NVIDIA outs the revolutionary Tegra® K1 mobile processor, a 192-core super chip featuring the same NVIDIA Kepler architecture that powers the fastest GPU on the planet, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti. It sets new mobile standards by supporting the latest PC-class gaming technologies, enabling it to run sophisticated gaming engines like Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 4. It delivers advanced computation capabilities to speed the development of applications for computer vision and speech recognition. And its extraordinary efficiency delivers higher performance than any other mobile GPU at the same power level.
“Over the past two decades, NVIDIA invented the GPU and has developed more graphics technologies than any other company,” says Jen-Hsun Huang, co-founder and CEO, NVIDIA. “With Tegra K1, we’re bringing that heritage to mobile. It bridges the gap for developers, who can now build next-gen games and apps that will run on any device.”
Tegra K1 is offered in two pin-to-pin compatible versions. The first version uses a 32-bit quad-core, 4-Plus-1™ ARM Cortex A15 CPU. The second version uses a custom, NVIDIA-designed 64-bit dual Super Core CPU. This CPU (codenamed “Denver”) delivers very high single-thread and multi-thread performance. It is based on the ARMv8 architecture, which brings the energy-efficient heritage of ARM processor technology to 64-bit computing.
Both versions of Tegra K1 deliver stunning graphics and visual computing capabilities powered by the 192-core NVIDIA Kepler GPU. The 32-bit version is expected in devices in the first half of 2014, while the 64-bit version is expected in devices in the second half of the year.
Tegra K1 provides full support for the latest PC-class gaming technologies — including DirectX 11, OpenGL 4.4 and tessellation. These capabilities will enable PC and console game developers to finally bring their stunning, visually rich titles to mobile devices.
“With the introduction of this revolutionary processor, we can take applications that run on PC or console and run it on Tegra,” says Tim Sweeney, founder of Epic Games and developer of Unreal Engine. “From here onward, I think we’re going to see the performance and feature gap between mobile and PC high-end gaming continue to narrow to the point where the difference between the platforms really blurs.”
Tegra K1 is also the first mobile processor to support NVIDIA CUDA® — the world’s most pervasive parallel computing platform. Developers have downloaded CUDA more than 2 million times to create cutting-edge GPU-accelerated applications for computer vision, advanced imaging, speech recognition, video editing and more.
“Kepler powers all 10 of the world’s most energy-efficient supercomputers,” says Linley Gwennap of the Linley Group. “By scaling this technology down, NVIDIA has set the new standard for what’s possible in mobile devices.”
