145-564: Tegra is a system on a chip (SoC) series developed by Nvidia for mobile devices such as smartphones , personal digital assistants , and mobile Internet devices . The Tegra integrates an ARM architecture central processing unit (CPU), graphics processing unit (GPU), northbridge , southbridge , and memory controller onto one package. Early Tegra SoCs are designed as efficient multimedia processors. The Tegra-line evolved to emphasize performance for gaming and machine learning applications without sacrificing power efficiency, before taking
290-516: A communications subsystem to connect, control, direct and interface between these functional modules. An SoC must have at least one processor core , but typically an SoC has more than one core. Processor cores can be a microcontroller , microprocessor (μP), digital signal processor (DSP) or application-specific instruction set processor (ASIP) core. ASIPs have instruction sets that are customized for an application domain and designed to be more efficient than general-purpose instructions for
435-481: A dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 CPU, an ultra low power (ULP) GeForce GPU, a 32-bit memory controller with either LPDDR2-600 or DDR2-667 memory, a 32 KB/32 KB L1 cache per core and a shared 1 MB L2 cache. Tegra 2's Cortex A9 implementation does not include ARM's SIMD extension, NEON . There is a version of the Tegra 2 SoC supporting 3D displays; this SoC uses a higher clocked CPU and GPU. The Tegra 2 video decoder
580-472: A graphics processing unit (GPU) – all on a single substrate or microchip. SoCs may contain digital and also analog , mixed-signal and often radio frequency signal processing functions (otherwise it may be considered on a discrete application processor). High-performance SoCs are often paired with dedicated and physically separate memory and secondary storage (such as LPDDR and eUFS or eMMC , respectively) chips that may be layered on top of
725-447: A memory hierarchy and cache hierarchy . In the mobile computing market, this is common, but in many low-power embedded microcontrollers, this is not necessary. Memory technologies for SoCs include read-only memory (ROM), random-access memory (RAM), Electrically Erasable Programmable ROM ( EEPROM ) and flash memory . As in other computer systems, RAM can be subdivided into relatively faster but more expensive static RAM (SRAM) and
870-653: A netlist describing the design as a physical circuit and its interconnections. These netlists are combined with the glue logic connecting the components to produce the schematic description of the SoC as a circuit which can be printed onto a chip. This process is known as place and route and precedes tape-out in the event that the SoCs are produced as application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC). SoCs must optimize power use , area on die , communication, positioning for locality between modular units and other factors. Optimization
1015-399: A semiconductor foundry . This process is called functional verification and it accounts for a significant portion of the time and energy expended in the chip design life cycle , often quoted as 70%. With the growing complexity of chips, hardware verification languages like SystemVerilog , SystemC , e , and OpenVera are being used. Bugs found in the verification stage are reported to
1160-441: A wireless ad hoc network for local multiplayer games, and multiple players can play on each of the connected Switch consoles. In the case of at least one game, Splatoon 2 , ten Switch consoles can connect in the ad hoc network, though only eight can play directly while the other two can watch as spectators. The Switch uses Bluetooth 4.1 for wireless communication between the console and its controllers. Users can purchase
1305-544: A "custom" Tegra chip "based on the same architecture as the world's top-performing GeForce gaming graphics cards " that are common in personal computers, and has a custom API known as "NVN", which is designed to "bring lightweight, fast gaming to the masses". Takeda described the Nvidia chipset as being critical for delivering gamers a level of performance similar to that which they experience on personal computers, helping to achieve "high performance but low power consumption" for
1450-518: A "make or break product" for Nintendo. The design of the Switch was aimed to bridge the polarization of the gaming market at the time, creating a device that could play "leisurely" video games along with games that are aimed to be played "deeply", according to Shinya Takahashi and Yoshiaki Koizumi , general manager and deputy general manager of Nintendo's Entertainment Planning & Development Division (EPD) respectively. This approach also would apply to
1595-410: A 3.5 mm audio jack , stereo speakers on the bottom face of the unit below the screen, a USB-C port for charging, and a kickstand on the back side. The unit also includes slots for a game card (cartridge-based media) and a microSD card slot located under the kickstand. The Switch console itself includes three buttons, all on the top of the device, Volume +/- and Power. The console has rails on
SECTION 10
#17328688035921740-534: A 4+1 configuration similar to Tegra 4, or Nvidia's 64-bit Project Denver dual-core processor as well as a Kepler graphics processing unit with support for Direct3D 12, OpenGL ES 3.1, CUDA 6.5, OpenGL 4.4 / OpenGL 4.5 , and Vulkan . Nvidia claims that it outperforms both the Xbox 360 and the PS3, whilst consuming significantly less power. Support Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression . In late April 2014, Nvidia shipped
1885-515: A certain level of computational performance , but power is limited in most SoC environments. SoC designs are optimized to minimize waste heat output on the chip. As with other integrated circuits , heat generated due to high power density are the bottleneck to further miniaturization of components. The power densities of high speed integrated circuits, particularly microprocessors and including SoCs, have become highly uneven. Too much waste heat can damage circuits and erode reliability of
2030-527: A chip consists of both the hardware , described in § Structure , and the software controlling the microcontroller, microprocessor or digital signal processor cores, peripherals and interfaces. The design flow for an SoC aims to develop this hardware and software at the same time, also known as architectural co-design. The design flow must also take into account optimizations ( § Optimization goals ) and constraints. Most SoCs are developed from pre-qualified hardware component IP core specifications for
2175-1005: A circuit is the integral of power consumed with respect to time, and the average rate of power consumption is the product of current by voltage . Equivalently, by Ohm's law , power is current squared times resistance or voltage squared divided by resistance : P = I V = V 2 R = I 2 R {\displaystyle P=IV={\frac {V^{2}}{R}}={I^{2}}{R}} SoCs are frequently embedded in portable devices such as smartphones , GPS navigation devices , digital watches (including smartwatches ) and netbooks . Customers want long battery lives for mobile computing devices, another reason that power consumption must be minimized in SoCs. Multimedia applications are often executed on these devices, including video games, video streaming , image processing ; all of which have grown in computational complexity in recent years with user demands and expectations for higher- quality multimedia. Computation
2320-866: A different processor. For further discussion of multi-processing memory issues, see cache coherence and memory latency . SoCs include external interfaces , typically for communication protocols . These are often based upon industry standards such as USB , Ethernet , USART , SPI , HDMI , I²C , CSI , etc. These interfaces will differ according to the intended application. Wireless networking protocols such as Wi-Fi , Bluetooth , 6LoWPAN and near-field communication may also be supported. When needed, SoCs include analog interfaces including analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters , often for signal processing . These may be able to interface with different types of sensors or actuators , including smart transducers . They may interface with application-specific modules or shields. Or they may be internal to
2465-429: A drastic shift in direction towards platforms that provide vehicular automation with the applied " Nvidia Drive " brand name on reference boards and its semiconductors; and with the " Nvidia Jetson " brand name for boards adequate for AI applications within e.g. robots or drones, and for various smart high level automation purposes. The Tegra APX 2500 was announced on February 12, 2008. The Tegra 6xx product line
