Nintendo Switch 2 promises to be this year's big (well small) gaming platform launch. It goes up against a growing ecosystem of handhelds based on x86-64 mobile processors running Windows, its main play would have to be offering a similar or better gameplay experience, but with better battery life, given that all of its hardware is purpose-built for a handheld console, and runs a highly optimized software stack; and the SoC forms a big part of this. Nintendo turned to NVIDIA for the job, given its graphics IP leadership, and its ability to integrate it with Arm CPU IP in a semi-custom chip. Someone with access to a Switch 2 prototype, likely an ISV, took the device apart, revealing the chip, a die-shrunk version of the Tegra T239 from 2023.

It's important to note that prototype consoles physically appear nothing like the final product, they're just designed so ISVs and game developers can validate them, and together with PC-based "official" emulation, set up the ability to develop or port games to the new platform. The Switch 2 looks very similar to the original Switch, it is a large tablet-like device, with detachable controllers. The largest chip on the mainboard is the NVIDIA Tegra T239. Nintendo Prime shared more details about the chip.NVIDIA originally built the T239 on Samsung 8 nm DUV foundry node, but the semi-custom chip powering the Switch 2 is very likely built on the Samsung 5 nm EUV node. This node offers a 70% transistor density increase over 8 nm, and Nintendo Prime calculates that the chip in the picture is roughly that much smaller than the 341 mm² die area of what the NVIDIA Orin would be with 2/3rd its CPU core and iGPU SM count. The chip in the pictures is estimated to has a die size of roughly 200 mm².

The T239 features a 3-tiered hybrid CPU consisting of one Arm Cortex X1 HP-core, three Cortex A78 P-cores, and four Cortex A55 E-cores, with Arm DynamIQ, a hardware-based scheduler. The iGPU of the T239 is based on the "Ampere" graphics architecture, with 12 streaming multiprocessors worth 1,536 CUDA cores. On the Switch 2, this chip drives 12 GB of LPDDR5X-7500 memory. The console uses a UFS 3.1 based 256 GB flash storage solution.

As for the device itself, the Switch 2 prototype measures 270 mm x 116 mm x 14 mm (WxDxH), which is noticeably larger than the 242 mm x 102 mm x 13.9 mm of the Switch OLED. Its display is larger, too, measuring 8-inch, compared to 7-inch of its predecessor. Nintendo likely took the opportunity to update the communications feature-set of the Switch 2.