The latest Nintendo Switch firmware update was rolled out last week. It sports quite a few new features, fixes, and upgrades. The firmware comes with reference to a new SoC. It for sure increases the possibility of a new model getting launched soon. What’s to be seen is if the hardware refresh is limited solely to the new chip.
After observing the 5.0 Nintendo Switch firmware upgrade carefully for the past few days, Mike Heskin claims to have discovered concrete proofs leading to the speculations, saying that the Nintendo Switch hardware refresh, featuring the new T214 chip, is most probably getting accompanied by a whole new PCB and 8GB RAM. The current one contains 4GB RAM. In his own words, “5.0.0 included hardware bringup for a new SoC called Mariko. Nvidia calls it t214 (it’s a fork of Tegra X1), it has a custom nintendo bootrom, new key material, new pmic (and new pcb!). However, it will probably look identical from outside.”
He also pointed out an interesting observation as well. He highlighted the fact, that the names of the famous Marvel characters are being used to code-name all the Tegra systems. For instance, the ‘Mariko’ code-name of the T214 seems to be inspired by Mariko Yashida. In the movie ‘The Wolverine’, released in 2013, Mariko is Wolverine’s primary romantic interest, girlfriend, and lover. He said, “Tegra systems are code-named after Marvel characters. TK1 was “Logan”, TX1 was “Arista” and now T214 SoC’s name “Mariko” comes from Mariko Yashida, Wolverine’s lover. Whether this symbolizes Nvidia and Nintendo’s scorching “romance” remains to be seen.”
It’s hardly been a year since the Nintendo Switch was released. Naturally, there a lot of reports & speculations regarding the time of the release of this hardware refresh by Nintendo. We will surely update you once it gets released. Until then, stay tuned.