2610-523: A fifth "companion" core in what Nvidia refers to as a "variable SMP architecture". While all cores are Cortex-A9s, the companion core is manufactured with a low-power silicon process. This core operates transparently to applications and is used to reduce power consumption when processing load is minimal. The main quad-core portion of the CPU powers off in these situations. Tegra 3 is the first Tegra release to support ARM's SIMD extension, NEON . The GPU in Tegra 3
2755-756: A general trend towards tighter integration of components in the computer hardware industry , in part due to the influence of SoCs and lessons learned from the mobile and embedded computing markets. SoCs are very common in the mobile computing (as in smart devices such as smartphones and tablet computers ) and edge computing markets. In general, there are three distinguishable types of SoCs: SoCs can be applied to any computing task. However, they are typically used in mobile computing such as tablets, smartphones, smartwatches, and netbooks as well as embedded systems and in applications where previously microcontrollers would be used. Where previously only microcontrollers could be used, SoCs are rising to prominence in
2900-451: A grip accessory to provide the form of a separated gamepad , or be used unattached. The Switch's software supports online gaming through internet connectivity, as well as local wireless ad hoc connectivity with other consoles. Switch games and software are available on both physical flash -based ROM cartridges and digital distribution via Nintendo eShop ; the system has no region lockout . Two hardware revisions have been released:
3045-452: A home console that the player could take with them anywhere. Around five different prototypes were developed for the Switch before they finalized on the released design. This included developing different methods of how the Joy-Con controllers would physically connect to the console, including using magnets to hold them in place. In addition to the form-factor design, Nintendo needed to balance
SECTION 20
#17328688035923190-461: A manner independent of time scales, which are typically specified in HDL. Other components can remain software and be compiled and embedded onto soft-core processors included in the SoC as modules in HDL as IP cores . Once the architecture of the SoC has been defined, any new hardware elements are written in an abstract hardware description language termed register transfer level (RTL) which defines
3335-538: A microcontroller integrates a microprocessor with peripheral circuits and memory, an SoC can be seen as integrating a microcontroller with even more advanced peripherals . Compared to a multi-chip architecture, an SoC with equivalent functionality will have reduced power consumption as well as a smaller semiconductor die area. This comes at the cost of reduced replaceability of components. By definition, SoC designs are fully or nearly fully integrated across different component modules . For these reasons, there has been
3480-652: A part of it. About three years prior to the Switch's announcement, Iwata, Tatsumi Kimishima , Genyo Takeda , and Shigeru Miyamoto crafted a strategy for revitalizing Nintendo's business model, which included approaching the mobile market, creating new hardware, and "maximizing [their] intellectual property". Iwata was able to secure a business alliance with Japanese mobile provider DeNA before his death. The deal developed mobile titles based on Nintendo's first-party franchises, believing this approach would not compromise their integrity. Following Iwata's death in July 2015, Kimishima
3625-502: A power adapter and HDMI cable. Third parties also support the Switch with additional accessories, such as carrying cases and screen protectors. The 4.0.0 system update enabled support for GameCube controllers connected via USB with the GameCube adapter that was available for the Wii U as well as a new adapter produced for the Switch; GameCube controllers can be used with most games compatible with
3770-486: A power source while needing to maintain autonomous function, and often are limited in power use by a high number of embedded SoCs being networked together in an area. Additionally, energy costs can be high and conserving energy will reduce the total cost of ownership of the SoC. Finally, waste heat from high energy consumption can damage other circuit components if too much heat is dissipated, giving another pragmatic reason to conserve energy. The amount of energy used in
3915-495: A software integrated development environment . SoCs components are also often designed in high-level programming languages such as C++ , MATLAB or SystemC and converted to RTL designs through high-level synthesis (HLS) tools such as C to HDL or flow to HDL . HLS products called "algorithmic synthesis" allow designers to use C++ to model and synthesize system, circuit, software and verification levels all in one high level language commonly known to computer engineers in
4060-429: A specific type of workload. Multiprocessor SoCs have more than one processor core by definition. The ARM architecture is a common choice for SoC processor cores because some ARM-architecture cores are soft processors specified as IP cores . SoCs must have semiconductor memory blocks to perform their computation, as do microcontrollers and other embedded systems . Depending on the application, SoC memory may form
4205-469: A third-party USB LAN adapter for wired connectivity when the console is docked for TV mode. Nintendo's Wii LAN adapter accessory is also compatible with the Switch via USB ports on the Switch dock. The Switch is primarily powered in Handheld mode by a non-removable 4,310 mAh , 3.7 V Lithium-ion rechargeable battery. The battery life is estimated to be between 2.5 and 6.5 hours, depending on
4350-522: A video game company in 2012 prior to the Wii U 's introduction that year and had similar losses in the following years due to the console's poor reception. The New York Times attributed Nintendo lowering financial forecasts in 2014 to weak hardware sales against mobile gaming . Previously, the company was hesitant about this market, with then-president Satoru Iwata considering that they would "cease to be Nintendo" and lose their identity if they attempted to be
4495-531: Is ISO 26262 -certified. In summer of 2012 Tesla Motors began shipping the Model S all electric, high performance sedan , which contains two NVIDIA Tegra 3D Visual Computing Modules (VCM). One VCM powers the 17-inch touchscreen infotainment system, and one drives the 12.3-inch all digital instrument cluster ." In March 2015, Nvidia announced the Tegra X1, the first SoC to have a graphics performance of 1 teraflop. At
Tegra - Misplaced Pages Continue
4640-407: Is a video game console developed by Nintendo and released worldwide in most regions on March 3, 2017. Released in the middle of the eighth generation of home consoles , the Switch succeeded the Wii U and competed with Microsoft 's Xbox One and Sony 's PlayStation 4 ; it also competes with the ninth generation consoles , Microsoft's Xbox Series X/S and Sony's PlayStation 5 . The Switch
4785-436: Is a tablet that can either be docked for home console use or used as a portable device , making it a hybrid console . Its wireless Joy-Con controllers function as two halves of a standard controller and alternatively as individual controllers, featuring buttons, directional analog sticks for user input, motion sensing, and tactile feedback. A pair can attach to the sides of the console for handheld-style play, attach to
4930-456: Is a hybrid video game console, consisting of a console unit, a dock, and two Joy-Con controllers. Although it is a hybrid console, Nintendo classifies it as "a home console that you can take with you on the go". In addition the company says that the Switch and the Nintendo 3DS are meant to co-exist, considering the 3DS as an entry-level product for younger players. The main unit of the Switch
5075-493: Is an evolution of the Tegra 2 GPU, with 4 additional pixel shader units and higher clock frequency. It can also output video up to 2560×1600 resolution and supports 1080p MPEG-4 AVC/h.264 40 Mbit/s High-Profile, VC1-AP, and simpler forms of MPEG-4 such as DivX and Xvid. The Tegra 3 was released on November 9, 2011. Common features: Pixel shaders : Vertex shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units The Tegra 4 ( codenamed " Wayne ")
5220-506: Is in the middle of its life cycle". In July 2024, the Switch became Nintendo's longest-running console without a replacement system, surpassing the seven-year period for the NES. The Switch Lite launched on September 20, 2019, in three colors: yellow, grey, and turquoise. The system was promoted alongside The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening , a remake of the 1993 Game Boy game . A special Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield branded version of
