The mobile SoC Nvidia had internally called Logan was officially announced at CES in Las Vegas on January 5. That it did was little surprise, as it’s been on Nvidia’s public roadmap for at least two years. The public name for the Tegra 4 successor wasn’t quite we anticipated, called “Tegra K1” rather than presumed “Tegra 5”. But while the public unveiling of Logan divulged little else new at the surface, a deep dive beneath uncovered a few unexpected details, and a major revelation, one that will cause both current rivals and prospective customers to take notice.
[dailymotion]https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x19a76i_nvidia-tegra-k1-demo-unreal-engine-4_tech[/dailymotion]
For the first time ever, EPIC’s Unreal Engine 4 is running on a mobile platform, the new NVIDIA Tegra K1. This is the first-ever console-class mobile technology, enabling PC-class gaming technologies like DirectX 11, OpenGL 4.4 and tessellation
First mentioned a couple of years back at Nvidia’s Graphics Technology Conference (GTC), Denver has come up now and then in company disclosures and press event Q&A’s. But we hadn’t heard much concrete on Denver … until now. In conjunction with the announcement of the 32-bit Tegra K1 SoC product at CES, Nvidia also previewed a 64-bit version of the device, expected to launch some time during the second half of 2014. Pin-to-pin compatible with the 32-bit Tegra K1,the 64-bit Tegra K1 will be built around Nvidia’s first homegrown CPU, the long-anticipated 64-bit Denver, supporting ARM’s recently established ARMv8 architecture.
The 64-bit Denver preview should turn some heads – it turned ours – but for now, it’s in the on-deck circle. 64-bit ARM is an absolutely worthwhile endeavor, particularly critical for a vendor like Nvidia. If the ambitious, wide-ranging plan to build a competitive environment for enterprise-class 64-bit devices develops as the company hopes, Denver will pay off big time down the road.
But 64-bit ARM is not what’s going to be powering the ARM-based devices that ship in the hundreds of millions right now … smartphones, tablets, and the like. Rather, it’s the 32-bit Tegra K1’s turn to bat now, and it’s the device on which Nvidia’s betting will gain a deeper foothold into today’s big-volume ARM applications.
