The Nintendo Switch has delivered a host of handheld miracles since it first launched in March 2017. What initially looked like last-gen console power packed into a handheld has given us so much more, to the point where the system plays host to id Tech 6 ports - and even an upcoming conversion of The Witcher 3. Low level access to Nvidia's Tegra X1 has seen some astonishing results over the last couple of years - but it's capable of more. Much more.
Telltale Games developer Zac Litton explains what the Tegra X1 powered Nvidia Shield opens up for games like The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones and Tales from the Borderlands in this exclusive interview from GDC 2015 in San Francisco.
Today Nvidia announced the Tegra X1 “Mobile Superchip” at CES 2015 in Vegas, showing the world the first chip for mobile platforms capable of generating one teraflop of raw power.
During the presentation, the manufacturer showcased the “Elemental” Unreal Engine demo running in real time on the X1.
How many tflops can this even compute? Not that the demo itself is impressive or anything but for 10W it most definitely is.
It's about 1TF of power for this particular SoC.
Source: http://www.anandtech.com/sh...
I just got a shield tablet for christmas! O well this thing is super powerful & will handle aything for 2+ years, thats about when I get a new tablet anyway.
At its pres conference at CES 2015 in Vegas Nvidia introduced the new Tegra X1 “Mobile Superchip” destined to succeed the cirrent K1, and providing twice as much performance, and providing great features and power for games.
Oh NVIDIA you and your overhype and unrealistic consumer expectations.
What clocks did you have this chip running at so you could achieve that 1 TFLOP of performance, because whatever it was it's not going to make it into any consumer products at those speeds.
Coming back to the real world the device is 50% - 100% more powerful than Tegra K1 and more efficient so it's around 300 - 400 GFLOPS in real world devices at clocks around 600 MHz. Now for a mobile chip that's completely B@D@$$, and puts this chip above PS360 and on par with Wii U and above it depending on the CPU and RAM attached to it (8-core mobile CPU + 3GB RAM, and you have a Wii U smashed into a tablet).
I don't understand why NVIDIA does these insane levels of hype, instead of real world showings (you see they haven't pulled this with GPUs in a while), because at the end of the day the tech is still above anything out there for these kind of chips, so they don't have to do all this false advertising. The only way this chip is reaching 1 TFLOP is with something large enough to have a cooling fan / supple over it, and something that can give it a constant power supply (something the size of a small computer case and larger).
On a side note, it just goes to show just how underpowered the Wii U was for this generation. Q3 / Q4 2015 Tablets are going to outperform it in raw hardware, that's ridiculous, and that's exactly why they should have went with the 6670. The good news is that the Nintendo 4DS-Fusion is going to be around the power of the PS360Wii U, so it should be a mighty little handheld.
If you watched the live stream, it's actually mostly aimed for automobiles and mobile phones. I don't see any OEM using the X1 lol, same as the K1. I think the K1 was only used for the nexus 9 tablet, correct me if I am wrong.
@LogicalReason
In max conditions K1 out powers Wii U, in consumer products (tablets / cellphones) the Wii U was still a bit ahead, and there are areas where the PS360 were still ahead of the K1.
Based on this informations the X1 has pretty much ended that, in raw GFLOPS it should be between 300 - 400 GFLOPS for mobile devices, and in some cases manufacturers might push clocks to the mobile limit and hit the 500 GFLOPS range. Now until we have the full details these are apple to oranges comparisons, but scaling from the K1 it all points to eh X1 being the better chip now doing nearly everything the Wii U does at a fraction of the TDP.
@chaldo
I didn't see the live stream, but I read the post about them wanting to use them in cars, and everyday appliances / and in the world to make living better.
As for the K1, it was used in several devices. NVIDIA Shield, Xiaomi MiPad, Nexus 9, and several Chromebooks, and soon to be in a new Android gaming console by Snail Games called "Obox" (I swear I'm not joking) and an android phone made by the same company which looks like a PS Vita with 4 shoulder buttons (it's a Chinese company....hence the rip off, but if it works it works).