5365-445: Is largely unchanged from the original Tegra and has limited support for HD formats. The lack of support for high-profile H.264 is particularly troublesome when using online video streaming services. Common features: Pixel shaders : Vertex shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units NVIDIA's Tegra 3 ( codenamed " Kal-El ") is functionally a SoC with a quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore CPU, but includes
5510-492: Is more demanding as expectations move towards 3D video at high resolution with multiple standards , so SoCs performing multimedia tasks must be computationally capable platform while being low power to run off a standard mobile battery. SoCs are optimized to maximize power efficiency in performance per watt: maximize the performance of the SoC given a budget of power usage. Many applications such as edge computing , distributed processing and ambient intelligence require
5655-780: Is necessarily a design goal of SoCs. If optimization was not necessary, the engineers would use a multi-chip module architecture without accounting for the area use, power consumption or performance of the system to the same extent. Common optimization targets for SoC designs follow, with explanations of each. In general, optimizing any of these quantities may be a hard combinatorial optimization problem, and can indeed be NP-hard fairly easily. Therefore, sophisticated optimization algorithms are often required and it may be practical to use approximation algorithms or heuristics in some cases. Additionally, most SoC designs contain multiple variables to optimize simultaneously , so Pareto efficient solutions are sought after in SoC design. Oftentimes
5800-532: Is the console, a battery-powered tablet -like monitor that consists of an LCD screen measuring 6.2 inches (160 mm) on its diagonal, the same as the Wii U GamePad. The unit measures 173 by 102 by 13.9 millimetres (6.81 in × 4.02 in × 0.55 in) and weighs 297 grams (10.5 oz). The screen supports ten-point multi-touch capacitive sensing and includes haptic technology from Immersion Corporation . The LCD screen supports resolutions up to 720p (1280×720 px ). The console includes
5945-721: The Balkans since 2016, announced after opening their new offices in Istanbul , that Nintendo's products will officially be distributed in Turkey later in the year. Nintendo abruptly withdrew from the Turkish market back in June 2012 when then-distributor Nortec Eurasia closed. CD Media released the Nintendo Switch in Turkey in July 2018. Nintendo's Singapore -based distributor, Maxsoft, officially launched
Tegra - Misplaced Pages Continue
6090-645: The Expansion Pack , wireless Nintendo 64 Controllers and Sega Genesis Control Pads were released for use with their respective services. Nintendo released Ring Fit Adventure in October 2019, which includes a Leg Strap to mount a Joy-Con to a leg, and the Ring-Con, a flexible hard plastic ring with Joy-Con mounting. The player interacts with the game, fashioned after a console role-playing game , by doing various exercises, such as running in place, squatting, and squeezing
6235-478: The Wii Classic Controller Pro and Wii U Pro Controller . The Pro Controller connects to the Switch via wireless Bluetooth communication, and is charged through a standard USB-C port on the controller. The Nintendo Switch supports a wide array of additional accessories, according to Kimishima. Kimishima suggested that the Switch is part of a large ecosystem of devices, though the Switch unit remains
6380-890: The bottlenecks of bus-based networks. Networks-on-chip have advantages including destination- and application-specific routing , greater power efficiency and reduced possibility of bus contention . Network-on-chip architectures take inspiration from communication protocols like TCP and the Internet protocol suite for on-chip communication, although they typically have fewer network layers . Optimal network-on-chip network architectures are an ongoing area of much research interest. NoC architectures range from traditional distributed computing network topologies such as torus , hypercube , meshes and tree networks to genetic algorithm scheduling to randomized algorithms such as random walks with branching and randomized time to live (TTL). Many SoC researchers consider NoC architectures to be
6525-434: The "Jetson TK1" development board containing a Tegra K1 SoC and running Ubuntu Linux . Unified Shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units ARM Large Physical Page Extension (LPAE) supports 1 TiB (2 bytes). The 8 GiB limitation is part-specific. In December 2015, the web page of wccftech.com published an article stating that Tesla is going to use a Tegra K1 based design derived from
6670-476: The "Joy-Con (L)" and "Joy-Con (R)". The controllers attach to the Switch console via side rails using a locking mechanism, with a small release button on their rear face to allow them to be detached. When detached, they can be used as a pair by a single player, attached to a grip that emulates a gamepad form factor, or used as separate controllers by two individual players. A single Switch console can support up to eight Joy-Con connections. Straps can be attached to
6815-570: The 10.0.0 system update in April 2020 allowed most update data, digital games (i.e., downloaded from eShop), and other downloaded content to be swapped between the internal memory and a microSD card. MicroSD and microSDHC were supported initially, and microSDXC card support was later added to the Switch's software via a system update. SD cards and miniSD cards do not fit the Switch. The Switch did not support external storage units at launch, but Nintendo stated that they were looking into adding this feature in
6960-573: The 2018 Black Friday shopping day, Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Fortnite . The Japan-exclusive "2nd Unit Set" released in May 2018 on the My Nintendo Store at a reduced price of ¥24,980 , was positioned towards households which already owned a Switch. It did not include a dock, AC adapter, HDMI cable, and charging grip. By February 2021, about four years from the console's release, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa said that "The Switch
7105-506: The 3DS and Wii U at their respective launches; Nintendo affirmed that the Switch would be profitable from launch during its 2016 fiscal year earnings report, as the company saw the console as a key earnings driver for 2017 and beyond. Fomalhaut Techno Solutions, a Japanese product teardown firm, estimated that the Switch cost $ 257 to make compared to its $ 299 MSRP , with the console and dock at $ 167 while each Joy-Con costs $ 45. Kimishima said that they may be able to see further profitability on
7250-463: The 8.0.0 firmware update released in April 2019 allows the CPU to clock up to 1785 MHz in certain games during loading to improve load times. While the SoC features 8 CPU cores, the Switch only uses the 4 64-bit Cortex-A57 cores, of which 1 is reserved to the operating system. The GPU cores are clocked at 768 MHz when the device is docked, and in Handheld mode, fluctuating between the following speeds: 307.2 MHz , 384 MHz , and 460 MHz . This gives
7395-658: The Cortex-A57 cores (both clusters must be in the CC6 off state). Nvidia has removed the ARM Cortex-A53 cores from later versions of technical documentation, implying that they have been removed from the die. The Tegra X1 was found to be vulnerable to a Fault Injection (FI) voltage glitching attack, which allowed for arbitrary code execution and homebrew software on the devices it was implemented in. A revision (codenamed " Mariko ") with greater power efficiency, known officially as Tegra X1+
SECTION 50
#17328688035927540-812: The European market varying. The set includes a Switch console, a dock; left and right Joy-Con controllers and accompanying straps; a Joy-Con grip, an AC power adapter and an HDMI cable. There were two Switch bundles available at launch, one with grey Joy-Con and one with neon red and blue Joy-Con. Nintendo feared that a higher price would harm sales, which prompted them to not include any additional hardware or games. The Switch continued to be officially released in particular markets like Argentina on August 15, 2017, and in South Korea and Taiwan on December 1. In April 2018, CD Media, Nintendo's official distributor in Greece and
7685-487: The FPGA RTL that make signals available for observation. This is used to debug hardware, firmware and software interactions across multiple FPGAs with capabilities similar to a logic analyzer. In parallel, the hardware elements are grouped and passed through a process of logic synthesis , during which performance constraints, such as operational frequency and expected signal delays, are applied. This generates an output known as
