Tegra


Tegra is a system on a chip series developed by Nvidia for mobile devices such as smartphones, personal digital assistants, and mobile Internet devices. The Tegra integrates an ARM architecture central processing unit, graphics processing unit, northbridge, southbridge, and memory controller onto one package. Early Tegra SoCs are designed as efficient multimedia processors. The Tegra-line evolved to emphasize performance for gaming and machine learning applications without sacrificing power efficiency, before taking a drastic shift in direction towards platforms that provide vehicular automation with the applied Nvidia Drive brand name on reference boards and its semiconductors; and with the Nvidia Jetson brand name for boards adequate for AI applications and for various smart high-level automation purposes.

History

The Tegra APX 2500 was announced on February 12, 2008. The Tegra 6xx product line was revealed on June 2, 2008, and the APX 2600 was announced in February 2009. The APX chips were designed for smartphones, while the Tegra 600 and 650 chips were intended for smartbooks and mobile Internet devices.
The first product to use the Tegra was Microsoft's Zune HD media player in September 2009, followed by the Samsung M1. Microsoft's Kin was the first cellular phone to use the Tegra; however, the phone did not have an app store, so the Tegra's power did not provide much advantage. In September 2008, Nvidia and Opera Software announced that they would produce a version of the Opera 9.5 browser optimized for the Tegra on Windows Mobile and Windows CE. At Mobile World Congress 2009, Nvidia introduced its port of Google's Android to the Tegra.
On January 7, 2010, Nvidia officially announced and demonstrated its next generation Tegra system-on-a-chip, the Nvidia Tegra 250, at Consumer Electronics Show 2010. Nvidia primarily supports Android on Tegra 2, but booting other ARM-supporting operating systems is possible on devices where the bootloader is accessible. Tegra 2 support for the Ubuntu Linux distribution was also announced on the Nvidia developer forum.
Nvidia announced the first quad-core SoC at the February 2011 Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona. Though the chip was codenamed Kal-El, it is now branded as Tegra 3. Early benchmark results show impressive gains over Tegra 2, and the chip was used in many of the tablets released in the second half of 2011.
In January 2012, Nvidia announced that Audi had selected the Tegra 3 processor for its In-Vehicle Infotainment systems and digital instruments display. The processor will be integrated into Audi's entire line of vehicles worldwide, beginning in 2013. The process is ISO 26262-certified.
In summer of 2012 Tesla Motors began shipping the Model S electric sedan, which contains two NVIDIA Tegra 3D Visual Computing Modules. One VCM powers the 17-inch touchscreen infotainment system, and one drives the 12.3-inch all digital instrument cluster."
In March 2015, Nvidia announced the Tegra X1, the first SoC to have a graphics performance of 1 teraflop. At the announcement event, Nvidia showed off Epic Games' Unreal Engine 4 "Elemental" demo, running on a Tegra X1.
On October 20, 2016, Nvidia announced that the Nintendo Switch hybrid video game console will be powered by Tegra hardware. On March 15, 2017, TechInsights revealed the Nintendo Switch is powered by a custom Tegra X1, with lower clockspeeds.

Models

Tegra APX

; Tegra APX 2500
; Tegra APX 2600
  • Enhanced NAND flash
  • Video codecs:
  • * 720p H.264 Baseline Profile encode or decode
  • * 720p VC-1/WMV9 Advanced Profile decode
  • * D-1 MPEG-4 Simple Profile encode or decode

    Tegra 6xx

; Tegra 600
  • Targeted for GPS segment and automotive
  • Processor: ARM11 700 MHz MPCore
  • Memory: low-power DDR
  • SXGA, HDMI, USB, stereo jack
  • HD camera 720p
; Tegra 650
  • Targeted for GTX of handheld and notebook
  • Processor: ARM11 800 MHz MPCore
  • Low power DDR
  • Less than 1 watt envelope
  • HD image processing for advanced digital still camera and HD camcorder functions
  • Display supports 1080p at 24 frame/s, HDMI v1.3, WSXGA+ LCD and CRT, and NTSC/PAL TV output
  • Direct support for Wi-Fi, disk drives, keyboard, mouse, and other peripherals
  • A complete board support package to enable fast time to market for Windows Mobile-based designs

