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Forums - Nintendo - AMD Hinting that they will get the win for Nintendo's next handheld?

phaedruss on 14 July 2014
fatslob-:O said:

Don't just believe that the Tegra K1 can consistently pull off 33 Gflops/watt consistently as it often caps out at around 25 Gflops/watt cause of the fact that it throttles a lot.

BTW don't expect much gains from going to a smaller process node as leakage issues become more apparrent so reducing power consumption at smaller process nodes will get harder and harder. Architectures also don't play a big role to performance gains in comparison to chip scaling so that's pretty much a moot point you've got on your hands.

Just note that the IPad mini is using the same processors as the iPhones but instead of being clocked at 800 Mhz it's clocked at 1 Ghz so that's actually a small increase in power consumption compared to the iPhones. 5 watts are meant for noticebly bigger tablets.


Architectures can play a major role in performace gains. I think 3-4 watts would be fine for a iPad mini sized Nintendo handheld though, isn't the Ps Vita around 3? Can't leakage issues be mitigated to some extent as well? I would think that as they mature that would be the case.



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nomad on 14 July 2014
padib said:

@underlined . Captain Tom just told you AMD nukes Intel by a factor of 5 in the mobile space, and Soundwave suggested AMD.


By a "nuke" and "factor of 5" is a huge exaggeration, in hand picked benches perhaps. Intel's 2W Clover trail lose slightly(say <50%) on the CPU side VS AMDs 4W Temash, and lose by a factor of 2 on the GPU. Intel's 4W Bay Trail matches, if not beats, AMD 15W Kabini on the CPU side and and lose by a factor of 2, but matches Temash's GPU. It's clear Intels beats AMD in term of efficiency. 

With that said, I still don't think Nintendo switch partners with Intel.



phaedruss on 14 July 2014

Regardless of the exact specs of the next handheld, I think it's clear that it could handle pared down ports of Wii U games. Look at Borderlands 2 on PS Vita and PS3. The situation would not be as extreme as that. Furthermore, Nintendo said their next architecture will "absorb" the Wii U architecture, I can only assume at this point this is referring to software not hardware.



fatslob-:O on 14 July 2014
phaedruss said:

Architectures can play a major role in performace gains. I think 3-4 watts would be fine for a iPad mini sized Nintendo handheld though, isn't the Ps Vita around 3? Can't leakage issues be mitigated to some extent as well? I would think that as they mature that would be the case.

Based off that video I would say that architectures DON'T play a major role to performance gains in comparison to chip scaling and I whole heartedly agree with Ex-Intel engineer, Bob Collwell with that.

I don't exactly know the power consumption for the Vita as it would be hard to isolate the components such as the screen which takes up a far portion of the power but I would still reccommend no more than 3 watts. 

A matured process node mostly helps in the yield department but as for leakage you would have to fundamentally change the whole transistor architecture itself or the materials to achieve lower leakages such as employing High-K dielectric materials or making the move to FinFETs. 



phaedruss on 14 July 2014

So architecture and maturity can mitigate these issues then?



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fatslob-:O on 14 July 2014
phaedruss said:
So architecture and maturity can mitigate these issues then?

Short answer is no and the long answer is entirely complicated ... 



phaedruss on 14 July 2014
fatslob-:O said:
phaedruss said:
So architecture and maturity can mitigate these issues then?

Short answer is no and the long answer is entirely complicated ... 


You just told me they can lol. Anyways, if you're telling me you can't get more out a chip by changing the design to be more efficient I think you're either lying or full of it.



fatslob-:O on 14 July 2014
phaedruss said:

You just told me they can lol.

How so ? By "architecture" you are likely referring to the "instruction set architecture" or the "micro architecture" which is entirely different from a "transistor architecture". Having a more mature process node does not mean that you solve the leakage issues. 



prayformojo on 14 July 2014

Nintendo handhelds. The item that I barely ever use, but can't help from buying every single time a new one launches. I swear, there is something subliminal going on with those damned things.



Soundwave on 14 July 2014
fatslob-:O said:
Soundwave said:

We don't know what the form factor for the next Nintendo handheld is, the 3DS isn't the monster seller they envisoned so don't assume they are married to the clamshell design. Even kids seem to prefer the bigger/single screen design of the iPad/iPad mini as they are playing more and more on those devices than Nintendo's. 

150 GFLOPS would be enough to approximate many/most 360/PS3/Wii U tier games at a significantly reduced resolution I think for play on the go. 

Many Vita games do not run at the full resolution of the screen, Uncharted runs at 720 x 408 for example instead of the full 960x544, but it's very hard to tell that it's a "low resolution" game on a small screen with a good PPI. I suspect a Nintendo handheld will scale similarily to this, higher end games will run at a much lower resolution. 

FYI the 2DS was a failure so don't just assume that a bigger form factor is the way to go. I think clamshell is one of the best things to have ever happened. 

I don't know if I should tell you this but the Vita was also extremely weak clocking in at less than 70 gflops so that's the reason why many vita games don't run the full resolution as pixel shading is very expensive so it's understandable why it happened.

I think the best resolution that Nintendo should go with is 480x270 as it will save a lot of power. 

70 gflops is pretty good for a device made in 2011. By 2016, Nintendo should be able to get chips 3-4x more powerful I would imagine, which does put XBox 360-like graphics in the relam of possibility at a lower resolution without too much fuss IMO. 

I think they will go with a higher resolution screen, but such a device will be a multi purpose device and the Wii U/360 like graphic games won't neccessarily be the norm. So y'know there's nothing wrong with running a game that has Wii-level graphics at full 720p or something. Or for web browsing and other apps a higher res screen is beneficial and these days cheap. If a developer wants to make a game that runs at 480x270, there's nothing stopping them.