7830-431: The Joy-Con batteries while they are connected to this grip. The Switch includes 32 GB of internal storage, 25.9 GB of which is user-accessible. This can be expanded up to 2 TB using a microSD , a microSDHC or a microSDXC card. A microSD card slot is located under the Switch's kickstand, where a microSD card can be inserted. If the microSD card is used, the Switch will only store game save data on
7975-464: The NX. At a Nintendo shareholders' meeting following the conference, Miyamoto stated that the company had concerns that competitors could copy ideas from the NX if they revealed it too soon. The following month, rumors began to surface surrounding the nature of the console, including its use of Nvidia Tegra hardware, being a "hybrid" device intended for both home and mobile use, controllers that can detach from
8120-952: The Nintendo Switch Online service within the country, integrating its offerings with the WeChat payment systems. Nintendo had exited the Brazilian market in 2015 due to high tariffs, but independent resellers have been trading the console in Brazil since March 2017. Nintendo had since assigned NC Games as their local game distributor in May 2017, and the local company had committed to sell some officially imported Nintendo Switch units in small quantities. NC Games silently went defunct in c. 2019. In August 2020, Nintendo affirmed that it would restart imports directly into Brazil, for release on September 18, 2020. Numerous special-edition models and bundles have been released, including those for Splatoon 2 ,
8265-549: The Nintendo Switch has shipped over 146 million units worldwide. It is Nintendo's best-selling home console and the third-best-selling game console of all time , behind the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo DS . While Nintendo had record revenues, net sales, and profits in 2009 as a result of the release of the Nintendo DS and Wii in 2004 and 2006 respectively, its revenues soon declined. The company posted its first loss as
8410-738: The Nintendo Switch in Oman on September 27, 2019. The company had previously broken street date for the Emirati release of the console, with retailers in the region distributing it as early as February 28, 2017. Although the Nintendo Switch had not officially been released in China prior to December 2019, it is still widely available in the country due to grey market imports from Hong Kong and other regions, such as Japan . In January 2018, former Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima said in an interview with Chinese news website QQ that Nintendo has tried to release
8555-663: The Nintendo Switch in the Philippines on November 30, 2018, in Thailand on March 29, 2019, and in Malaysia on January 17, 2020. In early-2019, Nintendo of Europe signed a partnership with Tel Aviv -based distributor TorGaming Ltd., making them Nintendo's official distributor in Israel, and launched their products in the market, including the Nintendo Switch, on March 1, 2019. Nintendo's Dubai -based distributor, Active Gulf, officially launched
8700-647: The Nvidia Tegra 250, at Consumer Electronics Show 2010 . Nvidia primarily supports Android on Tegra 2, but booting other ARM-supporting operating systems is possible on devices where the bootloader is accessible. Tegra 2 support for the Ubuntu Linux distribution was also announced on the Nvidia developer forum. Nvidia announced the first quad-core SoC at the February 2011 Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona. Though
8845-401: The SoC in what is known as a package on package (PoP) configuration, or be placed close to the SoC. Additionally, SoCs may use separate wireless modems (especially WWAN modems). An SoC integrates a microcontroller , microprocessor or perhaps several processor cores with peripherals like a GPU , Wi-Fi and cellular network radio modems or one or more coprocessors . Similar to how
SECTION 60
#17328688035928990-737: The SoC, if needed. Popular time sources are crystal oscillators and phase-locked loops . SoC peripherals including counter -timers, real-time timers and power-on reset generators. SoCs also include voltage regulators and power management circuits. SoCs comprise many execution units . These units must often send data and instructions back and forth. Because of this, all but the most trivial SoCs require communications subsystems . Originally, as with other microcomputer technologies, data bus architectures were used, but recently designs based on sparse intercommunication networks known as networks-on-chip (NoC) have risen to prominence and are forecast to overtake bus architectures for SoC design in
9135-1228: The SoC, such as if an analog sensor is built in to the SoC and its readings must be converted to digital signals for mathematical processing. Digital signal processor (DSP) cores are often included on SoCs. They perform signal processing operations in SoCs for sensors , actuators , data collection , data analysis and multimedia processing. DSP cores typically feature very long instruction word (VLIW) and single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) instruction set architectures , and are therefore highly amenable to exploiting instruction-level parallelism through parallel processing and superscalar execution . SP cores most often feature application-specific instructions, and as such are typically application-specific instruction set processors (ASIP). Such application-specific instructions correspond to dedicated hardware functional units that compute those instructions. Typical DSP instructions include multiply-accumulate , Fast Fourier transform , fused multiply-add , and convolutions . As with other computer systems, SoCs require timing sources to generate clock signals , control execution of SoC functions and provide time context to signal processing applications of
9280-479: The Switch Lite is a single unit, integrating the Joy-Con as part of the main unit's hardware, and uses a smaller screen measuring 5.5 inches (14 cm) diagonally. Additionally, a regular directional pad replaces the four directional buttons on the integrated left Joy-Con. While using a smaller battery than the original Switch, the Switch Lite uses a more power-efficient chipset, the 16-nanometer Tegra X1+, to extend
9425-576: The Switch Lite, themed around the Pokémon Zacian and Zamazenta , launched on November 8, 2019, a week before the game's release. A coral color was released on March 20, 2020, in Japan, and on April 3 in the rest of the world. A blue color released on May 7, 2021, in Europe, and on May 21 in the rest of the world. A special Pokémon Dialga and Palkia limited edition was released on November 5, 2021, 14 days before
9570-421: The Switch could be hampered by bottlenecks in individual components. DigiTimes reported in October 2017 that Nintendo had further shifted the production rate for the Switch up to 2 million per month, with plans to ship 20 million units by the end of the year; the newspaper also stated that the production rate was limited by component availability, and not by other factors of Nintendo's production process. On
9715-586: The Switch in China, but has been unable to do so. Nintendo partnered with Tencent in April 2019 to gain the necessary approvals to release the Switch in China, along with a test version of New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe ; it was released on December 10, 2019, at a base price of CN¥ 2,099 or about US$ 298 . Tencent continues to help Nintendo bring other Switch games through China's approval process via National Radio and Television Administration . In addition, Tencent helped localize various titles, and help implement
9860-429: The Switch outside of China and into Southeast Asia to limit the impact of new United States tariffs on electronics made in China. In November 2020, Bloomberg reported that Nintendo asked its assembly partners to boost production of the Switch by 20% and raised its target goal of Switch sales for the 2020 fiscal year from 25 million units sold to 30 million units, having previously reportedly raised their target for
10005-411: The Switch was designed to provide a "new way to play" that would "have a larger impact than the Wii U". Nintendo of America president and COO Reggie Fils-Aimé emphasized the console's appeal as a device that would provide gamers the option to play at home or on the go and noted that it would enable developers to create new types of games. This approach continued Nintendo's blue ocean strategy for
10150-505: The Switch when they can achieve volume discounts on components once they reach a level of about 10 million Switch units. Prior to launch, Nintendo anticipated shipping two million Nintendo Switch units by the end of the console's first month, and assured that its supply chain would be able to meet demand following the launch period to avoid the shortage situation with the NES Classic Edition in late 2016. Kimishima anticipated that
