Nintendo might be in talks with AMD for NX’s processor

Nintendo has been working on its next dedicated gaming platform called the NX. The news on NX came, back in March and ever since everyone’s been wondering what the platform would be like. At that time, Nintendo’s president, SaturoItawa, revealed at a press conference that it was too soon to reveal any details on the NX, but more details will be brought to the public next year. Since then there has been no official updates but recent speculations suggest that advanced Micro Devices (AMD) could be the company that provides the processor for the NX.

Image Source: technobuffalo

VentureBeat earlier reported that the CEO and president of AMD, Lisa Su has shared that the company has won a third semi-custom chip design contract that could generate billions of dollar in sales over its lifetime. Until now, Nintendo has been operating on the IBM’s Power PC architecture. If AMD is really involved with Nintendo, this will mean that the Nintendo devices will use the x86 based architecture. AMD will provide the company with the accelerated processing unit that combines with a central processing unit and graphics processing unit on a single chip for better gameplay.

Although Intel can also make the same chips, AMD managed to win the contracts away from them. AMD currently provides the processors used in the PS4 by Sony and the Xbox One by Microsoft, both of which are next generation consoles. This was also indicated last December by AMD’s interim CFO, Devinder Kumar that the company has two semi-custom chip designs in development. He told the analysts,” I will say that one is x86 and the other is ARM and at least one will go beyond gaming.”

When Nintendo paired up with IBM for the Wii U, the console was provided with a Power PC processor while AMD provided the graphics chip. Now, the challenge for AMD is that they have to create an APU that handles CPU and GPU functions well, if Nintendo is willing to give the backwards compatibility.

The availability of technology will of course help the company in this project but since the chip will have to support many controllers like the Wii U Gamepad, WII UPro Controller and the WiiRemote, the task might just be as hard as it looks.