    Tegra 2

The second generation Tegra SoC has a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 CPU, an ultra low power GeForce GPU, a 32-bit memory controller with either LPDDR2-600 or DDR2-667 memory, a 32 KB/32 KB L1 cache per core and a shared 1 MB L2 cache. Tegra 2's Cortex A9 implementation does not include ARM's SIMD extension, NEON. There is a version of the Tegra 2 SoC supporting 3D displays; this SoC uses a higher clocked CPU and GPU.
The Tegra 2 video decoder is largely unchanged from the original Tegra and has limited support for HD formats. The lack of support for high-profile H.264 is particularly troublesome when using online video streaming services.
Common features:
  • CPU cache: L1: 32 KB instruction + 32 KB data, L2: 1 MB
  • 40 nm semiconductor technology

    Devices

ModelDevices
AP20HMotorola Atrix 4G, Motorola Droid X2, Motorola Photon, LG Optimus 2X / LG Optimus Dual P990 / Optimus 2x SU660 , Samsung Galaxy R, Samsung Captivate Glide, T-Mobile G2X P999, Acer Iconia Tab A200 and A500, LG Optimus Pad, Motorola Xoom, Sony Tablet S, Dell Streak Pro, Toshiba Thrive tablet, T-Mobile G-Slate
AP215Fusion Garage Grid 10
T20Avionic Design Tamonten Processor Board, Notion Ink Adam tablet, Olivetti OliPad 100, ViewSonic G Tablet, ASUS Eee Pad Transformer, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, Toshiba AC100, CompuLab Trim-Slice nettop, Velocity Micro Cruz Tablet L510, Acer Iconia Tab A100
Tesla Motors Model S 2012~2017 and Model X 2015~2017 instrument cluster

Tegra 3

NVIDIA's Tegra 3 is functionally a SoC with a quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore CPU, but includes a fifth "companion" core in what Nvidia refers to as a "variable SMP architecture". While all cores are Cortex-A9s, the companion core is manufactured with a low-power silicon process. This core operates transparently to applications and is used to reduce power consumption when processing load is minimal. The main quad-core portion of the CPU powers off in these situations.
Tegra 3 is the first Tegra release to support ARM's SIMD extension, NEON.
The GPU in Tegra 3 is an evolution of the Tegra 2 GPU, with 4 additional pixel shader units and higher clock frequency. It can also output video up to 2560×1600 resolution and supports 1080p MPEG-4 AVC/h.264 40 Mbit/s High-Profile, VC1-AP, and simpler forms of MPEG-4 such as DivX and Xvid.
The Tegra 3 was released on November 9, 2011.
Common features:
  • CPU cache: L1: 32 KB instruction + 32 KB data, L2: 1 MB
  • 40 nm LPG semiconductor technology by TSMC

    Devices

ModelDevices
AP33LG Optimus 4X HD, HTC One X, XOLO Play T1000, Coolpad 8735
T30Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime , IdeaTab K2 / LePad K2, Acer Iconia Tab A510, Fuhu Inc. nabi 2 Tablet, Microsoft Surface RT, Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11,
T30ITesla Model S 2012~2017 and Model X 2015~2017 media control unit
T30LAsus Transformer Pad TF300T, Microsoft Surface, Nexus 7 , Sony Xperia Tablet S, Acer Iconia Tab A210, Toshiba AT300, BLU Quattro 4.5, Coolpad 9070
T33Asus Transformer Pad Infinity, Fujitsu ARROWS X F-02E, HTC One X+, Ouya

Tegra 4

The Tegra 4 was announced on January 6, 2013, and is a SoC with a quad-core CPU, but includes a fifth low-power Cortex A15 companion core which is invisible to the OS and performs background tasks to save power. This power-saving configuration is referred to as "variable SMP architecture" and operates like the similar configuration in Tegra 3.
The GeForce GPU in Tegra 4 is again an evolution of its predecessors. However, numerous feature additions and efficiency improvements were implemented. The number of processing resources was dramatically increased, and clock rate increased as well. In 3D tests, the Tegra 4 GPU is typically several times faster than that of Tegra 3. Additionally, the Tegra 4 video processor has full support for hardware decoding and encoding of WebM video.
Along with Tegra 4, Nvidia also introduced i500, an optional software modem based on Nvidia's acquisition of Icera, which can be reprogrammed to support new network standards. It supports category 3 LTE but will later be updated to Category 4.
Common features:
  • CPU cache: L1: 32 KB instruction + 32 KB data, L2: 2 MB
  • 28 nm HPL semiconductor technology