10295-629: The Switch will have lifetime sales numbers similar to the Wii, which sold 101 million units by 2016. Following the initial sales report numbers in April 2017, the Financial Times reported that the company was seeking to produce 18 million Switch units in its 2017 financial year as to avoid "customer tantrums" with poor supply levels, particularly near the 2017 holiday season and the release of Super Mario Odyssey on October 27, 2017. Fils-Aimé said in September 2017 that their 2017 production target for
10440-488: The Switch's GPU a theoretical peak performance of 393 GFLOPS in TV mode and 236 GFLOPS in Handheld mode. A later iFixit teardown of the final product confirmed 4 GB of LPDDR4 . It's clocked at 1600 MHz in TV mode, while at a reduced 1331.2 MHz in Handheld mode. The Switch offers Wi-Fi 5 (dual-band 802.11ac wireless connectivity compliant with 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac modes). Up to eight Switch consoles can be connected in
10585-651: The Switch's Pro Controller, such as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate . USB computer keyboards are supported for certain tasks, such as text entry. In January 2018, Nintendo announced Nintendo Labo , a child-oriented platform that combines games coupled with do-it-yourself cardboard projects that attach or wrap around the Switch Console and Joy-Con, effectively creating toys around the Switch hardware to interact with games. These cardboard units, which may also include string, rubber bands, and other pieces, are referred to as Toy-Con. The game software provides instructions for
10730-456: The Switch's development principally around the cost of implementing new features that would make the Switch stand out. For Miyamoto, his limited involvement allowed him to spend more time on Nintendo's software titles being developed at the time, such as Super Mario Run . The first public news about the Switch's hardware happened alongside the announcement of Nintendo and DeNA's partnership on March 17, 2015. At this stage, Nintendo referred to
10875-415: The Switch's development. Early sales of the Wii U were weak compared to the Wii, and major third-party studios like Electronic Arts and Ubisoft announced they would not support the console near the end of the Wii U's first year, further hampering its sales. According to Fils-Aimé, when it became apparent that the Wii U's life cycle performance would underperform the company's expectations, the Switch became
11020-556: The Switch's form and design was from feedback players had given Nintendo on the Wii Remote , according to Shinya Takahashi. With the release of games like Wii Sports and Wii Fit , players had asked Nintendo if they could make the Wii Remote in a smaller form factor, potentially strapped to a part of their body. This led to Nintendo envisioning what a smaller form-factor controller could provide in both hardware and gameplay, and it led to
11165-464: The Switch. Pre-release reports, unconfirmed by either Nintendo or Nvidia, stated that the SoC would be a standard Nvidia Tegra X1 instead, composed of four ARM Cortex-A57 and four ARM Cortex-A53 CPU cores along with 256 Maxwell -based CUDA GPU cores. This was later corroborated by an analysis on the console done by Tech Insights in March 2017. The CPU cores are normally clocked at 1020 MHz , but
11310-545: The Tegra; however, the phone did not have an app store, so the Tegra's power did not provide much advantage. In September 2008, Nvidia and Opera Software announced that they would produce a version of the Opera 9.5 browser optimized for the Tegra on Windows Mobile and Windows CE . At Mobile World Congress 2009, Nvidia introduced its port of Google 's Android to the Tegra. On January 7, 2010, Nvidia officially announced and demonstrated its next generation Tegra system-on-a-chip,
11455-449: The Toy-Con construction and provides the interface to control the Toy-Con. Such examples given include a remote-controlled "car", where the two Joy-Con attach to the car and their vibration feedback provide the motion for the car, controlled from the Switch, a fishing rod where the Joy-Con are part of the reel and handle of the rod and their motion controls used to simulate the act of fishing in
11600-587: The Wild runs at a maximum 900p and 30 frames per second while the Switch is docked. The dock measures 173 by 104 by 54 millimetres (6.8 in × 4.1 in × 2.1 in) and weighs 327 grams (11.5 oz). The dock included with the updated OLED consoles features a slightly redesigned housing, as well as replacing the rear USB port with a built-in Ethernet port . The Nintendo Switch comes with two controllers , collectively called Joy-Con and individually called
11745-404: The ability for the unit to play either on a television screen or as a portable and the use of detachable controllers. The "Switch" name was selected not only to refer to the console's ability to switch from handheld to home console modes, but to present "the idea of being a 'switch' that will flip and change the way people experience entertainment in their daily lives". Part of the inspiration of
11890-468: The announcement event, Nvidia showed off Epic Games' Unreal Engine 4 "Elemental" demo, running on a Tegra X1. On October 20, 2016, Nvidia announced that the Nintendo Switch hybrid video game console will be powered by Tegra hardware. On March 15, 2017, TechInsights revealed the Nintendo Switch is powered by a custom Tegra X1 (model T210), with lower clockspeeds. The second generation Tegra SoC has
12035-475: The chip was codenamed Kal-El, it is now branded as Tegra 3. Early benchmark results show impressive gains over Tegra 2, and the chip was used in many of the tablets released in the second half of 2011. In January 2012, Nvidia announced that Audi had selected the Tegra 3 processor for its In-Vehicle Infotainment systems and digital instruments display. The processor will be integrated into Audi 's entire line of vehicles worldwide, beginning in 2013. The process
12180-427: The circuit behavior, or synthesized into RTL from a high level language through high-level synthesis. These elements are connected together in a hardware description language to create the full SoC design. The logic specified to connect these components and convert between possibly different interfaces provided by different vendors is called glue logic . Chips are verified for validation correctness before being sent to
12325-435: The circuit over time. High temperatures and thermal stress negatively impact reliability, stress migration , decreased mean time between failures , electromigration , wire bonding , metastability and other performance degradation of the SoC over time. In particular, most SoCs are in a small physical area or volume and therefore the effects of waste heat are compounded because there is little room for it to diffuse out of
12470-448: The comic book character Professor X , was announced on 28 September 2016, and by March 2019, it had been released. It contains 7 billion transistors and 8 custom ARMv8 cores, a Volta GPU with 512 CUDA cores, an open sourced TPU (Tensor Processing Unit) called DLA (Deep Learning Accelerator). It is able to encode and decode 8K Ultra HD (7680×4320). Users can configure operating modes at 10 W, 15 W, and 30 W TDP as needed and
12615-435: The competitive console marketplace, as rather than compete feature for feature with the other consoles, they would establish unique and difficult-to-copy devices. Miyamoto said that some broad concepts of the Switch extend from the "lateral thinking with seasoned technology" design philosophy of Gunpei Yokoi that Nintendo has used over the last couple of decades. The commercial failure of the Wii U also pressured Nintendo in
12760-495: The console by using an SOC to which developers could easily port games. Nintendo was not focused on raw processing power but was instead looking to balance the overall features of the system, including battery life and size, as well as keeping in mind their limited development resources and timeline. Koizumi said, "The most difficult part was on how to take an overall balance while we were getting entangled with all of those in complexity." To achieve this balance, they did not opt to use
12905-548: The console placed on a table or other flat surface using its kickstand for shared gaming away from a dedicated screen, or in "Handheld mode" as a standard portable tablet device. Users can switch between these modes simply by placing the console in the dock or removing it, extending or retracting the kickstand, and detaching or connecting the Joy-Con. Games may be designed to play only in specific modes; for example, Voez initially could not be played in TV mode and relied on touchscreen controls. Support for controllers and TV mode
13050-410: The console to a power supply to charge its battery, and to a television via an HDMI connection for video/audio output. The dock also includes two USB 2.0 ports and one USB 3.0 port. While docked, the unit can support resolutions up to 1080p and a maximum frame rate of 60 frames per second , though the maximum resolution varies depending on the game. As an example, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of
