The recent NVIDIA leak might have given us the first glimpse of Nintendo's next-gen Switch 2 console and its specifications.
Nintendo's Next-Gen Switch 2 Console Specs Leak Out, Could Be Powered By NVIDIA Ampere GPU With Ray Tracing & DLSS 2.2 Support
Yesterday's NVIDIA leak was undoubtedly a major one, revealing several crucial and confidential information of existing and upcoming products. One of the leaks seemingly featured the source code for NVIDIA's DLSS technology but users were quick to spot 'NVN2' mentioned in the source files which is allegedly the graphics API for the next-generation Switch 2 or Switch Pro consoles.
NVIDIA leaks have "nvn2", which seems to be the graphics api for the Switch Pro, based on Ampere with ray tracing support and DLSS 2.2 pic.twitter.com/k6nEr31CcY
— Nikki™ (@NWPlayer123) March 1, 2022
Digging through the leaked files, several users were able to spot that the NVN2 API is designed to work with NVIDIA's Ampere GPU architecture and will feature support for both Ray Tracing & the aforementioned DLSS (2.2) technology. Now what's more interesting is that there are references to the T234/T239 SOCs which according to Kopite7kimi were going to power the new Nintendo Switch 2 console. Do note that there have already been reports of a DLSS powered Switch console in the works prior to this leak.
These SOCs will be a custom Orin design and will have a codename starting with a 'D'. The two possible codenames for the SOC are either Dane or Drake though some believe that these SOCs and the codenames were only specific to the Switch Pro which has been canceled in favor of a truly next-gen Switch console.
The T234 SOC is suggested to feature 2048 Ampere GPU CUDA Cores and 12x ARM Cortex-A78AE (Hercules) 64-bit cores. The T239 which will be custom-designed based on this is suggested to offer slightly different specifications. The specific GPU that the SOC will be using seems to be the Ampere GA10F and it is rumored to feature the chip is said (or rumored) to feature the same SEC8N rate as ORIN, 1024 FP32 rate, or half of Orin. The SOC will also likely carry AV1 support.
It's funny. What I said about "the new Switch SoC"?
1. T239 ✔️
2. Black Knight/Dane Whitman ❌ (Tim Drake is also start from D.) 🤣🤣🤣
3. AD10F/based on Ada Lovelace ❌ (GA10F)
4. SEC8N/the same as Orin ❓
5. 1024FP32/half of Orin ❓— kopite7kimi (@kopite7kimi) March 2, 2022
While the leak does report these specifications to be true, we can't say with certainty that these will be the final specs used for the next-gen Nintendo Switch 2 console. It could be entirely possible that these specs are specific to an unreleased or canceled version of the console and a new variant with far better specs could be in the works. So in the end, it's best we wait for final announcement or confirmation from Nintendo itself.
| SOC Name | Tegra X1 | Parker | Xavier | Orin | Atlan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Process Technology | 20nm TSMC | 16nm TSMC | 12nm TSMC | 8nm Samsung | 5nm TSMC? |
| SOC Transistors | 2 Billion (Tegra X1) | N/A | 7 Billion (Xavier) | 17 Billion (Orin) | TBA |
| GPU Architecture | Maxwell (256 Core) | Pascal (256 Core) | Volta (512 Core) | Ampere (2048) | Ada Lovelace? |
| CPU | 16 Core ARM CPU | 12 Core ARM CPU | 8 Core ARM CPU | 12 Core ARM CPU | Grace Next CPU Cores |
| CPU Architecture | 4x Cortex A57 4x Cortex A53 | 4x Denver A53 8x Cortex A57 | Carmel ARM64 8 Core CPU (8 MB L2 + 4 MB L3) | ARM Herclues Cores (A72AE) | Next-Gen Neoverse |
| System Memory | LPDDR4 | 8 GB LPDDR4 (50+ GB/s) | 16 GB 256-bit LPDDR4 | LPDDR4x | LPDDR5x |
About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
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