wccftech.com has released a lot of information the past few months about the likely NX chip, last ones yesterday.

There’s also strong evidence to suggest that Nindendo’s next generation gaming device “Nintendo NX” – which is coming next year – will be powered by an AMD semi-custom SOC. Making it a very likely candidate to feature AMD’s 3rd generation “Arctic Islands” GCN architecture.

http://wccftech.com/amd-arctic-islands-16nm-launch-coming-quarters/

Interestingly, all whispers point towards that semi-custom design as being Nintendo’s next generation gaming device dubbed “Nintendo NX” which coincidentally is pegged for a 2016 holiday launch, right around when AMD expects to start generating revenue from the upcoming semi-custom ramp mentioned above.

If Nintendo’s chosen semi-custom design is x86 based then any game that’s been released on either the PS4 or the XBOX ONE can be ported over to the new device with relative ease. Allowing Nintendo to jump in on the competition rather than form a niche of its own as it did with the Wii U. With a device that’s rumored to have “industry leading chips” which are “incredibly powerful” not only can Nintendo come out with a device that’s compatible with all the current and upcoming gaming titles, it can do so with hardware that’s potentially better than that of the competition. Something which Nintendo has struggled to achieve over several previous console generations but has the perfect opportunity to accomplish now.

http://wccftech.com/amd-making-custom-x86-soc-apple-imacs-2017-2018/

It was widely speculated that the ARM semi-custom chip would end up as the processor that would power Nintendo’s new handheld device, while the x86 chip announced alongside it would be a tailor-made server chip. Today, VentureBeat reports that the third and latest semi-custom chip would actually power Nintendo’s upcoming living room device, the Nintendo NX game console.

Nintendo choosing AMD for the second time goes beyond AMD’s traditional strong points with APUs. It allows all the developers that worked on games for the PC, PS4 and XBOX ONE to can carry over their experiences to the Nintendo NX without having to go through another the hurdle of working on a different architecture like IBM’s PowerPC. All the while backward compatibility to older Wii U games can be maintained through emulators enabled by the significant performance jump that the new x86 CPU is bound to bring.

It’s quite obvious that the Nintendo NX is set to launch during next year’s holiday season. Which makes TSMC’s 16nm FinFET or Samsung’s 14nm FinFET the perfect manufacturing nodes for it rather than the old 28nm node that current console chips are based on. This means that it will actually go head to head with Sony’s and Microsoft’s upcoming console refresh with smaller devices enabled by that very same FinFET technology. The new process will enable AMD to make the processors for these devices a lot smaller and significantly more power efficient. Which would in turn allow for more affordable systems that feature much more compact and sleek designs.So expect the Nintendo NX to boast a small and sleek form factor as well as an attractive price point.

http://wccftech.com/amd-making-processor-nintendo-nx/

It looks like Nintendo will really choose x86 for NX console while ARM is posible for hanheld, also previously mentioned "industry-leading chips" and this new information indicate that Nintenodo might go to 14/16nm.

Finally, all console using x86 architecture if this is true

Good. Less developers and fanboys talking about "hidden power" in a magical and strange new architecture.

Thank goodness.

Sounds like guess work.

You are giving Wccftech too much credit. Keep in mind that they are a site that most of the time simply publishes the rumors that are floating around the industry without having any proof or facts to support their claims. That's why their info is either generic or labeled as "rumor".

Now, AMD (and Nvidia) pursuing 14/16nm is nothing new, and if things had gone as planned we would have today 14/16nm products in out hands. Things just went wrong and they will arrive in 2016, but that is only a coincidence and have nothing to do with Nintendo launching their new system(s) in 2016 (if they get launched by next year... but that's another matter).

Yes, Zen will launch next year, and also yes, their Artic ISlands GPUs will also launch next year, but since when has Nintendo used not only brand new hardware but hardware that isn't even in the market yet? They never have, and I don't see how or why they would change that now.. specially if the fusion concept is true, where there are so many things that can go wrong that the last thing you want is have to deal with hardware related problems.

Now, if you look at the same wccftech, the have an article today that is not speculation:

AMD’s Embedded Carrizo ‘Merlin Falcon’ SOCs Launched

http://wccftech.com/amds-embedded-carrizo-merlin-falcon-socs-launched-amd-platform-support-ddr4-memory/

Those new SoC (System on Chips) include Excavator cores for the CPU part (they are the newest CPU cores AMD has right now, and are much, much better than the Jaguar chips that power the PS4/X1) paired with the latest GCN design for its GPU (the one that can be found in Tonga and Fiji).

And now look at this table:

Now, given that AMD first talked about these chips way back in 2014, it is much more logical (but also inherently wrong) to assume that Nintendo could use them to power their machines.

Why wouldn't Nintendo use the most powerful of those SoC, the 421BD, as the base of their home console, just dial down the CPU frequency to 1.6GHz but double the amount of GPU cores from 8 to 16 (or even 20 like the PS4) to keep it around the 20W mark, and use the 216GD as the base for their handheld part of NX tweaking it to keep it into the 10W mark?

Porting between the home and handheld would be a lot easier having the same components (but in different number), they both would use tried and tested components, given their nature of SoC chips they wouldn't be too pricey for the performance they give and, surprisingly enough, the home console could be more powerful than the PS4. It's a win-win escenario for Nintendo!

Now, am I going to say that Nintendo will use those chips? Of course not! There were SoC more powerful than WiiU long before it launched and Nintendo didn't use them back then, so no one can say what Nintendo will do.

But if I had to bet, I'd bet on one of these chips rather than on a Zen+Artic Islands GPU.

x86 sounds like standard tech, so ports from 3rd parties could be easy.
BTW, any of the chips in the OP or the ones mentioned by JEMC fits in the "industry-leading-chips" description?

The "industry-leading-chips" description is rather vague. But yes, it could be used with all of them for different reasons.

Zen is supposed to be able to compete with Intel chips and be among the fastest consumer chips available, and Artic Islands will be the their next gen GPUs.

Meanwhile, their Merlin Falcon SoC, while not featuring any new tech, are the best SoC chips you can get from AMD and within the industry.

Maybe to be more clear in my comment, I expect "industry-leading-chips" for the NX, but not because those are powerful, but because those are modern. Are those chips modern enough to make it easy to develop for?

Lets now make some serious conclusions and have long discussions about something that is not officially confirmed by Nintendo!