Now considering the X1 is more power friendly I expect it to be in a lot more things than the K1.
@ABizzel1
Dude, I am so hoping more phone OEM's would use this chip lol. I am sick of hearing "qualcomm" every time. Nvidia makes some badass chips. OEM's just need to use them, but you know, it's all about the costs etc..
@abizzel1
1GHz * 2 FP 16 * 2 FMA * 256 = 1 TFLOPs. When you layer in 64 more cuda cores, double the texture units, and four times the ROPs, a boost in clock from 950 to 1000mhz, and a maxwell based architecture using DDR4 based memory that's what you get and benchmarks are showing roughly double the performance of the A8X at 60% of the power consumption. 1TFLOP is nipping on the tails of 'next gen' consoles!
@livininsin
And the problem is most mobile devices have their GPU cores only running at 500 MHz, because it leeches battery life. Having the most demanding part of a mobile device constantly running at those clocks cuts your battery life down to a fourth, and that's before attempting to play any games. And when you do play games prepare to play them with oven-mitts to prevent 1st and 2nd degree burning.
That's once again why I said this chip is not getting max potential unless it's in something large enough to house appropriate cooling, and provide a constant power source to keep it running at those clocks. A mobile device can't do that, even a laptop would be a bit problematic producing an uncomfortable amount of heat on your lap.
Thanks for posting all the other specs, because I didn't get to see it.
So it's 256 Cuda Cores, 4 CU's, 16 ROPs, 16 TMUs, 1 TFLOP (at 1.0 GHz) or 400 - 500 GFLOPS (at consumer 500 MHz).
Like I said this is a beastly little chip, but my entire comment was regarding it's role in mobile devices, and as a consumer product (1 GHz is not a consumer speed), which is the same stunt NVIDIA pulled with the Tegra K1 (using a 950MHz / 1GHz clock to show max performance, knowing that they would only be using half that speed in actual devices).
Do you know the GPixels and GTexels.
Because they need insane levels of hype for this to thrive because there are no good real world showcases for this chip yet. I'm sure they have some tech demos but I don't see any mobile software on the horizon that will take full advantage of such a chip.
@abizzel1
Fair enough on the tdp being limited to only 5 watts for mobile devices.
It's almost as powerful as an Xbone and uses as much power as Apple's A8x chip.
http://tctechcrunch2011.fil...
It runs so cool the only heatsink required is a simple heat spreader like is found on most tablet chips.
ABizzel1- Considering it's benchmarking at roughly 2x the performance of the Tegra K1, yea... it's doing 1.0 tflop.
That's peak performance via lab test, not in a retail mobile product, which is the same things they did with the Tegra K1. A 1GHz clock for max potential performance, then clocks were knocked down to 500 MHz for battery life in mobile devices.
http://www.hardwarezone.com...
I hope we will see some gaming devices using this new chip. It is amazing how fast things progress.
I watched the live stream
nvidia CEO said it clearly
this is not for mobile phones
the keynote was about integrating this chip with automobiles
there wasn't anything about mobile phones or tablets
Edit:
also,
He said it's more power efficient
but he mentioned it consume about 10 watt
that's too much for a smartphones and tablets
power efficiency does NOT mean lower power consuming
it means better use of power
How much you can get from each watt consumed
I don't care how powerful a tablet, phone, or pc is. I will still buy the platforms with the best classics and game series. The best thing about my awesome PC is PS2, Wii, and GCN emulation. A powerful phone and tablet does not fix the issues of touch controls or tiny screens.
I have found some slow paced strategy and turn based games recently that work better. Kotor, civilization, etc. So in a pinch better than nothing.
Doom running at a locked 60fps on Switch is something else.
Imagine a Switch 2 with a Tegra X3 “Volta” or possibly even a Max-Q GPU.
In about 2 months time all mobiles will run Doom at 4k 60fps
Garbage, Why would you risk damaging your console to run something you can already run on other platforms with no risks involved.
Super interesting. I suppose if they do a Switch Pro they could just apply these overclock settings and it would still sell like crazy (I would like to see more like anti-aliasing as well).