For technology enthusiasts, there is no better time than the start of a year. They usually have the newer cutting edge toys in the hands by then, and can get an idea of what the future holds as companies rush out their new announcements at CES.
NVIDIA became one of the first technology giants to hold a press conference at the 2014 edition of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and has just made the Tegra K1 mobile processor official. This revolutionary 192-core chip makes use of the company’s newest Kepler architecture.
Aye, the one that powers one of the fastest GPUS on the market right now, the GeForce GTX 780 Ti.
In other words, you can expect all the features that are available on the latest gaming PCs, from full support for DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.4 to tessellation and everything in between.
The company has confirmed that it will be launching two versions of the Tegra K1.
One offers the 32-bit quad-core, 4-plus-1 ARM Cortex A15 CPU, and the other makes use of a custom designed 64-bit dual Super Core CPU, codenamed Denver.
It remains to be seen in which capacity these new fiery chips make their way to Windows powered devices. Equally important is the question whether Microsoft will still use either of them for its third-generation Surface tablets that are expected by the end of the year or opt for a Qualcomm solution.
But with hardware revolutions like these, the Windows RT platform just may earn itself a renaissance.
Maybe MS will sneak a processor upgrade in Surface like they did in pro. I’m sure the price of everything before K1 will be coming down soon.
Let’s hope. The Tegra K1 is just over the level of Xbox 360 and PS3. We can finally have better than this past console generation visuals on mobile!