9 replies to this topic

[Chaotix]

http://playeressence...eld-technology/

 

AMD’s Vice President Saeid Moshkelani has given us a little hint that Nintendo might be working on some powerful handheld technology. Despite what the critics say about the handheld market, Moshkelani still things the market is very viable thanks to Nintendo. He also implies that this next-gen handheld tech is not a follow-up to the PS Vita. 

 

“Another area of interest for semi-custom is handheld gaming, believe it or not. “Everyone thinks it is dead, but the [Nintendo] 3DS is still selling.”

 

When talking about the console business model, Moshkelani made it clear they were not interested in niche products.

 

“Has to be at least $100 million annual revenue for us to go for it,” says Moshkelani. That’s a minimum, he explains, not a target.

 

[Chrop]

I'm not too surprised, been 3 years since the 3DS came out so they'll be planning to make the next gen one. Although we won't hear anything about it until a few years from now. 

[the gamz girnalizt]

I'm not too surprised, been 3 years since the 3DS came out so they'll be planning to make the next gen one. Although we won't hear anything about it until a few years from now. 

But it's from AMD though, and they never took part in development with the 3DS, I think.

 

This is interesting though. It could be a sign that Nintendo might go for Home + Handheld console combined.

[Raiden]

But it's from AMD though, and they never took part in development with the 3DS, I think.

 

This is interesting though. It could be a sign that Nintendo might go for Home + Handheld console combined.

Yeah it was ARM processors before which is often used in portable/mobile devices and 3DS used a DMP GPU. So AMD which normally does Nintendo's GPU's on consoles.

[grahamf]

But it's from AMD though, and they never took part in development with the 3DS, I think.

 

This is interesting though. It could be a sign that Nintendo might go for Home + Handheld console combined.

Nintendo has been planning a "Fusion" platform where both their handheld and console is based on the Wii U's architecture. This will allow all Wii U games to be easily ported to the next handheld and console, and is why DS and GBA games are coming to the Wii U and NOT the 3DS

[the gamz girnalizt]

Nintendo has been planning a "Fusion" platform where both their handheld and console is based on the Wii U's architecture. This will allow all Wii U games to be easily ported to the next handheld and console, and is why DS and GBA games are coming to the Wii U and NOT the 3DS

Wow, you have a good point.

 

It's really likely that they'll do a fusion platform after all then.

[Nollog]

But it's from AMD though, and they never took part in development with the 3DS, I think.
 
This is interesting though. It could be a sign that Nintendo might go for Home + Handheld console combined.

Nintendo were looking at AMD, Nvidia and PICA for their 3DS graphics processor, they decided to go with PICA, most likely because they like Japanese companies.

I saw this on reddit today:

