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The Nvidia-driven Nintendo Switch Pro has been a favorite subject of the rumor mill for a good while now. Hints and leaks have cropped up every now and then for the past couple of years. However, recent leaks seem to hint at the legitimacy of the much-awaited rendition of Nintendo's popular handheld console.
The source code for Nvidia's DLSS AI image reconstruction technique has been leaked and references were found to an "NVN2". What's interesting here is that NVN is the name of the API (Application Programming Interface; a medium to allow communication between applications) that is used by the Nintendo Switch.
The plot thickens with Nvidia and Nintendo
This implies that a Switch Pro using NVN2 would also be using DLSS upscaling technology. It essentially uses dedicated graphics hardware to upscale images from lower resolutions.
Everything so far seems to line up with previous Switch rumors. For example, last year's leaks suggested that the Switch Pro would be based on the Tegra Orin chipset, originally manufactured for self-driving cars. It is also apparently codenamed "Black Knight."
The Orin features graphics hardware based on the Ampere architecture and DLSS is only supported on Turing (RTX 2xxx) and above series graphics cards from Nvidia (Ampere is the successor to Turing).
This follows after a recent cyberattack on Nvidia by hackers calling themselves LAPSU$ (or Lapsus), who stole over 1 TB worth of confidential info from the graphics technology manufacturer.
All things considered, it would be safe to say that there's too much smoke out there for the Switch Pro to be a fluke at this point. Truth be told, 2015's Tegra X1 chipset in the Switch is starting to show its age, and some games (like Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Hitman 3) have resorted to cloud streaming to work on the platform. Nintendo would definitely benefit from the step forward.
As their competitors (the PS5 and Xbox Series consoles) mature under the developer's care, future games will also move forward with regards to graphical grunt. So if the Japanese gaming giant wishes to keep pace with third-party support and get the newest games, this seems to be the most logical choice for them.
