NVidia just published all variants of Tegra Orin launching soon (January 2023). Assuming Nintendo uses one of these, which one do you think they will use? My opinion:

1. NO WAY: Orin Nano 4GB. 6 core CPU and 512 core GPU. 64 bit bus, only 4GB of memory, the same as the current Switch. Would work as a Switch revision or pro version, but not next gen.

2. Very Likely: Orin Nano 8GB, 1024 core GPU instead of 512, a large increase, and crucially it has a 128 bit memory bus like an iPad or the TegraX2 we wanted, giving Nintendo enough memory bandwidth for the first time to run at 1080p properly. Much better than any phone. INEXPENSIVE. Cheap and powerful.

3. Also possible: Orin NX 8GB, same as the Nano 8GB but with higher clock speeds and faster DDR5 memory speeds. Similar to the Apple M2 for GPU performance.

4. Not likely: Orin NX 16GB, would be good competition to the Steam Deck as it has a lot of RAM and 2 more CPU cores, but too expensive for Nintendo and lacking GPU improvements. Nice parity with the basic needs of the PS5 generation, port every game at low resolution. High-res textures baby!

5. The Original Dream: Jetson AGX 32GB cutdown version of the full chip. A whopping 1792 cores. Yummy. A massive 256 bit bus like a full laptop/desktop video card. A massive 32GB of memory, though perhaps a custom version of this would work with 16GB of memory to cut costs, but retain everything else. Faster than the PS4 Pro in every category (CPU, GPU, storage, ram, everything).

Everything above this is impossible and expensive. Note that Orin supports nVME storage now, unlike the Tegra X1, so we could get fast storage as well like the Xbox/PS5.

I should also mention that the first 3 options are $199, $299, and $399 direct from nVidia. Nintendo can get everything for 1/2 or 1/3 the price of that, in volume. Very reasonable prices here that are the same as the TegraX1 that was put in to the original Switch. 

Jetson Orin NX 8GB

Very possible! As it has the better RAM, that makes a large difference if you want higher resolutions. It uses 5W more power though than the Nano 8GB.

The Orin AGX 32GB was the first to release (you can buy it now, super expensive of course). nVidia had this to say: "Develop for all six Jetson Orin modules with one developer kit" so really we are pretty certain the AGX is the developer kit, but which module Nintendo might use for the consumer product is hard to say.

Worst case scenario is Nintendo still uses Xavier. Please no. I'm assuming Nintendo is going cheap, which would be one of the Orin 8GB models. They are in full production, and unlike last time nVidia doesn't have millions of Xaviers lying around looking for a customer.

Tensor core will be the more important bit. That will determine how well it scales to 4k using DLSS.

Personally I was hoping Nintendo would hold out till Atlan as hardware sales are still decent. Then I saw that Atlan was cancelled and Thor took over, so not sure how far that will push things into the future.

That cancellation made a Nintendo Orin launch guaranteed. There is nothing for the next several years except for Orin, so Orin is what Nintendo will use :)

Yer appears that way.  Some sources saying that Thor will be on same schedule as Atlan, it is just they changed specs to be significantly better. I'll believe it when I see it haha. In the past when they made spec changes the codename stayed the same so this one is bizzar if they can meet some schedule

> Orin Nano 8GB, 1024 core GPU instead of 512, a large increase, and crucially it has a 128 bit memory bus like an iPad or the TegraX2 we wanted, giving Nintendo enough memory bandwidth for the first time to run at 1080p properly.

This is the only logic choice.

The Orin Nano has one major advantage. Super cheap. They could easily release a new Switch with it, and go back to $300 for the price.

I'm hoping for Orin NX 16 GB, but probably we'll have to settle for Orin NX 8GB.
NX also was the Switch codename, that would be a nice coincidence.

Orin Nano would be disappointing. No DL-Accelerator would probably mean also no DLSS.