    Devices

Tegra 4i

The Tegra 4i was announced on February 19, 2013. With hardware support for the same audio and video formats, but using Cortex-A9 cores instead of Cortex-A15, the Tegra 4i is a low-power variant of the Tegra 4 and is designed for phones and tablets. Unlike its Tegra 4 counterpart, the Tegra 4i also integrates the Icera i500 LTE/HSPA+ baseband processor onto the same die.
Common features:
  • 28 nm HPM semiconductor technology
  • CPU cache: L1: 32 KB instruction + 32 KB data, L2: 1 MB
    Devices

Tegra K1

's Tegra K1 features ARM Cortex-A15 cores in a 4+1 configuration similar to Tegra 4, or Nvidia's 64-bit Project Denver dual-core processor as well as a Kepler graphics processing unit with support for Direct3D 12, OpenGL ES 3.1, CUDA 6.5, OpenGL 4.4/OpenGL 4.5, and Vulkan. Nvidia claims that it outperforms both the Xbox 360 and the PS3, whilst consuming significantly less power.
Support Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression.
In late April 2014, Nvidia shipped the "Jetson TK1" development board containing a Tegra K1 SoC and running Ubuntu Linux.
In December 2015, the web page of wccftech.com published an article stating that Tesla is going to use a Tegra K1 based design derived from the template of the Nvidia Visual Computing Module for driving the infotainment systems and providing visual driving aid in the respective vehicle models of that time. This news has, as of now, found no similar successor or other clear confirmation later on in any other place on such a combination of a multimedia with an auto pilot system for these vehicle models.

Tegra X1

Released in 2015, Nvidia's Tegra X1 features two CPU clusters, one with four ARM Cortex-A57 cores and the other with four ARM Cortex-A53 cores, as well as a Maxwell-based graphics processing unit.
It supports Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression. Only one cluster of cores can be active at once, with the cluster switch being handled by software on the BPMP-L. Devices utilizing the Tegra X1 have only been seen to utilize the cluster with the more powerful ARM Cortex-A57 cores. The other cluster with four ARM Cortex-A53 cores cannot be accessed without first powering down the Cortex-A57 cores. Nvidia has removed the ARM Cortex-A53 cores from later versions of technical documentation, implying that they have been removed from the die. The Tegra X1 was found to be vulnerable to a Fault Injection voltage glitching attack, which allowed for arbitrary code execution and homebrew software on the devices it was implemented in.
A revision with greater power efficiency, named officially as Tegra X1+ was released in 2019, fixing the Fusée Gelée exploit as reported by Katherine Temkin. That revision is also known as model numbers T214 and T210B01.
ModelSoC / VariantDevices
T210ODNX02-A2Nintendo Switch
T210TM670D-A1Nvidia Shield Android TV
T210TM670M-A2Nvidia Shield Android TV
T210TM660M-A2Jetson Nano 4 GB, Jetson Nano 2 GB
T210TM671D-A2Google Pixel C
T210TM670D-A2Nvidia Jetson TX1 development board, Nvidia Drive CX & PX
T210b01ODNX10-A1Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch Lite,
Nintendo Switch: OLED Model
T210b01TM675M-A1Nvidia Shield Android TV

Tegra X2

Nvidia's Tegra X2 features Nvidia's own custom general-purpose ARMv8-compatible core Denver 2 as well as code-named Pascal graphics processing core with General-purpose computing on [graphics processing units |GPGPU] support. The chips are made using FinFET process technology using TSMC's 16 nm FinFET+ manufacturing process.
  • CPU: Nvidia Denver2 ARMv8 dual-core + ARMv8 ARM Cortex-A57 quad-core
  • RAM: up to 8 GB LPDDR4
  • GPU: Pascal-based, 256 CUDA cores; type: GP10B
  • TSMC 16 nm, FinFET process
  • TDP: 7.5–15 W

