Nvidia reveal new Tegra X1 mobile chip

At CES this weekend, graphics giant Nvidia announced the new Tegra X1 mobile processor.

The processor will, according to Nvidia, will bring “supercomputer class power” to mobile devices that use it.

The Tegra X1 runs on an 8-core, 64-bit ARM CPU and will launch with DirectX 12 and OpenGL 4.5. Nvidia are claiming the Tegra will be twice as powerful as the Tegra K1 which was released last year.

The chip runs on a 256-core Maxwell GPU and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang told CNET “[W]e’re able to run any application that relies on the architecture of Maxwell”.

The Maxwell architecture allows the chip to produce a teraflop of power - that is 1 trillion calculations per second.

But it won’t be limited to phones, Huang has also said that the company aims to have these “mobile superchips” in cars as well as entertainment and driver assists become more complicated.

You can find the full spec and announcements on Nvidia’s page here. Check out the video below, a demonstration of the power run on the Unreal Engine 4.