Would unlocking the Switch's extra A53 CPU cores help in any way?

[XRTerra]

Would it help with background processes or even getting better/more consistent framerates?


For example, 1 A53 CPU Core to deal with background processes(e.g home menu), while all 4 of the A57 cores are used for running games. This could help open the door for better emulation, and if games are modded for it(or a universal game optimizer is made), better framerates.
Obviously the battery life would tank, probably losing 10-30 mins of gameplay. But in docked mode, this would help immensely as there is no battery life issue. Infact, 3 years ago somebody tried this with Jak and Daxter on the PS-Vita and it ran better with thread optimizer as well;

Probably wishful thinking, but it would be really cool to see the switch become what is essentially a PS Vita 2, especially with PPSSPP being able to run games at a higher resolution and vita2hos(which natively runs vita stuff on switch, which even though it can't run games yet, it can run simple vita homebrew). Imagine how cool it would be to wake up and be like "hm I'm gonna play borderlands 2 for the ps vita on my switch" whip out your ps4/ps5 controller with missioncontrol and just playing it like nothing.

P.S, would direct 3ds ports be possible once 3ds games start getting fully decompiled? That would also open another can of worms like "How would touch screen stuff work" so..

 

[masagrator]

No, because those cores cannot work next to A57 cores. Chip is designed to switch between set of cores, not work with both at once. So enabling A53 cores actually would make everything worse.

Beside even if you would do it, games are designed to create threads at fixed CPU core. That's why enabling access to Core #3 in games by editing iirc npdm doesn't change anything. You would need a way to better distribute those threads and doing this randomly can bring issues (for example Animal Crossing is very sensitive to timings)

P.S, would direct 3ds ports be possible once 3ds games start getting fully decompiled?

Ofc. Any fully decompiled project is possible to do, only difference is how much work you need to put into it. In case of 3DS games you need to switch from 3DS SDK to something more common like OpenGL.

 

[M7L7NK7]

But you could just play borderlands 2 for switch

 

[XRTerra]

But you could just play borderlands 2 for switch

That was kinda the joke, yeah. Borderlands 2 for vita runs like ass

 

[CompSciOrBust]

Iirc the extra cores are missing on the Switch variant of the X1, or they're disabled in hardware or something. I remember people talking about it in the AtlasNX Discord server a few years ago but can't remember the specific details.

 

[guily6669]

I agree, if I paid for them they better give me all the cores I paid for

But yeah, I wish that was a thing