At CES nVidia introduced the Tegra K1, bringing high performance Kepler architecture used in PC graphics cards to mobile SOCs (system on a chip). The K1 offers up to 192 cores, with potential to offer desktop graphics on mobile devices. nVidia introduced the technology without release date and showed a NVIDIA Tegra K1 Demo Using the Unreal Engine 4.
Here is some info from a detailed preview at Anantech:
With Tegra 2 NVIDIA’s big selling point was being first to dual-core in Android. Tegra 3 attempted to do the same with being first to quad-core. Tegra 4 just made things faster. Tegra K1 on the other hand does away with the gimmicks and instead focuses on fundamentals.
The SoC will come in two versions, one version with a quad-core (4+1) Cortex-A15, and one that leverages two of NVIDIA’s own 64-bit ARMv8 Denver CPUs. More importantly, they both ship with a full implementation of NVIDIA’s Kepler GPU architecture. In fact, Tegra K1 marks a substantial change in the way NVIDIA approaches mobile GPU design. From this point forward, all mobile GPUs will leverage the same architectures as NVIDIA’s desktop parts. As if that wasn’t enough, starting now, all future NVIDIA GeForce designs will begin first and foremost as mobile designs. NVIDIA just went from playing with mobile to dead serious in a heartbeat.
Here is the marketing info from NVIDIA:
NVIDIA® Tegra® K1 is Impossibly Advanced, bringing the same NVIDIA Kepler™ architecture that drives the world’s most extreme gaming PCs to mobile gaming. 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 — all in the palm of your hands.
Here is a great video preview showing the integration of hardware and software with the Tegra K1 running the Unreal Engine 4 from EPIC games: