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Nvidia unveils Tegra X1 'superchip' at CES 2015.

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I've long wondered about the Tegra chipset than runs my Model S touchscreen. I suspect that the sluggish browser and nav map refresh may be due to the chipset being underpowered, rather than being limited by the 3G connectivity. Might I be wrong?

Thanks!
 
I've long wondered about the Tegra chipset than runs my Model S touchscreen. I suspect that the sluggish browser and nav map refresh may be due to the chipset being underpowered, rather than being limited by the 3G connectivity. Might I be wrong?

Thanks!

The Tegra 3 that is used in the headunit is pretty powerful chip. It's got 4 cores and can run at 1.4GHz. That's pretty fast. Although I don't know what actual speed it's running at in the car, but even at 700MHz (that'd be ~1/4 power consumption of the full speed) it still would be a pretty powerful machine. It's faster than any iPhone and iPad (although iOS devices are 64-bit, which might be beneficial for some, but certainly not all applications). It's the same chip used in Microsoft Surface and some other devices that can't be called particularly slow.

I think the MS's browser/map performance is mostly due to the specifics of the software implementation.

Regarding the 3G limitations: it's certainly a limiting factor, but not the single one. For example, 3G is not used when you scroll the page, but scrolling is still slow. Also, the performance doesn't change significantly when I'm on WiFi with 25Mbps connection behind it. So I'd say it's mostly software.
 
Romp, thanks for the interesting reply! This gives me hope that these Internet apps may work better in the future, despite the current 3G limitation. I'll play with the nav app some more but using tethering to my IPad hotspot.
 
Wonder if the name is a clue.. X1 :)

Lots of relevant info in the blogs as well, especially mention of "Auto pilot" - afaik, only Tesla use this phrase, for everyone else it is "driver assistance". Pure speculation of course, would make a lot of sense for Tesla to step up from Tegra 2/3 for the X.