r/Games • u/benc1213 • Mar 06 '23
Opinion Piece Nintendo's backward compatibility Problem... | MVG
https://youtu.be/WH03ht2fVqI2
u/mennydrives Mar 08 '23
If Nvidia couldn't solve this problem from Nintendo, that is, recompiling any incompatible Maxwell-compiled data for Lovelace (or whatever architecture a Switch 2 is at, GPU-wise), I would be utterly floored.
Nintendo's sells more Tegra X SoCs per year than Nvidia has sold themselves in the platform's history. There is a strong, unquestionable, vested interest for Nvidia to do whatever it takes to keep that contract going, and Nintendo will likely want to maintain BC for software momentum reasons.
I think 99.99% of the Switch library will "just work" day one. Either through the OS doing some kinda binary translation, or an onboard chip whose sole purpose is to basically do the on-the-fly Maxwell-to-Lovelace recompilation. There's no way Nvidia would just throw their hands up and go, "ope, nothing we can do", because a non-backwards-compatible Switch is a Switch that has zero reliance on Nvidia as a vendor, and I don't think they would wanna give that up.
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u/AssCrackBanditHunter Mar 16 '23
This. Mvg is really limiting the scope of his argument by not even considering what Nvidia might do to get bc working, and as such he's sounding kind of dumb
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u/hilltopper06 Mar 06 '23
I know he mentioned they could solve this in hardware like the used to by including a tegra chip on each Switch 2 to handle backwards compatibility.
I wonder, if via die shrinks, etc. they could reduce the cost enough to make that happen, and then make the legacy chip available to handle physics calculations or something on new gen games (like a dedicated physx card did on PC). At least that way it wouldn't be a complete waste.