| sc94597 said: 1. It is not false. The chipset in the original Switch SKU had the same exact design and was identical to the T210 in the Nvidia Shield TV. It is not just a matter of using the Shield's chipset as a base and then making specialized modifications for a hybrid closed-ecosystem console. It was the same exact chip-design, but with a few CPU efficiency cores disabled (still present on the physical hardware though) and clock speeds under-clocked. These things, as you noted, would be done by Nintendo and not Nvidia. That is not how most console hardware, even today, inherits existing designs. The T239, for example, is a chipset designed and used exclusively by the Switch 2. There is no identical to x device in the Switch 2's circumstance. It inherits general design decisions from other Ampere and Tegra Orin chipsets, but it is its own chipset which had to be specifically designed by (an) Nvidia SOC R&D team(s), using constraints from Nintendo and with its intended use-case in mind. |
It is a false statement, it's not a "Hand me down". - Nintendo made a purchase that was disconnected from the Shield lineup.
As for the CPU efficiency cores being disabled, that was NOT a Nintendo thing, that was an nVidia thing.
Because devices like the Pixel C also had the ARM A53 cores disabled as well.
nVidia eventually removed those cores entirely in later revisions of the Tegra X1 SoC's that ended up in Shield devices.
As for T239, it's a cut down T234.
It's literally nothing special, it's literally not a new or unique design.
It's a die-harvested part.
| sc94597 said: 2. U.S companies are the leader in chip design (although not exclusively) and the design work does happen in the U.S. Why do you keep bringing up manufacturing and fabrication? Nvidia is not a chip manufacturer, they're a chip design company. Nintendo's contract with Nvidia is for chip design, and you know this because you say as much in your response here. The T239 would not exist if Nintendo didn't work with Nvidia to ask for it to be designed for them. Tegra Orin would just be a SOC family with one fewer SOC. The T210 would exist if Nintendo didn't contract with Nvidia for the Switch. That's the difference. That is what is meant by "hand me down." |
Fabrication is the basic fundamental cornerstone that determines what the design of a chip can be.
Certain fabrication processes have strict die-sizes, voltage limits and frequency curves that need to be strictly adhered to otherwise issues such as electromigration come into play.
You cannot take a Geforce RTX 5090 with it's 92~ Billion transistors and drop it onto a 14nm process node and call it a day, it doesn't work that seamlessly, sacrifices and changes to things like placement of dark silicon, pipelining and more need to be done to reduce things like crosstalk and leakage.
The T239 could exist without Nintendo, it's a Die-harvested part.
You have the T234 as your full blown chip. - nVidia then reduces it down by disabling parts of the chip to meet yields.
In-fact they did it with Orin 32GB which lost 256~ CUDA cores.
And then they did it again with Orin 16GB which was 50% of the CUDA cores.
And then they did it again with Orin 4GB which was 25% of the CUDA cores.
These are all the same chip. The same design.
Nintendo isn't getting a special or unique (Other than being a variant of already designed ORIN chips.) chip here.
There is no secret sauce.
| sc94597 said: 3. Yes, and the T239, comparatively -- is not. Which is my point. It's not for purchase by any other company than Nintendo. It was designed specifically for Nintendo and the Switch 2 with their input and constraints, working with Nvidia. No other device will use the T239. |
You can take the T234 and edit the firmware to disable CUDA cores to match the T239 chip. - Making it identical.
Tegra is used in a lot of different markets, you just need someone who wants to use a cut down chip and nVidia would oblige, it's not exclusive to Nintendo, it's exclusive to who has a wallet and will pay enough, nVidia holds the rights to the chip and it's technology, not Nintendo.
There is no specific design choices that make it unique other than it being a die-harvested part.
| sc94597 said: 5. And Tegra T234 is not the chipset in the Switch 2. The Tegra T239 that is in the Switch 2, is a different SOC from the T234. It's not the same situation with the original Switch where the same exact chipset (T210) was popped into the Switch 2, the efficiency core cluster deactivated (not even removed) and frequencies changed. The T239 has specialized accelerators for gaming-specific tasks, different SM/core counts, and has the specialized edge-compute accelerators (NVDLA) removed compared to the T234. You don't see anything like this with the T210 vs. T210 (in another device) situation because that was an actual general-purposed chip meant to be used in tablets (amongst other devices) and not specifically designed for edge-compute as the T234. Nintendo was able to just purchase the T210 from Nvidia as-is, because it worked well enough. They couldn't do that with a T234 (for its size alone.) And even then Nintendo had to disable its efficiency core cluster that existed physically in the Switch, which they wouldn't have done if they had a chipset designed specifically for the Switch, as they do with the T239 for Switch 2. They'd just not include them from the start and have a different CPU configuration that is fully utilized by the Switch, if the Switch's chipset were semi-custom like the Switch 2's. This is why the T239 doesn't physically have the NVDLA; it's a semi-custom chip for the Switch 2, whereas the T210 was not for the Switch and it therefore had redundant/vestigial hardware (like the A53 cluster.) |
Correct. T234 is not. But it is based on T239.
What specialized accelerators for gaming specific tasks? Got evidence?
NVDLA or "nVidia Deep Learning Accelerator" is open source and can run on Switch 2 or any Tegra/nVidia powered device, it's up to developers to include it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NVDLA
www.youtube.com/@Pemalite
