Nvidia unveils Tegra X1 ‘mobile superchip’

Nvidia chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang announced a mobile processor dubbed the Tegra X1 mobile superchip, the successor to last year’s Tegra K1 chip.

The graphics chip maker made the announcement at a press conference at the 2015 Interntaional CES, the big tech trade show in Las Vegas this week.

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The chip consumes only about 10 watts of power, but it has 256 graphics cores, or processing brains, compared to 192 in the Tegra K1. It is a power-efficient machine that can work in mobile devices, yet it is also powerful enough to drive car computers and other gadgets.

The chip is based on Nvidia’s Maxwell architecture, which was introduced earlier this year with new laptop graphics chips. It is a 64-bit chip with eight major processing brains (central processing units, or CPUs) and the capability to display 4K video images at 60 frames per second, Huang said.

Huang said that the Tegra X1 has more than a teraflop of computing power. The fastest supercomputer in the world in the year 2000 could achieve a teraflop, but it required 10,000 Intel Pentium Pro processors.

Huang showed in a demo that the 10-watt Tegra X1 could run the Unreal Engine 4 “Elemental” demo that an Xbox One game console, which consumes 100 watts, can also do.

Patrick Moorhead, analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, said in an email, “Nvidia is focused initially on the automotive intelligence market with their new X1 processor.  Use cases include object recognition, car response, and entertainment. While not as trendy as phones or tablets, the automotive market can take full advantage of the performance the entire Nvidia platform brings to the table. While automotive dominated Nvidia’s message today, I do expect mobile and gaming announcements in the future.”