I'll share my post from Neogaf yesterday in here, just some speculation but I hope it's interesting to everyone. (side note, I messed up on the gflops, I should of pushed the clock to match 176GFLOPs which would match Wii U's and not the 172 that I go on about in this post)
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I've been thinking about this for a while now. The simple answer is that they will use an AMD APU. 2016 for their handheld and 2017 for their console. Here is how it would work and carry over BC as well as their current Wii U library of VC titles/eshop titles.
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First some realities: Nintendo's oldest partner in console making is the S3/ARTX/ATI/AMD team where they have hired over some of the staff themselves and have a very strong working relationship.
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AMD's "Mullins" is a 28nm APU with 128 ALUs @ 500MHz (Wii U has 160 @ 550MHz = 172 GFLOPs) and a quad core 2GHz Puma core, these APUs run at 2.8 watts (which is lower than psp, but of course this is just the SoC and not the complete system)
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AMD is moving to 20nm next year and 16/14nm in 2016 as well as new architecture for their cores (k12 arm/x86)
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Wii U uses about 28watts without the disc drive, ~20% of that is likely PSU power efficiency loss, so you are closer to 22 watts, USB, Wifi, Wifi(gamepad signal), bluetooth, ram and other misc components will use up another ~8watts, this system is built on 45nm process for the CPU/GPU (GPU is possibly 40nm) these are drastically old parts that could be reduced as much as 3 times to reduce their power draw. Infact there is little in the Wii U that couldn't of literally been done in 2009 from a technical standpoint. This entire system can be created in a handheld size with 20nm process under the formfactor's power restrictions
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The simple setup:
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3DS uses 2 CPUs, one used in games and one used in the DS for BC and to power the OS, this was the key to where Nintendo is most likely going with their absorption of Wii U architecture, NNID and VC going forward.
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They are likely to use an AMD APU for their handheld, possibly only 2 cores but I'd venture to guess a quad core is just as likely. For the GPU side you could see 3CUs running at 450MHz (192 ALUs @ 450MHz = 172 GFLOPs) with Espresso cores for OS/BC/VC compatibility with Wii U.
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This is also the likely answer for Wii U's successor as well, Espresso as a co-processor makes a lot of sense.
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Handheld: ~2016
[polygon performance is actually higher on GCN afaik, you get 2m poly per mhz, so a higher clock can push more polygons but more "shaders" or ALUs gives a better GFLOPs performance and is also more likely considering higher clocks effect battery more]
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Pessimistic view:
CPU: Espresso co processor for VC/BC/OS; AMD ARM APU Dual core 1.6GHz on 20nm process
GPU: AMD APU 2CU (128 ALUs GCN2 @ 670MHz for 172GFLOPs) on 20nm process
RAM: 2GB
Screen: 2x ~4 inch 480p screens (Lower resolution gives a better performance so this might not be a huge negative)
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Optimistic view:
CPU: Espresso co processor for VC/BC/OS; AMD ARM APU Quad core 2GHz on 20nm process
GPU: AMD APU 4CU (256 ALUs GCN2 @ 500MHz for 256GFLOPs) on 20nm process
RAM: 4GB
Screen: 2 ~5 inch 540p screens (qHD gives the best reduction of 1080p graphics which we would see a lot of in Nintendo's next console)
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Console: ~2017
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Pessimistic view:
CPU: Espresso co processor for VC/BC/OS; AMD ARM 8 core 2GHz on 20nm process.
GPU: AMD APU 14CUs (896 ALUs GCN2 @ 1GHz for 1792GFLOPs | ~PS4 spec) on 20nm process.
RAM: 8GB DDR4 ~150GB/s + 35MB edram
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Optimistic view:
CPU: Espresso co processor for VC/BC/OS; AMD ARM 8 core 3GHz on 16/14nm process
GPU: AMD APU 20CUs (1280 ALUs GCN2 @ 1.2GHz for 3072GFLOPs)
RAM: 16GB DDR4 ~150GB/s + 35MB edram
[note: Sorry if the listed specs above is more of a range than some might be expecting, but the truth is I don't know the future and so speculating on specifications of a device without intimate knowledge is really just guess work, so rather than that, I looked at AMDs future products and selected likely candidates from 2 view points for both devices.]
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This allows Nintendo to legacy their software through a service, connect both devices going forward into 1 dev cycle and allows the OS to become quite a bit more capable with background services (system wide voice chat, gameplay recording/uploading) all while keeping their current tools and apps alive.
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I'd also like to point out that the OS they are using on Wii U could be carried over running right on espresso, this also means they never have to dump their previous catalog of games going forward again. Nintendo isn't Microsoft as we all know, so building up their current OS it probably a lot better for them than starting from scratch again considering how badly the Wii U ran 20 months ago.

[grahamf]

I'm excited.

 

That being said, I'm confident that Nintendo will be erring towards the pessimistic view, with the Wii 3 primarily focusing on integrating new technologies and reducing discovered bottlenecks than adding more cores or increasing speeds. The Wii, Wii U, 3DS, and DS indicate that Nintendo has an easier time selling consoles that are cheaper than consoles that are more powerful. I'm speculating the Wii 3 will be at most the size of the original Wii, and potentially the size of the Wii Mini (except it will support an internal 2.5" drive so the Wii Mini's size may be too small)

 

Also I'm fairly certain the handheld's co-processor will be more like the 3DS's than the Wii U's. It's more important that it can run 3DS games then Wii and Wii U games, especially since the Wii and Wii u games would need to be heavily modified just for the controls (and the fact that the bottom screen can no longer be moved independent of the top screen)

Edited by grahamf, 16 July 2014 - 04:50 PM.

[GAMER1984]

I just do not see the hint other than he thinks the Nintendo 3ds is selling well. i guess i see a different view

[Gruff]

I just do not see the hint other than he thinks the Nintendo 3ds is selling well. i guess i see a different view

Same. From the small quote they gave I didn't see it either.