13195-413: The console under the codename "NX" and described it as a "brand new concept". At an investor's meeting in April 2016, Nintendo announced that it planned to release the NX worldwide in March 2017. While Nintendo did not unveil the NX's hardware at E3 2016 in June, it did announce that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild , which was originally announced as a Wii U-exclusive, would also be released for
13340-409: The console, with an estimated twenty-hour lifespan. These batteries are automatically charged if they are attached to the console while it is charging itself. Additional accessories have other means to charge the Joy-Con. While the basic Joy-Con grip that ships with the Switch does not offer charging capabilities, a separate premium Joy-Con grip includes a USB-C connector port that can be used to charge
13485-441: The core console element. Takahashi suggested the possibility of other units besides the Joy-Con that could attach and/or connect to the console to serve as alternate input devices and change how the Switch can be used. Nintendo offers a Joy-Con Wheel, a small steering wheel -like unit that a Joy-Con can slot into, allowing it to be used for racing games such as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe . Standalone docks are available, which include
13630-486: The cultural lifestyle and gaming differences between Japanese and Western players; Japanese players tend to play on the go and with social groups, while Western players tend to play at home by themselves. The design of the Switch would meet both cultures, and certain games, like 1-2-Switch , could potentially make social gaming more acceptable in Western culture. Two key elements that were set to address this mixed market were
13775-532: The data throughput of the SoC. This is similar to some device drivers of peripherals on component-based multi-chip module PC architectures. Wire delay is not scalable due to continued miniaturization , system performance does not scale with the number of cores attached, the SoC's operating frequency must decrease with each additional core attached for power to be sustainable, and long wires consume large amounts of electrical power. These challenges are prohibitive to supporting manycore systems on chip. In
13920-676: The designer. Traditionally, engineers have employed simulation acceleration, emulation or prototyping on reprogrammable hardware to verify and debug hardware and software for SoC designs prior to the finalization of the design, known as tape-out . Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are favored for prototyping SoCs because FPGA prototypes are reprogrammable, allow debugging and are more flexible than application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). With high capacity and fast compilation time, simulation acceleration and emulation are powerful technologies that provide wide visibility into systems. Both technologies, however, operate slowly, on
14065-628: The die size is 350 mm. Nvidia confirmed the fabrication process to be 12 nm FinFET at CES 2018. (Model) (GHz) (MHz) System on a chip A system on a chip or system-on-chip ( SoC / ˌ ˈ ɛ s oʊ s iː / ; pl. SoCs / ˌ ˈ ɛ s oʊ s iː z / ) is an integrated circuit that integrates most or all components of a computer or electronic system . These components usually include an on-chip central processing unit (CPU), memory interfaces, input/output devices and interfaces, and secondary storage interfaces, often alongside other components such as radio modems and
14210-804: The embedded systems market. Tighter system integration offers better reliability and mean time between failure , and SoCs offer more advanced functionality and computing power than microcontrollers. Applications include AI acceleration , embedded machine vision , data collection , telemetry , vector processing and ambient intelligence . Often embedded SoCs target the internet of things , multimedia, networking, telecommunications and edge computing markets. Some examples of SoCs for embedded applications include: Mobile computing based SoCs always bundle processors, memories, on-chip caches , wireless networking capabilities and often digital camera hardware and firmware. With increasing memory sizes, high end SoCs will often have no memory and flash storage and instead,
14355-525: The fiscal year from 22 million units sold to 25 million units in August 2020. These boosts in production have been attributed to more demand mainly due to the success of Animal Crossing: New Horizons during the COVID-19 pandemic . The Nintendo Switch Lite is a revision of the Switch designed for handheld play released worldwide on September 20, 2019, with an MSRP of US$ 199.99 . First announced in July 2019,
14500-653: The following day to reveal the full launch lineup and upcoming games for the Switch. The Switch was officially released on March 3, 2017, worldwide in Japan, most English-speaking and Western markets and in the United Arab Emirates. It was released with an MSRP of ¥ 29,980 in Japan, US$ 299.99 in the United States, £ 279.99 in the United Kingdom, and A$ 469.95 in Australia; with standardized pricing for
14645-425: The future of SoC design because they have been shown to efficiently meet power and throughput needs of SoC designs. Current NoC architectures are two-dimensional. 2D IC design has limited floorplanning choices as the number of cores in SoCs increase, so as three-dimensional integrated circuits (3DICs) emerge, SoC designers are looking towards building three-dimensional on-chip networks known as 3DNoCs. A system on
14790-469: The future. The Switch console has a 3.5 mm headphone jack. At launch, the Switch did not support Bluetooth wireless headphones, though they can also be connected if a Bluetooth adapter is connected to the headphone jack. A system update in October 2017 partially resolved this issue by enabling support for wireless USB headphones when the receiver is connected to the USB port on the console when docked. This
14935-512: The goals of optimizing some of these quantities are directly at odds, further adding complexity to design optimization of SoCs and introducing trade-offs in system design. For broader coverage of trade-offs and requirements analysis , see requirements engineering . SoCs are optimized to minimize the electrical power used to perform the SoC's functions. Most SoCs must use low power. SoC systems often require long battery life (such as smartphones ), can potentially spend months or years without
15080-461: The handheld-only Switch Lite, released on September 20, 2019; and a higher-end version featuring an OLED screen, released on October 8, 2021. The Switch was unveiled on October 20, 2016; the concept came about as Nintendo's reaction to financial losses attributed to poor sales of the Wii U and market competition from mobile games . Nintendo's then-president Satoru Iwata pushed the company towards mobile gaming and novel hardware. The Switch's design
15225-431: The hardware elements and execution units , collectively "blocks", described above, together with software device drivers that may control their operation. Of particular importance are the protocol stacks that drive industry-standard interfaces like USB . The hardware blocks are put together using computer-aided design tools, specifically electronic design automation tools; the software modules are integrated using
15370-439: The idea of a console that was small enough with these new controllers to also be portable. Other concepts came out of critical consumer feedback of the Wii U. Fils-Aimé said that one common criticism they had for the Wii U was that while players did enjoy using the Wii U GamePad and would want to play games on it anywhere, it became functionless if they moved a distance away from the main console. This served for Nintendo to design
15515-645: The interconnection delays and maximize the speed at which data is communicated between modules, functional units and memories. In general, optimizing to minimize latency is an NP-complete problem equivalent to the Boolean satisfiability problem . For tasks running on processor cores, latency and throughput can be improved with task scheduling . Some tasks run in application-specific hardware units, however, and even task scheduling may not be sufficient to optimize all software-based tasks to meet timing and throughput constraints. Nintendo Switch The Nintendo Switch
15660-402: The internal memory, leaving data that can be re-acquired on the microSD card. Save data will always be stored on the console, regardless if the source is a physical game card or a digital download copy. At launch, there was no way to transfer save files to another Switch console. Save game and profile transfers between Switch consoles were added in the 4.0.0 system update in October 2017, while
