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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - How much power would the NX need to perfectly emulate WiiU games?

DM235 on 23 February 2016

The DS, 3DS, Wii and Wii U all offered backward compatibility through hardware. I see no reason why they wouldn't do this on the NX. They will most likely make consumers by a Wii U Gamepad separately, just to keep costs low (for those users who don't have one).

So the answer is 75 Watts, the power draw of the Wii U.



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JRPGfan on 23 February 2016
DM235 said:
The DS, 3DS, Wii and Wii U all offered backward compatibility through hardware. I see no reason why they wouldn't do this on the NX. They will most likely make consumers by a Wii U Gamepad separately, just to keep costs low (for those users who don't have one).

So the answer is 75 Watts, the power draw of the Wii U.

Wii U is a 45nm chip..

If Nintendo went with a 16nm FinFET single chip (apu), they could probably cut that 75watts down by ALOT (like down to 20watts or so).



DM235 on 23 February 2016
JRPGfan said:
DM235 said:
The DS, 3DS, Wii and Wii U all offered backward compatibility through hardware. I see no reason why they wouldn't do this on the NX. They will most likely make consumers by a Wii U Gamepad separately, just to keep costs low (for those users who don't have one).

So the answer is 75 Watts, the power draw of the Wii U.

Wii U is a 45nm chip..

If Nintendo went with a 16nm FinFET single chip (apu), they could probably cut that 75watts down by ALOT (like down to 20watts or so).

Good point, although Nintendo most likely wouldn't go with the latest (and most expensive) designs.  For example, Intel was shipping 22 nm Ivy Bridge processors in 2012, while Nintendo used 45 nm for the Wii U.

A 28 nm design is more likely, so that would bring it down to about 45 Watts.



JRPGfan on 23 February 2016
DM235 said:
JRPGfan said:

Wii U is a 45nm chip..

If Nintendo went with a 16nm FinFET single chip (apu), they could probably cut that 75watts down by ALOT (like down to 20watts or so).

Good point, although Nintendo most likely wouldn't go with the latest (and most expensive) designs.  For example, Intel was shipping 22 nm Ivy Bridge processors in 2012, while Nintendo used 45 nm for the Wii U.

A 28 nm design is more likely, so that would bring it down to about 45 Watts.

Its just.... 3D transistors (finFETs) add so much, the jump from 28nm -> 16nm is massive.

Maybe its a pipedream... but I really wish nintendo would do 16nm FinFET, and aim for 50% more performance than a PS4, and use like 8gb of Hybrid memory cube ram, with a APU useing newest proccessor design from AMD.

Then just release the console around 450$ or so (with a standart controller).



DM235 on 23 February 2016
JRPGfan said:

Its just.... 3D transistors (finFETs) add so much, the jump from 28nm -> 16nm is massive.

Maybe its a pipedream... but I really wish nintendo would do 16nm FinFET, and aim for 50% more performance than a PS4, and use like 8gb of Hybrid memory cube ram, with a APU useing newest proccessor design from AMD.

Then just release the console around 450$ or so (with a standart controller).

Last year's phones (Samsung Galaxy S6) were already using 14 nm CPUs, so this is obviously possible.  If the price breakdowns are believable, you can build the Galaxy S6 for about $290.  Since consoles don't need a built-in screen, that cost can be put towards a better GPU / better RAM.  But again, I am not getting my hopes up, since Nintendo does not seem to want to use cutting edge technology.  Heck, they may be better off releasing a $249 home console that is on par with the current gen.

Price breakdown for a Samsung Galaxy S6:

http://www.techinsights.com/teardown.com/SamsungGalaxyS6/



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Thunderbird77 on 23 February 2016

First, NX needs to be a home console. X1 emulates the x360 with 6x the power. It seems like Wii U's  successor will have at least 4 teraflops, wich is already around 8x the wii u's power. I don't think emulation will be a problem.



Thunderbird77 on 23 February 2016
bonzobanana said:
If they want wii u compatibility it will be designed with that in mind even if using different architecture. They will optimise a few things to enable full speed wii u emulation. As previously stated the wii u gpu its pretty standard although low power radeon hardware and the cpu is absolutely dire so no problems with that. The memory bandwidth is very low in wii u except for the 32MB of high speed memory. That 32MB could be difficult to emulate but the NX may well have a similar memory arrangement.

Full wii u compatibility is no problem at all and wii emulation could be done easily fully in software I'm sure without having to worry about optimising anything.

I think people have to remember with Microsoft's approach that they use patches to bypass emulation issues. So its only partial emulation and part new code. It's a different approach and the xbox one probably isn't powerful enough to emulate the 360 fully in software. However the 360 in many ways is more powerful than wii u and the xbox one is likely less powerful than NX at least in cpu terms so its an easier job.

So looking forward to NX hoping its a return to decent Nintendo hardware that will unleash the full potential of Nintendo's game developers and not having to fight the hardware all the time.

I would truly love it if the NX had a top loading optical drive and ran wii u, wii and gamecube software but the reality is I think no optical drive so wii u compatibility is only going to be for digital downloads so I'll need to keep my wii u anyway as I have few digital games.

The 360 is way less powerful than wii u in every way and so will x1 against NX (if NX is a home console.



Thunderbird77 on 23 February 2016
Zekkyou said:

That depends mostly on what type of architecture they go for. The less like the WiiU their new console's hardware is, the more power they'll need to emulate it. We won't know much power they'll need until we have a better idea of what will be inside the NX (assuming it's a home console).

that's not how emulation works. horsepower and coding is all that matters. You would be right regarding BC through hardware.



Monteblanco on 23 February 2016

Usually, emulation is pretty hard on any system and, unless NX uses a similar architecture to the Wii U, it will be near impossible to pull it out.

Concerning the Xbox, I understand backwards compatibility is not running on emulation. The Xbox One uses only the assets, such as geometry and textures, from the disc and get the executables from the Microsoft's servers. The trick is that the Xbox team was able to create a program that interpret the PowerPC code of the 360 and write a new executable for the x86 architecture of the Xbox One. That is a pretty amazing feat and I would be surprised if Nintendo and Sony, which are not software companies, could replicate it.



FromDK on 23 February 2016
Monteblanco said:

I would be surprised if Nintendo and Sony, which are not software companies, could replicate it.

They dont have to figure it out them self.. They could just pay others.. (just like opera made the browser for Wii or DeNA will help with mobil stuff)

But when it comes to BC.. I could see NX.. not having it.. Sony got away with it and earning lots of money on it.. and Wiiu userbase will likely end up 5 times smaller than wii.. (Not that many it will benefit)