NVIDIA's Tegra X1 64-bit ARM SoC running (non-Android) Linux is a beast! I was given access to a SHIELD Android TV that was configured to run Ubuntu Linux, which has led for some exciting benchmarks. In some workloads, the Tegra X1 comes up just shy of an Intel Core i3 "Broadwell" system. The Tegra X1 has me very excited about the future of ARMv8 hardware on Linux and NVIDIA's continued Tegra advancements.

For those not recalling the Tegra X1 launch from earlier this year, the X1 SoC succeeds the K1 and is a 64-bit ARM design that's packing in four Cortex-A57 cores and four Cortex-A53 cores in a big.LITTLE design. The X1 SoC features Maxwell-class graphics, but the focus of this article is just on the CPU benchmarks while the GM20B Maxwell benchmarks will happen at a later date. The Tegra X1 SoC consumes less than 10 Watts.