Nvidia has been attempting to get into the world of online gaming for a while now. Last year, the company released the Nvidia Shield, its first portable Android-based gaming platform, and a number of graphics chips customized for smartphones. This year, however, Nvidia is set to revolutionize smartphone gaming with the new Nvidia Tegra K1.
The Tegra K1, unveiled at the 2014 International CES in Las Vegas, has a total of 192 cores that promises to turbo-charge smartphones for gaming. The new chip aims to narrow the gap between console class graphics and smartphone graphics. The Tegra K1 uses the same architecture used in the Kepler GPU found in the GeForce GTX 780 Ti, albeit in a much smaller package. With the release of the Tegra K1, Nvidia is now the proud manufacturer of the fastest smartphone GPU chipset on the planet.
The Tegra K1 comes in two flavors, a 32-bit version and a 64-bit version. The 32-bit Tegra K1 comes with a 4+1 ARM core configuration similar to what has been seen on the Tegra 4. On the other hand, the 64-bit version will come with a 64 bit dual core Denver CPU. However, the company has also announced that they will soon release a third variant specifically made for vehicles.
While some are wondering why the new chip was called the Tegra K1 instead of the Tegra 5, the company has stated that the relationship between the Tegra K1 and the Tegra 4 is "not linear," hinting the the Tegra K1 may be the first of a new generation of Nvidia mobile graphics chips.
Using the Tegra K1, future smartphones may see gaming quality almost on par with consoles and high spec'ed PCs. This also means that gamers may see bigger and better titles released for their smartphones in the very near future. Aside from gaming, Nvidia also plans to use another variant of the chip to help improve automated systems used in vehicles. This means that we may see more powerful features on cars such as advanced driver assistance, automatic parking systems and other new futures that may make life a whole lot easier for motorists.
