Nintendo Switch 2: Nvidia Tegra T239 could power new game console

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The Nvidia Tegra T239 octa-core SoC, a custom design of the well-known Nvidia Tegra T234 (“Orin”), is a candidate for a possible “Nintendo Switch 2 ' or 'Switch Pro'. In addition to a significantly higher raw performance, there are also ray tracing and DLSS.

Nvidia Tegra T239 as a custom SoC for the Switch 2/Pro

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First brought up in June last year by Twitter user @kopite7kimi, developer Sumit Gupta, who has been working for Nvidia since 2007, commented on Linux.org about the new or heavily modified system-on-a-chip from the Tegra processor family .

Adding support for Tegra T239 SoC which has eight cores in a single cluster. Also, moving num_clusters to soc data to avoid over allocating memory for four clusters always.

Sumit Gupta, Nvidia

According to the published e-mail, the Tegra T239 is cut from 12 to 8 Arm Cortex-A78AE (“Hercules”) processor cores in direct comparison to the Tegra T234, while the SoC completely dispenses with energy-saving e-cores. For a possible Switch 2 or Switch Pro, it would come close to the Jetson AGX Orin from the embedded area, which has a similar structure.

The rumor mill tells the Tegra T239 the following key data by:

  • Custom design of the Nvidia Tegra T234 (“Orin”)
  • 8 × Arm Cortex-A78AE (“Hercules “) with up to 2 GHz
  • GA10B GPU (“Ampere”) with up to 1,024 CUDA cores
  • A maximum computing power of 4 TFLOPS
  • Support for LPDDR5 memory

With 1,024 CUDA cores and 32 tensor cores of the Ampere generation, the SoC would achieve a computing power of up to 4,096 TFLOPS, while the current Nintendo Switch (test) with Nvidia Tegra X1 and 256 Maxwell -Shaders only achieved 1,024 TFLOPS.

Raytracing and DLSS 2.x for the handheld

This would clear the way for also rumors that have been circulating for a long time that the successor to the Nintendo Switch should support both ray tracing and DLSS 2.x.

Nvidia Tegra X1 Nvidia Tegra T234 Nvidia Tegra T239* CPU 4× Arm Cortex-A57
4× Arm Cortex-A53 12× Arm Cortex-A78AE 8× Arm Cortex-A78AE GPU Nvidia GM20B
(“Maxwell”) Nvidia GA10B
(“Ampere”) Shader 256 2,048 1,024 TFLOPS 1,024 8,192 TFLOPS 4,096 TFLOPS Memory IF LPDDR4@64-Bit LPDDR5@256-Bit LPDDR5@128-Bit *) not officially confirmed yet!

A possible Switch 2 or Switch Pro could have up to four times more raw performance. However, since Nintendo has not yet said a word about a successor to the current Switch, Switch Lite and Switch OLED, it remains pure speculation for the time being, which should be treated with appropriate caution.