Nvidia made a splash at this year’s CES with the unveiling of its Tegra K1 ARM chip, which included a 64-bit version slated for release later this year. At the Hot Chips conference today, Nvidia released more details about the upcoming chip, which is codenamed Project Denver.
Project Denver is Nvidia’s first custom-designed CPU, and it’s being touted as the first 64-bit ARM processor for Android. The system will pair two Denver CPUs with speeds up to 2.5 GHz with its existing 192-core Kepler architecture. According to Nvidia, the dual-core design provides “significantly higher performance” than rival four- and eight-core mobile processors.
The chip also includes: “7-way superscalar microarchitecture (up to 7 concurrent micro-ops can be executed per clock), a 128KB 4-way L1 instruction cache, a 64KB 4-way L1 data cache, and a 2MB 16-way L2 cache.” For the deeper technical workings of the chip, you can check out this report from Tirias Research.
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Nvidia also confirmed that it is working on Android L support for the 64-bit chip. You can expect the first devices packing the new chip to arrive before the end of the year.
If it lives up to expectations, Project Denver will bring desktop level performance to mobile devices while still maintaining power efficiency. We’re trying not to get too hyped up about this, but today’s teaser suggests we’ll have some serious power in our hands thsi fall.
➤ Mile High Milestone: Tegra K1 “Denver” Will Be First 64-bit ARM Processor for Android [Nvidia]
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