3 ms·
> Hardware accelerated video blocks often see plenty of reuse across a GPU lineup. I’m surprised that Nvidia spent extra engineering resources to make a complet
by mlsu 2y ago
> Hardware accelerated video blocks often see plenty of reuse across a GPU lineup. I’m surprised that Nvidia spent extra engineering resources to make a completely different video engine for Tegra X1, rather than reusing the one in mainstream Maxwell GPUs. Perhaps Maxwell’s video engine was too power hungry to go into a mobile chip targeting 10W of power consumption.
It makes sense that the tested Tegra differs from a mainstream GTX 980. My understanding is that Tegra is basically a separate product line born from an early 2010s (somewhat) failed automotive/mobile play. I think those engineering resources were an already spent sunk cost in need of recouping. Maybe someone on the inside would know better.
- rickdeckard 2y agoI'm not aware of the automotive play until Tegra2 reached the end of its lifecycle as a Smartphone CPU. From what I know, Tegra had its inception as a CPU for portable electronics, in the era of ~2011 when Smartphone vendors sourced CPU's and Modems from different parties instead of having a single SoC including the Modem. Tegra2 was going head-to-head with TI OMAP3 in ~2012 for the fastest Premium Smartphone Platform, Tegra2 powered the first DualCore Smartphone in the world. At that time there were a few players on that market for CPU + Modem: - Qualcomm APQ + Qualcomm MDM Modem - TI OMAP + Infineon XMM Modem / Qualcomm MDM Modem - nVidia Tegra + Infineon XMM / Qualcomm MDM Modem - Samsung Exynos + Infineon XMM / Qualcomm MDM Modem - Apple/Samsung custom + Infineon XMM / Qualcomm MDM Modem In the end Qualcomm won against TI and nVidia by forging a path to merge APQ and MDM into their SD/SDM SoC-line and becoming "less economic" for Hardware manufacturers to have their Modems combined with other CPU's.