Bofferbrauer2 said:
Orin is rated for a TDP of 65W, that's way too much for a handheld format like the Switch. Also, it's heavily axed towards Deep Learning and AI, too much for it's performance to not become squandered or very hard to tap on (similar to the Cell in the PS3). I'd be more expecting a new Tegra chip with more consumer-related hardware, which NVidia probably wants to develop anyway for it's Shield line of products, which uses the same chips as the Switch does. In other words, I'm more expecting something with 4-8 Tegra cores (Carmel or Hercules) and 384-512 Cuda Cores (Turing or next-gen) and a 128bit bus of 8-16GB LPDDR4X or LPDDR5 without too many bells or whistles, as they currently are too taxing for a handheld format, even in 7 or 5nm. And that should be enough to get PS4-like performance from a handheld anyway |
Anyone throwing out TDP's must also state that the chip could be on a smaller node than the theoretical numbers given for Orin, there's just not enough info given about that chip to understand why it needs 65-70w. The only difference with Switch is that its not just one thing or the other, so it needs a chip design that allows it flexibility to provide decent performance in handheld but also ramp up for dock mode.(The idea of Switch is much closer to a laptop than a phone)
There are mobile chips currently on the market that eclipse the PS4, but Switch 2 will definitely be challenged on memory bandwidth and storage read speeds. Back during the GC days Nintendo put up a 1 billion dollar multi-year deal with IBM for processors, so they aren't completely against spending out for technology. Especially with something like this where they have a clear vision of where their platform should continue to go...(Not saying they will ever spend out like that again, but now makes more sense to.)