15805-482: The late 2010s, a trend of SoCs implementing communications subsystems in terms of a network-like topology instead of bus-based protocols has emerged. A trend towards more processor cores on SoCs has caused on-chip communication efficiency to become one of the key factors in determining the overall system performance and cost. This has led to the emergence of interconnection networks with router -based packet switching known as " networks on chip " (NoCs) to overcome
15950-447: The limitations of the device's own kickstand for tabletop play, including an official "Adjustable Charging Stand" that can be connected to the device's AC adapter. Original Switch models were released with model number "HAC-001". The Switch uses a system-on-chip from the Tegra family of products, developed in partnership with Nvidia . No specific details were revealed beyond that it is
16095-407: The main device and be played separately, and that Nintendo would distribute games on the console via cartridges and digital downloads. On October 20, 2016, Nintendo officially announced the console under the name Nintendo Switch, alongside a trailer that demonstrated the hardware's nature as a hybrid device. At the time of the trailer's release, Nintendo did not provide many details on features of
16240-588: The memory and flash memory will be placed right next to, or above ( package on package ), the SoC. Some examples of mobile computing SoCs include: In 1992, Acorn Computers produced the A3010, A3020 and A4000 range of personal computers with the ARM250 SoC. It combined the original Acorn ARM2 processor with a memory controller (MEMC), video controller (VIDC), and I/O controller (IOC). In previous Acorn ARM -powered computers, these were four discrete chips. The ARM7500 chip
16385-418: The mini-game, and a small toy piano. In September 2018, with the release of Nintendo Switch Online , Nintendo introduced NES Controller style Joy-Con controllers alongside its classic games service. In September 2019, when SNES games were added to the service, wireless SNES Controllers were released. In September 2021, when Nintendo 64 games and Sega Genesis titles were added to the service alongside
16530-416: The more powerful hardware they could have used, instead using a middle-ground approach to achieve their vision of the Switch. Koizumi served as the general producer of the Switch during its development. According to Miyamoto, the Switch's development within Nintendo was headed by younger employees, with him saying "it's really been them that have put this forward and designed this system". Miyamoto said of
16675-425: The near future. Historically, a shared global computer bus typically connected the different components, also called "blocks" of the SoC. A very common bus for SoC communications is ARM's royalty-free Advanced Microcontroller Bus Architecture ( AMBA ) standard. Direct memory access controllers route data directly between external interfaces and SoC memory, bypassing the CPU or control unit , thereby increasing
16820-430: The order of MHz, which may be significantly slower – up to 100 times slower – than the SoC's operating frequency. Acceleration and emulation boxes are also very large and expensive at over US$ 1 million. FPGA prototypes, in contrast, use FPGAs directly to enable engineers to validate and test at, or close to, a system's full operating frequency with real-world stimuli. Tools such as Certus are used to insert probes in
16965-424: The original model. Thus, the time-on-battery was effectively extended to 4.5–9 hours, depending on the game played. No other system component was updated in this revision. The Nintendo Switch is produced between Taiwan-based Foxconn and Japan-based Hosiden , with Foxconn accounting for the largest volume. Nintendo did not plan to sell the Switch below manufacturing cost at launch, as they had done for both
17110-529: The other with four ARM Cortex-A53 cores, as well as a Maxwell -based graphics processing unit. It supports Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression . Only one cluster of cores can be active at once, with the cluster switch being handled by software on the BPMP-L. Devices utilizing the Tegra X1 have only been seen to utilize the cluster with the more powerful ARM Cortex-A57 cores. The other cluster with four ARM Cortex-A53 cores cannot be accessed without first powering down
17255-485: The platform, though they planned to have events in 2017 to provide more details about the console. The company stated that there are additional features that were not presented in the introductory trailer. Miyamoto and Fils-Aimé presented the Switch to host Jimmy Fallon on a broadcast of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in December 2016. In addition to showing more of the console's hardware and functionality, Fallon
17400-436: The power and speed of the console's central processing unit with battery life and the unit's size, coupled with limited development resources and deadlines set by Nintendo's management. One choice made by the development team was to use an existing system on a chip (SOC) rather than creating their own as they had done on previous consoles. Koizumi said that this break from tradition was done to gain more third-party support for
17545-415: The presentation of the 2017 fiscal year results to investors, Nintendo's newly named president Shuntaro Furukawa stated that they anticipate producing 20 million Switch consoles over the 2018 fiscal year keeping the momentum of its sales in that year. In June 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported that Nintendo was starting to move some of its production of the Switch and two hardware revisions of
17690-551: The release of Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl . This special edition pays homage to the Nintendo DS Lite Dialga and Palkia edition. On September 26, 2024, a special gold colored edition of the Switch Lite based on The Legend of Zelda was released on September 26 to coincide with the release of The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom . These units also came bundled with a 12-month membership to Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack . The Nintendo Switch
17835-404: The ring, to perform in-game actions of running, jumping, and attacking and defending, respectively. Such features are part of Nintendo's "quality of life" goals to incorporate physical activity alongside the Switch, similar to past titles like Wii Fit . In February 2017, Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima stated that it had been "studying" virtual reality solutions, but felt that comfort
17980-633: The risk of catastrophic failure . Due to increased transistor densities as length scales get smaller, each process generation produces more heat output than the last. Compounding this problem, SoC architectures are usually heterogeneous, creating spatially inhomogeneous heat fluxes , which cannot be effectively mitigated by uniform passive cooling . SoCs are optimized to maximize computational and communications throughput . SoCs are optimized to minimize latency for some or all of their functions. This can be accomplished by laying out elements with proper proximity and locality to each-other to minimize
18125-422: The side, into which the Joy-Con controllers can be slid to attach them to the Switch unit. An ambient light sensor on the front of the console adjusts the screen's brightness automatically. The model number of the original Switch model is "HAC-001". There are three gameplay modes that can be used with the Switch; "TV mode" with the console slid into the dock to support play on a television, "Tabletop mode" with
18270-439: The sides of Joy-Con when they are detached. A charging grip is available for the Joy-Con, which provides a means to attach a USB-C cable for power. Alongside that, Nintendo released a charging strap that allows players to charge an individual Joy-Con via embedded AA batteries on June 16, 2017. The Switch also supports a wireless controller, called Nintendo Switch Pro Controller, which has a more traditional design reminiscent of
18415-458: The slower but cheaper dynamic RAM (DRAM). When an SoC has a cache hierarchy, SRAM will usually be used to implement processor registers and cores' built-in caches whereas DRAM will be used for main memory . "Main memory" may be specific to a single processor (which can be multi-core ) when the SoC has multiple processors , in this case it is distributed memory and must be sent via § Intermodule communication on-chip to be accessed by
18560-519: The software being used. Nintendo gives the example of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild supporting approximately three hours of battery life. The battery can be charged either while in the dock, or through a standard USB-C connector on the console. The estimated recharge time while the unit is in sleep mode is about 3 hours. Nintendo offers the means for replacing batteries through its customer support. Each Joy-Con has its own non-removable 525 mAh, 3.7 V Lithium-ion battery separate from