    Devices

ModelDevices
T186Nvidia Drive PX2 ,
ZF ProAI 1.1
T186Nvidia Jetson TX2
Mercedes-Benz MBUX
1 unit along with 1 GPU semiconductor is part of the ECU for "Tesla vision"
functionality in all Tesla vehicles since October 2016
T186Magic Leap One
Skydio 2

Xavier

The Xavier Tegra SoC, named after the comic book character Professor X, was announced on 28 September 2016, and by March 2019, it had been released. It contains 7 billion transistors and 8 custom ARMv8 cores, a Volta GPU with 512 CUDA cores, an open sourced TPU called DLA. It is able to encode and decode 8K Ultra HD. Users can configure operating modes at 10 W, 15 W, and 30 W TDP as needed and the die size is 350 mm2. Nvidia confirmed the fabrication process to be 12 nm FinFET at CES 2018.
  • CPU: Nvidia custom Carmel ARMv8.2-A, 8 cores 10-wide superscalar
  • GPU: Volta-based, 512 CUDA cores with 1.4 TFLOPS; type: GV11B
  • TSMC 12 nm, FinFET process
  • 20 TOPS DL and 160 SPECint @ 20 W; 30 TOPS DL @ 30 W
  • * 20 TOPS DL via the GPU based tensor cores
  • * 10 TOPS DL via the DLA unit that shall achieve 5 TFLOPS
  • 1.6 TOPS in the PVA unit
  • 1.5 GPix/s in the ISP unit
  • Video processor for 1.2 GPix/s encoding and 1.8 GPix/s decode including 8k video support
  • MIPI-CSI-3 with 16 lanes
  • 1 Gbit/s Ethernet
  • 10 Gbit/s Ethernet

    Devices

ModelSoC VariantDevices
T194Nvidia Drive Xavier
T194Nvidia Drive Pegasus
T194Nvidia Drive AGX Xavier Developer Kit
T194Nvidia Jetson AGX Xavier Developer Kit
T194Nvidia Jetson Xavier
T194TE860M-A2Nvidia Jetson Xavier NX
T194Nvidia Clara AGX "Clara AGX is based on NVIDIA Xavier and NVIDIA Turing GPUs."
T194Bosch GmbH|Bosch] and Nvidia designed Self Driving System
T194ZF ProAI

On the Linux Kernel Mailing List, a Tegra194 based development board with type ID "P2972-0000" got reported:

Orin

Nvidia announced the next-gen SoC codename Orin on March 27, 2018, at GPU Technology Conference 2018.
Nvidia has sent papers to the press documenting that the known clock and voltage scaling on the semiconductors
The so far published specifications for Orin are:
  • CPU: 12× Arm Cortex-A78AE ARMv8.2-A
  • GPU: Ampere-based, 2048 CUDA cores and 64 tensor cores1; "with up to 131 Sparse TOPs
of INT8 Tensor compute, and up to 5.32 FP32 TFLOPs of CUDA compute."
  • * 5.3 CUDA TFLOPs
  • * 10.6 CUDA TFLOPs
  • Samsung 8N process
  • 275 TOPS DL
  • * 170 TOPS DL via the GPU
  • * 105 TOPS DL via the 2x NVDLA 2.0 units
  • 85 TOPS DL
  • 5 TOPS in the PVA v2.0 unit
  • 1.85 GPix/s in the ISP unit
  • Video processor for ? GPix/s encoding and ? GPix/s decode
  • 4× 10 Gbit/s Ethernet, 1× 1 Gbit/s Ethernet
Nvidia announced the latest member of the family, "Orin Nano" in September 2022 at the GPU Technology Conference 2022.
The Orin product line now features SoC and SoM based on the core Orin design and scaled for different uses from 60W all the way down to 5W. While less is known about the exact SoC's that are being manufactured, Nvidia has publicly shared detailed technical specifications about the entire Jetson Orin SoM product line. These module specifications illustrate how Orin scales providing insight into future devices that contain an Orin derived SoC.

