NVIDIA’s Tegra239 SoC Officially Linked to Nintendo’s Switch 2; First Glimpse of the Chip Emerges

It appears that Nintendo’s latest console, the highly anticipated Switch 2, carries the same kind of NVIDIA wizardry as its predecessor, as evidenced by the newly surfaced images of its internal chip.

Heading into the details, it’s now been confirmed that the Nintendo Switch 2 runs on NVIDIA’s Tegra239 chip, marking a significant step forward with its ARM-based architecture. Players have been buzzing since the Switch 2 rolled out features like a 4K 60 FPS capability through its docking station, but until now, we were in the dark about the specific chip powering these enhancements. Thanks to NVIDIA’s collaboration with Nintendo, and the custom Tegra SoCs they developed together, many speculated that the console would feature this new generation chip. That speculation has just been validated with a photo shared online by @Kurnalsalts unveiling what looks to be the Tegra239 chip, clearly marked as “T239.”

The tweet didn’t dive into further specifics, so we’re left piecing together data from earlier reports. What we do know points to impressive internals: the chip allegedly integrates eight Arm Cortex-A78C cores, alongside a hybrid GPU amalgamating Ada Lovelace and Ampere elements, backed by 1536 CUDA cores. You can expect the CPU to clock between 1.1 GHz and 1.5 GHz, depending on whether the console is docked. Complementing this is a 128-bit memory interface leveraging the latest LPDDR5 technology.

Though detailed insights on the Tegra239 are scarce, we have confirmed support for NVIDIA’s DLSS upscaling technology, which plays a critical role in enhancing the console’s performance. If you’re looking for a comprehensive breakdown of these specs, be sure to check out our in-depth analysis, where we dissect each feature. Clearly, through its Tegra239, NVIDIA is not only ambitiously pushing its custom ASIC boundaries but also solidifying its exclusive partnership with Nintendo by leveraging ARM’s capabilities.

The intriguing aspect amid all this excitement is the question of when NVIDIA will break into the AI PC space with its own SoC. Rumors of a collaboration with MediaTek, aiming to produce ARM-focused chips possibly dubbed the N1X and N1 series, have circulated since last year, but there’s been little news on that front.