Digital Foundry has addressed the revelations from the alleged leak of the Switch 2 motherboard.
On the latest episode of DF Direct Weekly, they discussed what could be ascertained from the pictures of the motherboard, and what they believe this means for Nintendo’s next console.
Last week, we reported on an analysis of those pictures by redditor zcomuto. They came to the conclusion that the Switch 2’s SOC is a Samsung 8nm, therefore, it’s based on the Ampere architecture. Since then, some fans have pointed out that Ampere and 8nm is decidedly less efficient than the newer Lovelace architecture, on smaller sized chips.
Richard Leadbetter addresses these speculations on the podcast. As he pointed out, the markings on the SOC indicate it was made by Samsung, and that it’s based on Ampere architecture. Leadbetter argues that it would not make sense for Nvidia/Samsung/Nintendo to bring the Ampere architecture to smaller sized SOCs than it was made for. If the SOC was 4nm or 5nm, then Nintendo and Nvidia would have simply chosen to upgrade to Lovelace.
Leadbetter also revealed something very interesting that he cites from his sources. While we were told that the rumored T239 derived from Nvidia’s T234 SOC, they don’t have a lot in common at all. But we’ll need to take a few minutes to explain what this all means.
Of course, you know the T239 as it’s the name found in the Hosiden shipping data, all the way back in September of last year. The T234 you may have only heard of a few times, but you probably don’t know its full commercial name: the Nvidia Jetson AGX Orin. You probably also heard that this Orin SOC is used in cars, but you may not know you could buy it as part of a dev kit yourself, right here. Of course, unless you’re a hobbyist in robotics, you aren’t likely to even know the first thing you could do with this kit.
According to Leadbetter’ sources, the T234 and T239 were made by different teams, and the only thing it has in common is the Ampere architecture. So, in spite of everyone’s best speculation, their best guesses may still turn out to be inaccurate, when faced with the actual performance metrics of the Switch 2.
Leadbetter ends this by pointing out that many gamers also dismissed the original Switch when they found it was using an X1 Tegra chip, which was definitely older and less powerful than the SOC Nvidia packed in their Nvidia Shield Android based mini PCs. But as we all know, the Switch has gone on to become the best-selling home console in America, and the Shield remains a niche product, albeit a very good one.
