LAS VEGAS: NVIDIA HAS UNVEILED what it claims is the world’s first mobile supercomputer chip, the Tegra X1.
Taking the wraps off the processor at CES in Las Vegas on Sunday, Nvidia said the mobile chip is the first of its kind because it is the most “super energy efficient architecture in the world”, powered by the same Maxwell GPU architecture as seen in desktops and notebooks.
“Last year we announced he Tegra K1,” said co-founder and CEO of Nvidia, Jsen Huang.
“Today were announcing the exact same Maxwell GPU will come to mobile devices in a processor we call Tegra X1, bringing the same power envelope of the K1 but with double the performance.”
Huang said the power envelope of the Nvidia Tegra X1 stands at about 10W, which can be compared to the power of the Xbox One, which runs at about 100W when powering the same game – Elemental on the Unreal engine.
For those wondering why anyone would need so much power on a mobile device, Nvidia said that the firm will be targeting the automobile industry with the Tegra X1.
“So what we gonna do with all that horse power? Sure, we don’t need it for phones,” said Huang. “We believe the future car will be most advanced computers in the world, with computers and rich displays all round it – more computing horse power than any other systems.”
Huang said that Nvidia believes side mirrors could become smart mirrors, complemented by rear seat entertainment, and curved sides that could become displays.
“We can imagine curved displays within cars to expand rapidly, the combined resolution inside your car will grow like nothing you’ve ever seen – because we’ll become accustomed to rich displays,” said Huang.
To support this growth, Nvidia have developed Drive CX, a platform powered by Maxwell which includes suite software called Drive Studio – that is – tools to allow car designers to access them properly, promising to “take computer graphics to whole new level”.
For example, Infotainment systems in cars could take a Tron-like appearance in maps as opposed to a cartoon-like one, alongside digital dashboards and a cockpit completely “reimaged with all sorts of materials”.
Nvidia said that this means designers who are good at designing cars don’t have to understand the coding and tech involved in the drive CX, they can work with Design Studio and translate their vision for the future into something they can easily deploy.
