The Tegra chip plan for Nintendo’s new console has been exposed to changes
Nintendo’s latest financial report revealed that the cumulative sales of Nintendo Switch have reached 122.55 million units, surpassing Sony’s PlayStation 4 (with cumulative sales of 117.2 million units) and entering the top three in history, marking a new milestone. For a game console that has been on the market for over five years, it is natural to consider updating and upgrading it.
Earlier rumors stated that the next-generation Nintendo Switch console would be equipped with Nvidia’s latest Tegra chip, manufactured using Samsung’s 5LPP process. However, this statement has been questioned by many. While people were still debating, a whistleblower claimed that the previous rumors were incorrect and that the Tegra chip originally planned for the new Nintendo game console was canceled several months ago. Nvidia subsequently replaced it with a vehicle-use chip platform based on 8nm, changing it from Atlan to Thor.
Leaked information from last year indicated that “NVN2” mentioned in the NVIDIA DLSS source code files is likely to be the graphic API for the next-generation Nintendo Switch, which will be used in conjunction with Ampere architecture GPU, supporting not only DLSS 2.2 but also ray tracing technology. The files also mention the T234/T239 SoC, which has a customized Arm Cortex-A78AE core for the CPU and an Ampere architecture-based GPU with 2048 CUDA cores and may also support AV1. Clearly, its performance is much better than the existing customized Tegra chips.
However, some people speculate whether there is a possibility that the cooperation between Nintendo and Nvidia has come to an end. Nowadays, Nvidia no longer has SoCs for devices such as tablets, and designing SoCs specifically for Nintendo may not be cost-effective. Nvidia has always been concerned about profit margins, and their quote may not be low. Moreover, power consumption and heat dissipation have always been big issues for mobile devices, and previous Tegra chips did not perform well in this aspect.
