NVIDIA Shows Off Kal-El's Quad-Core Power

NVIDIA’s Kal-El project has piqued the interest of a lot of people in the mobile technology arena. A processor which combines a quad-core processor with a 12-core GPU is bound to create quite an impression when shown… and impress it did.

Can Kal-El jump over a building in a single bound?

In a video posted on YouTube, NVIDIA showed a graphically intensive demo called ‘Glowball’. NVIDIA says, “The ball serves as the light source. As it rolls, it casts its effect on different objects. This shows off the power of true dynamic lighting, rendered in real-time with physics. Thanks to Project Kal-El, Glowball’s true dynamic lighting brings more life and interactivity to a 3D environment. This marks the first time this type of lighting is feasible on a mobile device. Glowball also leverages the accelerometer inside the device, affecting real-time movements of drapes throughout the game. As the user tilts the device, the gravity in the scene changes and drapes respond accordingly”.

The movements made by the glowball in the video are calculated and simulated by Kal-El’s four CPUs. The video also shows the drop in visual quality when only two of the four CPUs are used inferring that a quad-core processor in Kal-El is required for the level of realism shown in the video

More from News & Analysis

What is the US HIRE Bill and why is India’s $250-billion IT sector worried? Is the internet dead? What's this theory that OpenAI's Sam Altman says might be true?

NVIDIA’s project Kal-El, which debuted at Mobile World Congress, is the successor to the Tegra 2 chip which powers a lot of current smartphones and tablets. NVIDIA says that it will reveal more in the coming days and you can be sure that we will be keeping an eye out for it. For now, you can check out the video below.