I've been kinda reading up on future Nvidia Tegra chips just to see where the Switch line could be going. Right now, the Tegra X2 (Parker) chip is just becoming available to vendors, basically the X2 is a pretty decent upgrade on the X1 in the current Switch. It has two performance mode options, in one mode it can basically perform the same tasks as the Tegra X1 at half the battery consumption. So if Nintendo stuck one of these into a Switch, basically you could go from 3 hours battery life to 5-6 hours if my understanding is correct. Not bad. 

But there's even a bigger, badder Tegra, Nvidia is already working on which is slated to be finished by the end of this year -- that's the Tegra Xavier (Tegra X3 basically). This chip is a much bigger chip and is based on Volta, Nvidia's next-gen archtecture. The Xavier is designed primarily for self driving cars and is meant to replace the Drive PX2 chip which has a Tegra X2 on it (two of them I believe) and even a full blown Nvidia GPU on top of that. That Drive PX2 delivers 8 TFLOPS of performance at 80 watts. 

Now Xavier (Tegra X3) is reportedly supposed to do close to Drive PX2 performance .... at only 20 watts! The current Switch for reference runs at 15 watts in docked mode. Nvidia uses a different terms to grade these chips on performance .... DLTOPS (learning FLOPS basically), so Drive PX2 does 24 DLTOPS, Xavier does 20 DLTOPS. Doing some basic math that works out to about 6.6 TFLOPS for the Nvidia Xavier. 

That's insane performance for a 20 watt part! Now the Xavier at just under 300mm is a pretty big chip (512 CUDA cores). The current Switch Tegra X1 SoC is only a bit over 121mm. So that Xavier chip is very big.  However lets say we slash that in half ... to 256 CUDA cores, you could have 3.3 TFLOP performance docked at only 10 watts, and 1.65 TFLOP if you cut it again in half for a undocked mode at 5 watts for the chip. Basically PS4 level performance in portable mode, and almost PS4 Pro in docked mode. 

Not too shabby huh? And this chip will be done by the end of this year, so by 2019/2020, if Ninendo wants to use it as a mid-gen refresh ... it should be more than mature enough to go into a mass produced $300 device. Lets remember the current Tegra X1 is a 2015-era chip, that Nintendo is using in 2017.

I'm really loving the potential of this Nintendo × Nvidia partnership. But it's still a long way out for a such an upgrade, which would defintely more likely be a 'Switch 2' rather than a 'pro' version.

Calling BS on all that until they prove it... nvidia have a habit of over promising and under delivering when it comes to mobile chips.

whats the other performance mode option for X2?

so Switch is essentially a souped up PS3/360/Wii U and Switch 2 in 5 or so years could be a souped up PS4/XBO? sounds about right.

The other performance mode for Tegra X2 is double the processing power of Tegra X1 at 15 watts. So for Switch that'd effectively be 384 GFLOPS or whatever x2 at 15 watts (768 GFLOPS). So that would be performance that destroys a PS3/360/Wii U. It'd be effectively quadruple a Wii U. 

And that chip is available right now, today. 

so essentially you could release a few different skus of Switch using the X2?

A Switch Slim that is smaller, lighter, more portable, better battery life & Switch Pro that has docked mode level of performance while undocked?

Yes, you could put the X2 in the current Switch casing and make different models from it. If you used the lower-power mode of the X2, you'd basically double the battery life of the system, and since the system is pushing out considerably less heat, yes you could also make the system smaller/thinner if you wanted. 

Or you could use the same chip to double performance if you clicked on performance mode and have double the performance in the same casing size. 

I imagine Nintendo R&D probably has Switch models that have a Tegra X2 doing both and they are testing both out right now. 

My hunch is Nintendo will start releasing Tegra X2 based Switch units next summer or so, the second year of a system is where you want hardware shipments to really ramp up, and Nintendo loves having that new model about 14-18 months post-launch and they have the perfect chip in the X2 to do it with. They'll phase out the X1 Switches as 2018 goes on IMO and replace it with the X2 models. 

ya ive been saying for awhile that Nintendo will release two skus like those along with a home only microconsole over the next 2-3 years.

Could be more than two. The 3DS has 5 models in 6 years, I think Switch will have even more because it's the only Nintendo hardware product line basically. That and because hardware refreshes quite frankly make these companies money. 

I think you'll see new models next year and the current 20nm Tegra X1 Switch will be phased out by the end of 2018 if not sooner. 

I wouldn't be surpised if there are as any as 7-9 Switch models though older ones will likely be phased out as time goes on. 

Switch Current - 20nm Tegra X1

Switch Slim - 16nm Tegra X2 w/battery saving mode, cheap 720p screen (2018)

Switch Pro - 16nm Tegra X2 w/double the performance and 1080p screen (2018)

Switch Microconsole - Same chip as Switch Pro (2019?)

Switch Next - 16nm Tegra Xavier cut basically in half, PS4 level performance in handheld mode, March 2020? 

Switch Next Slim - 7nm Die Shrink of the Xavier. Fall 2021. 

The older models will simply just go down in cost offering Switch at lower price points, newer models take over the $300 price point. Rinse, wash, repeat. 

Some caveats though:

1. 20W is the TDP, not the consumption, which is likely higher than that.

2. The TFLOPS are in half precision, so cut the numbers by 2 to get single precision.

3. Needs good cooling to keep the chip from throttling down.

4. cutting the CUDA cores down doesn't exactly halve the consumption of the chip. Also, lowering clock speed might be a better way to gain on efficiency.

5. Considering what the Chip is made for, it (sadly) probably comes at a premium price, especially if it needs the platform built around it to actually work.

All in all, what I could see with an X3 based Chip in an upcoming Switch would be twice the performance at most, as too much has to be cut to fit into the handheld.