Geekerwan and Kurnal lately carried out forensic evaluation of a Nintendo Swap 2 T239 chip which appears to point that the {hardware} was finalized in 2021.
As for the way this info has surfaced, just a few of the console’s motherboards appeared on Chinese language on-line retail shops. Geekerwan and Kurnal had been each in a position to purchase them and start testing regardless that we’re nonetheless just a few weeks away from the official launch.
Primarily based on the evaluation from Geekerwan and Kurnal, and with Digital Foundry summarizing their findings, it seems that the Nintendo Swap chip “is on an 8nm course of, maybe even with 10nm options.” It is available in at 207mm2, which is larger than the 166mm2 within the launch Steam Deck. Apparently, the processor is 75 p.c greater than the unique Nintendo Swap and has twice the world of the processor in future fashions just like the Swap Lite.
Because the chip with the T239 processor was “taped out”, it seems that the design was completed in 2021. One comparability shared by Geekerwan is the NVIDIA GA107 processor, which was one other 8nm product that was taped out in 2020 and launched in numerous GPUs in 2021.
This info could have ties to Swap Professional rumors that had been slightly outstanding just a few years in the past. Digital Foundry factors out: “With the advantage of hindsight, it now appears believable that the Swap Professional was an amalgamation of rumors: a mixture of the Swap OLED mannequin and formative work on the console that’ll lastly hit shops on June 5 this 12 months.”
Quite a lot of components could have contributed to Nintendo Swap 2 launching in 2025 even when the {hardware} was finalized years prior. There was the continued success of Swap 1, the unpredictable covid pandemic, and manufacturing prices for the T239 processor lowering through the years.
Share this:
Associated
