Nvidia isn't done torturing the console makers with thoughts of what could have been following two announcements in this year's SIGGRAPH, or Special Interest Group on GRAPHics and Interactive Techniques Conference.
First off, they announce Mobile Kepler GPU, bringing the top of the line PC architecture to smartphones and tablets. Nvidia hypes this up in their blog as a step as significant as when GeForce 256, the first PC GPU, was announced 14 years ago.
They explain that Kepler was redesigned to handle low power consumption needs of SoCs, and were then optimized for mobile even further. As a result, it can render at the expected level for mobile, using one third the power of current tablet chips. Kepler supports Windows DirectX 11, but more importantly, OpenGL.
Impressively, Nvidia prepared a demo, using the same Ira demonstration early this year that ran on the GeForce GTX Titan, on the Kepler GPU.
Nvidia's other announcement was the reveal that they had Unreal Engine 4 running on Kepler. This was partly made possible thanks to OpenGL 4.3. As Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney explains, this is not a modified version of the engine, but the same UE4 that runs on PCs today and can use as much as 2.4 teraflops of power that is now possible on mobile.
This is all impressive technology indeed, and are logical steps forward in bringing mobile gaming up to the same level as PC and console gaming. On the flip side, you can see Nvidia's implicit intentions to undermine next gen consoles. If 3rd party developers find tablets are capable of receiving ports of console and PC games thanks to Kepler, tablets may become a 3rd platform for even the next generation of consoles to compete with. Heck, this could eventually undermine Sony and Microsoft's attempts to sell gamers on a multiscreen experience. Nvidia's sourgrapes may give console companies more troubles than they bargained for.
