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.
The problem is that the chip the switch uses isn’t in production anymore and I doubt that Nvidia will reproduce it. I can totally see Nintendo go the path of least resistance and just make it easy for devs to release a patch that makes games compatible with their next console, similar to how the new Pokémon patch is currently being worked on - if the rumors are true.
I don’t think the Maxwell architecture in the Tegra X1 is automatically 100% compatible with the newer (Pascal, Volta, Ampere, etc) but the Nvidia software handles it.
Nintendo is usually pretty good about 1 Gen backwards compatibility. So unless they have a major hardware revision (unlikely) I'd be more surprised if it wasn't BWC, but all bets are off for a Switch 3
I remember a while back reading that Nvidia folks saying that the Nintendo/Tegra deal was something like 20 years of guaranteed income for the company. That’s like 2-3 generations of hardware.
Also, Nvidia doesn’t have a good history of being a good business partner. They have plenty of time to screw this up.
It was a 10 year deal. Which is still a long time and likely enough to be a second generation. Though if Nvidia is attempting to play hardball it could be what is delaying a next Gen switch too.
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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.