Devices

ModelDevicesComments
T234Nvidia Jetson AGX Orincomes in 32 GB and 64 GB RAM configurations, available as standalone module or devkit;
intended for industrial robotics and/or embedded HPC applications
Nvidia Jetson Orin NXmid-power SODIMM-form factor Orin-series module, available only as standalone module;
pin-compatible with Xavier NX carrier
Nvidia Jetson Orin Nanolow-power, cost-effective SODIMM-form factor Orin-series module, available
as standalone module or devkit; intended for entry-level usage
Nvidia DRIVE AGX Orinused in automotive ADAS applications. 1×Orin 12×A78AE 32GB LPDDR5 @100W, 167+87 INT8 TOPS
Nio Adambuilt from 4× Nvidia Drive Orin, totals to 48 CPU cores and 8,192 CUDA cores;
for use in vehicles ET7 in March 2022 and ET5 in September 2022
T239
"Drake"		Nintendo Switch 28 × ARM Cortex-A78C, 1536 Ampere CUDA cores, 102.4 GB/s LPDDR5X

Grace

The Grace CPU is an NVIDIA-developed ARM Neoverse V2 CPU platform, targeted at large-scale AI and HPC applications, available within several NVIDIA products. The NVIDIA OVX platform combines the Grace Superchip with desktop NVIDIA GPUs in a server form-factor, while the NVIDIA HGX platform is available with either the Grace Superchip or the Grace Hopper Superchip.
The latter is an HPC platform in of itself, combining a Grace CPU with a Hopper-based GPU, announced by NVIDIA on March 22, 2022.
Linux kernel patch sets indicate that a single Grace CPU is also known as T241, placing it under the Tegra SoC branding, despite the chip itself not including a GPU.
1Figures cut in half from full Grace Superchip specification

Atlan

Nvidia announced the next-gen SoC codename Atlan on April 12, 2021, at GPU Technology Conference 2021.
Nvidia announced the cancellation of Atlan on September 20, 2022, and their next SoC will be Thor.
Functional units known so far are:
  • Grace Next CPU
  • Ada Lovelace GPU
  • Bluefield DPU
  • other Accelerators
  • Security Engine
  • Functional Safety Island
  • On-Chip-Memory
  • External Memory Interface
  • High-Speed-IO Interfaces

    Thor

Nvidia announced the next-gen SoC codename Thor on September 20, 2022, at GPU Technology Conference 2022, replacing the cancelled Atlan.
A patchset adding support for Tegra264 to mainline Linux was submitted May 5, 2023, likely indicating initial support for Thor.
The ARM Neoverse V3AE CPU is built to deliver maximum performance for automotive applications, central compute and machine learning workloads.

Devices

* VLIW-based Vec4: Pixel shaders + Vertex shaders. Since Kepler, Unified shaders are used.

Software support

FreeBSD

supports a number of different Tegra models and generations, ranging from Tegra K1, to Tegra 210.

Linux

Nvidia distributes proprietary device drivers for Tegra through OEMs and as part of its "Linux for Tegra" development kit, also Nvidia provides JetPack SDK with "Linux for Tegra" and other tools with it. The newer and more powerful devices of the Tegra family are now supported by Nvidia's own Vibrante Linux distribution. Vibrante comes with a larger set of Linux tools plus several Nvidia provided libraries for acceleration in the area of data processing and especially image processing for driving safety and automated driving up to the level of deep learning and neuronal networks that make e.g. heavy use of the CUDA capable accelerator blocks, and via OpenCV can make use of the NEON vector extensions of the ARM cores.
, due to different "business needs" from that of their GeForce line of graphics cards, Nvidia and one of their Embedded Partners, Avionic Design GmbH from Germany, are also working on submitting open-source drivers for Tegra upstream to the mainline Linux kernel. Nvidia co-founder & CEO laid out the Tegra processor roadmap using Ubuntu Unity in GPU Technology Conference 2013.
By end of 2018 it is evident that Nvidia employees have contributed substantial code parts to make the T186 and T194 models run for HDMI display and audio with the upcoming official Linux kernel 4.21 in about Q1 2019. The affected software modules are the open source Nouveau and the closed source Nvidia graphics drivers along with the Nvidia proprietary CUDA interface.
As of May, 2022, NVIDIA has open-sourced their GPU kernel modules for both Jetson and desktop platforms, allowing all but proprietary userspace libraries to be open-source on Tegra platforms with official NVIDIA drivers starting with T234.

QNX

The Drive PX2 board was announced with QNX RTOS support at the April 2016 GPU Technology Conference.

Similar platforms

SoCs and platforms with comparable specifications are: