Nvidia Announces Tegra X1 With Maxwell GPU

At a press conference in Las Vegas, Nvidia today announced an update to its highly successful Tegra K1 mobile processor. The X1 combines a 64-bit ARM_based processor with a graphics chip based on the company’s Maxwell architecture. The K1 used Nvidia’s older Kepler GPU technology. The X1 will feature a 256-core Maxwell GPU and an eight-core 64bit CPU. That, the company says, makes it the first teraflop mobile processor.

The original Tegra K1, Nvidia noted, was the first mobile processor that brought together a strong mobile CPU with a very powerful GPU. Bringing Kepler to the K1 took Nvidia two years.

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Nvidia unveiled the original K1 exactly a year ago at CES. It has since found a home in a number of products, including a number of Chromebooks from manufacturers like Acer and HP. Nvidia’s own Shield tablet and Google’s Nexus 9 also used the chip.

The Kepler chip in the Shield and Nexus 9 already approached console-level quality and this new chip, the company said today, surpasses those specs by at least 2x. It also introduces a number of new technologies. “The Maxwell is unquestionably the most powerful GPU we’ve ever built,” the company said today. The X1 will also be far more energy efficient as its predecessor.

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