18705-420: The system. Because of high transistor counts on modern devices, oftentimes a layout of sufficient throughput and high transistor density is physically realizable from fabrication processes but would result in unacceptably high amounts of heat in the circuit's volume. These thermal effects force SoC and other chip designers to apply conservative design margins , creating less performant devices to mitigate
18850-574: The template of the Nvidia Visual Computing Module (VCM) for driving the infotainment systems and providing visual driving aid in the respective vehicle models of that time. This news has, as of now, found no similar successor or other clear confirmation later on in any other place on such a combination of a multimedia with an auto pilot system for these vehicle models. Released in 2015, Nvidia's Tegra X1 (codenamed " Erista ") features two CPU clusters, one with four ARM Cortex-A57 cores and
18995-472: The younger employees: "I always look for designers who aren't super-passionate game fans. I make it a point to ensure they're not just a gamer, but that they have a lot of different interests and skill sets." Junior developers were also used to help brainstorm ideas of how to make sure the Switch had a longer lifecycle beyond the typical five-to-six years as most other consoles had. Miyamoto, Takeda, and Iwata were less involved, but provided necessary oversight on
19140-410: Was a main concern. Nintendo of America president and COO Reggie Fils-Aimé also cited that existing VR solutions were not "fun" or "social". Nintendo ultimately unveiled a new Labo VR kit in March 2019, using a cardboard headset and viewer placed in front of the console's screen, in combination with attached accessories. Stands and alternate docks have also been created for the Switch to overcome
19285-509: Was aimed at a wide demographic of players through multiple modes of use. Nintendo preemptively sought the support of many third-party developers and publishers , as well as independent studios, to help build the Switch's game library alongside its first-party games, while standard electronic components, such as a chipset based on Nvidia 's Tegra line, were chosen to make development for the console easier for programmers and more compatible with existing game engines . As of September 2024 ,
19430-682: Was announced on February 19, 2013. With hardware support for the same audio and video formats, but using Cortex-A9 cores instead of Cortex-A15, the Tegra ;4i is a low-power variant of the Tegra 4 and is designed for phones and tablets. Unlike its Tegra 4 counterpart, the Tegra 4i also integrates the Icera i500 LTE / HSPA+ baseband processor onto the same die. Common features: Pixel shaders : Vertex shaders : Pixel pipelines (pairs 1x TMU and 1x ROP) Nvidia 's Tegra K1 (codenamed " Logan ") features ARM Cortex-A15 cores in
19575-577: Was announced on January 6, 2013, and is a SoC with a quad-core CPU, but includes a fifth low-power Cortex A15 companion core which is invisible to the OS and performs background tasks to save power. This power-saving configuration is referred to as "variable SMP architecture" and operates like the similar configuration in Tegra 3. The GeForce GPU in Tegra 4 is again an evolution of its predecessors. However, numerous feature additions and efficiency improvements were implemented. The number of processing resources
19720-756: Was dramatically increased, and clock rate increased as well. In 3D tests, the Tegra 4 GPU is typically several times faster than that of Tegra 3. Additionally, the Tegra 4 video processor has full support for hardware decoding and encoding of WebM video (up to 1080p 60 Mbit/s @ 60fps). Along with Tegra 4, Nvidia also introduced i500, an optional software modem based on Nvidia's acquisition of Icera , which can be reprogrammed to support new network standards. It supports category 3 (100 Mbit/s) LTE but will later be updated to Category 4 (150 Mbit/s). Common features: Pixel shaders : Vertex shaders : Pixel pipelines (pairs 1x TMU and 1x ROP) The Tegra 4i ( codenamed " Grey ")
19865-485: Was given the opportunity to play part of Breath of the Wild live. Nintendo revealed technical details of the Switch, including its worldwide launch date and price, at a press event in Tokyo on January 13, 2017. The event was livestreamed , with an English voiceover provided by Nintendo of America through their broadcast and regional Twitter accounts relaying details in other languages. A Nintendo Treehouse event occurred
20010-477: Was later added to Voez in January 2018 via an update for the game. Another example is Super Mario Party , which does not support Handheld mode. Nintendo stated that the Switch is a "single-screen experience", in that the player either sees the content on the console when it is out of the dock, or on the screen attached to the dock when the console is docked. The Switch cannot feature dual-screen functionality that
20155-502: Was later fully resolved in a system update in September 2021 when it enabled support for Bluetooth Wireless headphone devices without the need for a USB adapter. Around July 2018, Nintendo quietly released Switch units with minor hardware changes and updated firmware to block exploits in the original Switch models that led to the ability to extract ROM images from game cards and software. Nintendo claimed in its case against Team Xecuter and Gary Bowser in February that this hardware change
20300-544: Was named as president of Nintendo, while Miyamoto was promoted to the title of "Creative Fellow". The initial conception for the Switch started shortly after the release of the Wii U in 2012. Kimishima stated that when Nintendo was evaluating what new hardware they wanted to produce, they "didn't just want a successor" to either the Nintendo 3DS or Wii U, but instead asked "what kind of new experience can we create?" In an interview with The Asahi Shimbun , Kimishima said that
20445-513: Was offered through the Wii U via its GamePad . Nintendo patented a means of using multiple Switch consoles to create a multi-monitor configuration by arranging them on a flat surface and spanning a single gameplay environment across their screens. This technology was first seen in Super Mario Party . The console, with or without Joy-Con attached, can be placed into the Switch dock, a docking station with electrical connectors to connect
20590-1100: Was released in 2019, fixing the Fusée Gelée exploit. It's also known as T214 and T210B01. TM670D-A1 TM670M-A2 TM671D-A2 TM675M-A1 CPU frequency may be clocked differently than the maximum validated by Nvidia at the OEM's discretion Unified Shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units Maximum validated amount of memory, implementation is board specific Maximum validated memory bandwidth, implementation is board specific Nvidia's Tegra X2 (codenamed " Parker ") features Nvidia's own custom general-purpose ARMv8-compatible core Denver 2 as well as code-named Pascal graphics processing core with GPGPU support. The chips are made using FinFET process technology using TSMC 's 16 nm FinFET+ manufacturing process. Unified Shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units (SM count) The Xavier Tegra SoC, named after
20735-504: Was revealed on June 2, 2008, and the APX 2600 was announced in February 2009. The APX chips were designed for smartphones, while the Tegra 600 and 650 chips were intended for smartbooks and mobile Internet devices (MID). The first product to use the Tegra was Microsoft 's Zune HD media player in September 2009, followed by the Samsung M1. Microsoft's Kin was the first cellular phone to use
20880-469: Was specifically the result of Team Xecuter's sales of modified Switch chips that used the exploit. An updated version of the Nintendo Switch under model number "HAC-001(-01)" was announced on July 17, 2019, and was released in Japan and North America in mid-August 2019, and in the United Kingdom in September 2019. This revision uses the Tegra X1 + SoC , a more efficient chipset compared to the Tegra X1 used in
21025-709: Was their second-generation SoC, based on the ARM700, VIDC20 and IOMD controllers, and was widely licensed in embedded devices such as set-top-boxes, as well as later Acorn personal computers. Tablet and laptop manufacturers have learned lessons from embedded systems and smartphone markets about reduced power consumption, better performance and reliability from tighter integration of hardware and firmware modules , and LTE and other wireless network communications integrated on chip (integrated network interface controllers ). An SoC consists of hardware functional units , including microprocessors that run software code , as well as
#591408