Recently, a photo of a chip labeled "T239" has been circulating online, confirming that this custom SoC is the processor for the anticipated Switch 2. With its powerful hardware specifications and cutting-edge technology, the Switch 2 is generating even more excitement. Today, we'll explore this chip and highlight the key features of the Switch 2, offering a glimpse into the technical core of this highly anticipated hybrid gaming console.

The Tegra T239 is NVIDIA's custom chip for the Switch 2, continuing its partnership from the original Switch and making a significant leap forward in performance and architecture. The chip includes eight Arm Cortex-A78C CPU cores, with an expected clock speed range of 1.1 GHz to 1.5 GHz, depending on the power needs in handheld or docked mode. Compared to the first-generation Switch's Tegra X1—which used the 2015 Maxwell architecture with a quad-core Cortex-A57—this chip dramatically improves CPU performance, allowing for better handling of complex gaming logic and multitasking scenarios.

The GPU component of the Tegra T239 is another major highlight. It uses a hybrid architecture combining elements from both NVIDIA's Ampere and Ada Lovelace technology generations, featuring 1,536 CUDA cores. The Ampere architecture was foundational for the RTX 30 series graphics cards, and Ada Lovelace was central to the RTX 40 series. This cross-generational fusion achieves a balance of performance and efficiency. The GPU is speculated to run at 500-600 MHz in handheld mode, potentially reaching 900 MHz or more when docked, with floating point performance expected to be between 2.5 and 3.9 TFLOPs. This suggests that the Switch 2's graphics performance in docked mode may rival the PS4 and approach the Xbox Series S in certain scenarios.

The memory system also receives a significant upgrade. The Tegra T239 is equipped with a 128-bit wide LPDDR5 memory interface, potentially offering a memory capacity of 12GB and bandwidth between 68 and 102 GB/s, depending on the operational mode. This is an enormous step up from the first-generation Switch's 4GB LPDDR4 and 25.6 GB/s bandwidth, dramatically reducing load times and supporting more complex texture and scene rendering. Furthermore, the Switch 2 is expected to include UFS 3.1 storage starting at 256GB, with read speeds up to 2100 MB/s, effectively eliminating the bottleneck of eMMC storage. With the chip's built-in file decompression engine, game loading speeds will be significantly faster, resembling the rapid