NVIDIA announces Tegra X1 with 1 teraflop performance

NVIDIA has announced their brand new mobile processor for 2015, the Tegra X1. The X1 is the first mobile processor in the world capable of 1 teraflop floating point performance, which almost puts it in the same league as desktop class GPU and current generation gaming consoles.

The X1 has a new octa-core CPU cluster, consisting of four Cortex A57 and four Cortex A53 cores with a custom CPU interconnect and cluster migration. The four A57 cores have 2MB of L2 cache between them and the A53 cores have 512KB.

On the GPU side, NVIDIA has turned to using its latest generation Maxwell architecture, which we saw on their flagship desktop GPU this year, the GTX 980. Although not quite in the same league performance-wise, the 256 CUDA core GPU in the X1 is twice as powerful as the Kepler-based GPU on the K1. It's also capable of 1 teraflop of floating point performance. To put that into perspective, the Xbox One is capable of 1.3 teraflop while the PS4 can do 1.84 teraflop.

The X1 has a 64-bit wide LPDDR4 memory capable of peak memory bandwidth of 25.6GB/s. It is also capable of outputting 3840x2160, that's 4K at 60fps, to an internal or external display with support for HDMI 2.0 and HDCP 2.2. X1 also has improved codec supports and can decode VP9, VP8, H.264, H.265 (10-bit) at 2160p60, along with 600 MP/s (megapixels per second) JPEG encode and decode.

Tegra X1 also supports all major graphics standards, including Unreal Engine 4, DirectX 12, OpenGL 4.5, CUDA, OpenGL ES 3.1 and the Android Extension Pack.

Along with mobile use, NVIDIA also has planned other applications for the X1, namely in automobiles, with its newly announced NVIDIA DRIVE car computers. The DRIVE PX computing platform will be used for autopilot applications, where two X1 processors will take input from 12 onboard cameras for features such as Surround Vision that lets you see a seamless 360 view outside of your car on your screen and Auto-Valet for automatic parking. DRIVE CX will power your car's infotainment system, such as navigation, digital instrument clusters, audio system, HVAC, and driver monitoring.

Mobile devices running Tegra X1 are expected in the first half of 2015 with automobiles leveraging the DRIVE PX and CX in the second half of 2015.

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