Nvidia is the latest company to get involved in the driverless car market, announcing the new Tegra X1 at an event a few days before the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

The Tegra X1 is Nvidia's newest mobile chip development, but instead of focusing primarily on mobiles and tablets, the Tegra X1 will also be capable of running driverless car systems.

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Using the computational horsepower of 256 graphical cores and eight 64-bit CPU cores, the Tegra X1 is able to map out the road, recognize objects, signs, lanes and other things on the road, through cameras on the front, back and sides of the car.

The Tegra X1 can also make decisions for the car, including turning, changing lanes, braking, reversing and steering. It will utilize other sensors built into the car to make these decisions.

Nvidia has added Maxwell graphics architecture to the Tegra X1, making it much easier to map out roads. Maxwell graphics also brings 4K video into the car, and Nvidia is working on a compatible entertainment system for self-driving cars using Drive CX platform.

Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang announced the Tegra X1 at a press conference, claiming it is the "world's most advanced cockpit" for cars. Nvidia will show off the new super-chip at CES 2015.

Partnerships will need to be created for the Tegra X1 to succeed, and currently there are only a few car manufacturers actively pursuing the idea of self-driving.

Audi has unveiled its own "Piloted Driving" A7 car, codenamed Jack, which will also be available to view at CES 2015. Nvidia could potentially offer a much more powerful central supercomputer to power Audi's car platform.

Tesla is another potential partnership, already showing signs of an autonomous car, capable of driving itself. Google might also be prepared to work with Nvidia, for more horsepower on its self-driving platform.

Nvidia has confirmed the Tegra X1 will be available for mobile and tablet manufacturers as well, but its main focus is smart cars.

TagsNvidia, Tegra X1, Driverless Cars, mobile chip