Nintendo NX release date: specs rumors include NVIDIA Tegra X2 chip, patented modular controller

Nintendo signage is displayed at the company's booth at the 2014 Electronic Entertainment Expo, known as E3, in Los Angeles, California June 11, 2014.Reuters/Kevork Djansezian

The Nintendo NX is one of the highly anticipated gaming devices and is already schedule to be released by March 2017. The latest rumors suggest that the upcoming video game console will be powered by the Tegra X2 chip manufactured by NVIDIA and will come with a patented modular controller.

Previous reports suggested that the upcoming Nintendo console is said to have the NVIDIA TEGRA X1 chip under its hood. Several reports seems to disagree with the specific rumor since the chip mentioned is already a year old, uses Maxwell architecture GPU and will not be able to cope with the demands of today.

Sources now claim that the chip to be used is actually the Tegra X2, which uses the 16 nm FinFET manufacturing process, which also means that it is faster than the previous model. It also contains four our ARM-based Cortex-A57 cores, two Denver2 cores and Pascal-based GPU, the latest from NVIDIA. The GTX 1080, 1070, and the powerful Titan X are the latest GPUs from NVIDIA based on the Pascal architecture, SegmentNext reported.

Meanwhile, it was previously reported that a newly filed patent from the company was recently uncovered that could be related to the upcoming console's controller. The patent shows a detachable controller that uses infrared signals to send the corresponding button presses.

Now, another patent by the company was recently updated and published and shows that a D-pad input can be added or removed instantly from the top right corner of the controller. The patent was dated October 2014 and first published back in 2014, NintendoLife stated.

Nothing is official at the moment with regards to these controllers, but the Nintendo NX is already announced to be released by March 2017 and an event is believed to be happening later this year to bring in additional news about the upcoming console.