With the public announcement of the Nintendo Switch 2, we've learned about the device's capabilities, such as 4K 60 FPS output via the dock, but there hasn't been much information about which chip the device is powered by. We know that Nintendo has a deal with NVIDIA to use its custom Tegra SoC, which leads us to speculate that the device will be powered by the next-generation Tegra 239 chip. Now,@KurnalsaltsThe speculation was given credence by sharing a photo of what appears to be an NVIDIA Tegra 239 chip, labeled "T239."
The tweet does not provide any other information, so we will most likely have to rely on previous information regarding the specifications of this SoC. According to the information we have so far, the chip is said to be equipped with eight Arm Cortex-A78C cores, a hybrid GPU containing Ada Lovelace and Ampere elements, and 1536 CUDA cores.
The CPU speed is expected to be between 1.1 GHz and 1.5 GHz, with different values reflecting the speed in docking mode. The 128-bit memory interface using the LPDDR5 specification is also worthy of attention.
Interestingly, details about the Tegra 239 are fairly sparse, so we can’t reveal too many details, but we do know that the SoC supports DLSS, which is crucial for the console’s performance improvements. With the Tegra 239 chip, NVIDIA has demonstrated its ambitions in custom ASICs, and through its partnership with ARM, NVIDIA still maintains exclusive development rights for the Nintendo Switch.
The bigger question is, when will NVIDIA release chips for the AI PC market? NVIDIA has been speculating about releasing this chip since last year. There have been rumors that NVIDIA will cooperate with MediaTek to launch an ARM-based SoC, most likely named N1X and N1 series, but there is no news yet.