanted to go with an off the shelf part, it may have been a decision based on time/cost, but it's also had some headaches for them like hackers being able to easily exploit the X1. For future Switch iterations I believe they will use custom chips but chips that are based off of existing designs Nvidia has. 

Last edited by Soundwave - on 10 November 2018