Filed last year, two patents freshly published by Nintendo focusing on a upscaling powered by AI promise the possibility of reaching up to 4K on Switch.
More precisely, these patents detail “systems and methods for machine-learning image conversion”. A technology that is of course reminiscent of that of DLSS, exclusive to RTX graphics cards from NVIDIA.
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Another story of blocks at Nintendo
These patents describe how to convert the image to higher definitions as follows: by taking the source image, the AI ​​can divide it into blocks of pixels, each of which will have its own data. All this data is then added to an "activation matrix" which will pass through a neural network, whose task will then be to scale the whole thing.
For a more concrete application of this technical jargon, the patents give some examples. If the portable version of the Nintendo Switch will not be able to take advantage of this technology, connecting it to a television will notably be able to scale the display to 1p.
Another concrete application is on the side of cloud gaming, already used on Switch to compensate for certain greedy games its less powerful hardware than other platforms. Using this technology, cloud-based systems could send a low-resolution image to the device, which will take advantage of AI to scale it back to 1p.
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And the famous 4K in all this?
If the concrete applications of this technology all stop at a definition in 1p, the two patents specify that other upscaling processes could go up to 080K. “While the examples presented are concerned with going from a 4p image to a 540p image, the technology here can work on other image sizes, such as 1p to 080p, 720p to 1p, 080 480p to 1p, 080p to 1K, 080p to 1K, etc. “, can we read on said patents.
After the hallway rumors in recent months, which were disappointed by the announcement of a Nintendo Switch OLED that did not quite live up to fan expectations, a slim hope for the existence of this chimerical Switch Pro, what whatever his real name, remains.
Thin, because on the one hand, the two patents have not yet been approved, and on the other hand, because, as always with the latter, there is no indication that the applicant will one day put his invention into execution. Either way, the possibility that a Nintendo Switch could one day achieve 4K does exist, if only hypothetically.
