Nvidia has launched its Tegra X1 “mobile super chip”, with over one teraflops of processing power, at CES 2015.Built on the same Nvidia Maxwell GPU architecture recently rolled out for the GeForce GTX 980 gaming graphics card, the X1 features a 256-core Maxwell GPU and 8 CPU cores, with Nvidia stating it will begin appearing in the first half of the year.
The X1 will feature in Nvidia’s Drive car computers, also announced at CES, including Drive PX, an autopilot computing platform, capable of processing video from up to 12 onboard cameras.
Drive CX, meanwhile, is a cockpit platform designed to power the advanced graphics required across screens used for digital clusters, infotainment, head-up displays, virtual mirrors and rear-seat entertainment.
Jen-Hsun Huang, Nvidia CEO and co-founder, observed that mobile supercomputing is set to be “central to tomorrow’s car”.
“With vast arrays of cameras and displays, cars of the future will see and increasingly understand their surroundings,” Huang commented.
“Whether finding their way back to you from a parking spot or using situational awareness to keep out of harm’s way, future cars will do many amazing, seemingly intelligent things. Advances in computer vision, deep learning and graphics have finally put this dream within reach.”
Huang additionally noted Nvidia sees “a future of autonomous cars, robots and drones that see and learn, with seeming intelligence that is hard to imagine”.
“To achieve this dream, enormous advances in visual and parallel computing are required,” he stated.
“The Tegra X1 mobile super chip, with its one teraflops of processing power, is a giant step into this revolution.”
