NVIDIA's Tegra X1 Delivers Stunning Performance On Ubuntu Linux

[schmidtbag]

Damn, now that's some serious performance for a chip like this. Assuming this is a big.LITTLE architecture, were these benchmarks run using IKS or GTS? Because if these were IKS, then these results are even more impressive than they seem.

[milkylainen]

10W TDP? Hell my Core i7-5600U has 15W TDP. Guess which one is over 50% faster?
Technically it has boiled down to design and fab. Precisely as Intel predicted. Which ISA it is has even less weight than ever.
The only relevant comparison nowdays is compute unit/energy unit.
I was an ARM fanboy ages ago. When Intel dropped netburst in favor for a more modern architecture, it just became a question of time.
I still think Intel has everybody else beaten when it comes to compute unit/energy unit.
For Intel, it just becomes a question of downscaling and providing lucrative SoC's at lucrative prices, which btw is the real problem.
Intel still wants premium dollars for less than stellar offerings.

[torsionbar28]

I still think Intel has everybody else beaten when it comes to compute unit/energy unit.

You sure about that? I think POWER architecture is ahead of x86. POWER is faster in terms of raw compute power, but I think it may also beat intel in efficiency. Partly due to its "hyperthreading on steroids". Where intel hyperthreading only does 2 threads per physical core, IBM POWER does eight threads per physical core.

"POWER8 is a 4 GHz, 12 core processor with 8 hardware threads per core for a total of 96 threads of parallel execution. It uses 96 MB of eDRAM L3 cache on chip and 128 MB off-chip L4 cache"

POWER8's are also available in an 8 core 5 GHz variant, I don't think intel has any chips shipping at or near 5 GHz yet.

The upcoming POWER9's are going to be even more awesome...

[Michael_S]

How hard is it to get Linux on it? I hadn't heard that Nvidia was going to support that at all.

I thought the same. You can build way faster x86 hardware for the same price at nearly the same size, with better upgradeability/expandability and Linux support

Can you build something x86 for the same price? $200? Motherboard + CPU + case + power supply + processor + memory? Really? Most of the Mini-PC and Barebone PCs I'm seeing for less than $200 on Newegg or Amazon can be upgraded to blow an Shield TV to hell for performance, but not at the $200 price point.

10W TDP? Hell my Core i7-5600U has 15W TDP. Guess which one is over 50% faster?

Yes, but that Core i7-5600U isn't available in anything new for less than $650.

If they do make a Linux-compatible development board out of this thing for $200 or so, I might buy it for a mini home server. My other plan was to give the job to an old laptop.

[deppman]

10W TDP? Hell my Core i7-5600U has 15W TDP. Guess which one is over 50% faster?

Since you're such a math genius, guess which one has 50% higher TDP? So while the CPU is perhaps 50% faster, the HD 5500 graphics get's its ass handed to it by the Tegra X1 (check out the comparison charts). Thus the perf/W award goes to the X1 even though it's on 20nm Planar instead of 14nm FinFet.

As pointed out by others, the i7-5600U alone costs more than twice the entire NVidia Shield TV system ($393 vs. $199). I can buy four Shield TVs for the price of one i7-5600U system. Let's see how those near-$400 CPUs work on sub-$300 Chomebooks and Chromeboxes compared to the X1.

[Dukenukemx]

For $300 you get the performance of a 10 year old PC while unable to play modern x86 game titles? Who wouldn't want that? I mean just cause a G3258 is faster and could actually play some PC games with the Intel graphics chip shouldn't mean you should right? Also not to forget the $90 A10 5800K with amazing built in graphics. It's AMD I mean who'd want that crap?

Oh but if you put Android on it you can play amazing titles like Doom 3, Portal, Half Life 2, Half Life 2 Episode 2. Photoshop. No wait, it can't do Photoshop. Basically every game from 2004, which even Intel HD 4600 graphics can do. And if you want to stream PC games to this amazing device then you need da best Nvidia graphics card. No AMD graphics for you cause you're stupid. It's a legitimate reason. Not like Steam can do that as well with any graphics card.

Oh and don't forget how amazing Nvidia's open source drivers are. They just throw money at the developers to work on it.

[bmerry]

Has anyone gotten NVIDIA graphics drivers running on this? We've got one running Ubuntu and recompiled the NVIDIA-modified kernel for it, but when I try to build the driver kernel module against it, it vomits up a bunch of compiler errors.

[Imroy]

Wow, the Intel fanboys sure get defensive when it's shown that a "lowly" ARM chip outperforms some low-end (and middle-range?) Intel chips. Me thinks you doth protest too much...

[milkylainen]

You sure about that? I think POWER architecture is ahead of x86. POWER is faster in terms of raw compute power, but I think it may also beat intel in efficiency. Partly due to its "hyperthreading on steroids". Where intel hyperthreading only does 2 threads per physical core, IBM POWER does eight threads per physical core.

"POWER8 is a 4 GHz, 12 core processor with 8 hardware threads per core for a total of 96 threads of parallel execution. It uses 96 MB of eDRAM L3 cache on chip and 128 MB off-chip L4 cache"

POWER8's are also available in an 8 core 5 GHz variant, I don't think intel has any chips shipping at or near 5 GHz yet.

The upcoming POWER9's are going to be even more awesome...

Hmm. Correct me if I'm wrong. But I think the Power8 (depending on version) has a TDP of around 250W. It's an awesome CPU. Technically it will probably beat competing x86 in compute density (which is the most important factor), but x86 will still have it beaten when it comes to compute/energy density.
As per frequency, it doesn't say anything. Most likely, frequency comes at the cost of energy and long pipelines (remember netburst?).
5GHz will mean lower gate-to-gate time, which usually means longer pipelines or asynchronous designs. There is no way around physics.
So comparing a 3+GHz CPU with a 5GHz CPU without having access to all benchmarks and data is useless.
Hyperthreading is to share resources. There is no way 8 parallell threads are going to have significant boost unless threads are stalling. In some cases, contention for non shared resources is even going to trash performance. Every big CPU company has been down that road already. Hyperthreading does not guarantee anything.

So, while I agree on the awesomeness of Power8, making a whitepaper numbers comparision is not valid.

[Passso]

Considering the 2x performance of a Pentium 3258 for 65?/70$ I do not find this really impressive.
And for those who do not trust you can make yourself for 230$ a far much powerful box with a Pentium (70$ + 45$ MB + 25$ RAM + 35$ box + 50$ SSD) and get a maximum of compatibility.

That said, maybe the graphic perfs of this Tegra are much better than the Intel integrated but there is no test of it...