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I have been rafting and kayaking, on and off, since I was fourteen years old. I've faced class 5 rapids. I've battled white water in three states. This weekend, I took my first drink – in the placid waters of the Great Miami River!
Consider this a cautionary tale.
My party consisted of my husband, a friend, and me. We put in at Rentschler Forest. You can find the well-maintained park on 5701 Reigart Road in Fairfield Township.
Rentschler is built on the remnants of the old Eerie Canal. It is evident that the natural flow of water has been diverted. Directly across from the ramp, a dam blocks access to the main river. Instead, a small, shallow tributary flows into the main river maybe a mile or so downstream. We stumbled upon the clever idea of crossing to the dam, carrying our kayaks across the rocky riverbed, and putting in below the dam. That way, we reasoned, we wouldn't get stuck in the shallow water of the tributary. We'd only have to walk our kayaks once, not every time the water got shallow. It seemed like a perfectly reasonable plan, right? Wrong!
Warning: don't ever do this.
We paddled across to the old dam and got out. We immediately realized that the dry riverbed over which we had to carry our kayaks was a bit longer and comprised of more treacherous terrain than we'd originally anticipated. On the map, it looks like a hop, skip, and a jump. In reality, it felt more like a slide, skid, and a stumble.
Here, I was the lucky one. My kayak is an Otter by Old Town. I bought it a few years ago, but the product has since been discontinued; that's a shame. Mine is a light-weight, no-frills kayak that is easy to carry. I'm only 5 feet tall and, I'll admit it, I'm rather out of shape. Carrying my kayak across a bed of loose rocks was certainly easier on me than it was for the guys, both of whom had larger kayaks. They had to help each other and take two trips. I got to sit by the water and play Candy Crush while I waited for them.
We put in below the dam.
Putting in below the dam proved a bit awkward. The churning water actually kicked up a bit of a current. This is where my light sit-in put me at a disadvantage to the guys' heavy sit-on-top models. Putting in at a ramp and in placid water is one thing. Climbing inside a kayak near a dam and against a current? Entirely another thing. One foot went in, one stayed planted on the rocks. I did the splits. Then, splash! Into the water I went!
Bonus: the water wasn't freezing. It also wasn't deep. I clung to my kayak, found my footing, and tried to climb back onto the bank. Unfortunately, the loose, rocky riverbed kept slipping out from under my feet every time they found purchase. My husband yanked on my shirt, a move that caused me to lose my footing again, but I eventually made it back onto the rocks without losing either my kayak or paddle. I've decided to be flattered that my husband's first reaction was to try to save me, even if I was never really in any great peril. Honestly, the thoughts flashing through my mind were less, "Oh, God!" and more, "Now I have to do laundry before work!"
After I got back into my boat, we finally paddled off. Every inch of me was dripping wet – and yes, I was embarrassed. I'm glad we had the presence of mind to take a dry bag. We use Ascend's Round Bottom Lightweight Dry Bags. We've never been disappointed with their performance, not even after a few years of wear and tear. My cell phone and wallet remained dry and functional because I stowed them in a dry bag. They're cheap ($15.99), and a must-have accessory for any day spent on the water. They're definitely cheaper then replacing water-logged phones!
The rest of the trip proved peaceful and uneventful. I spent the first half of the trip as I spend the first half of any trip: being asked to wait.
The Waiting Game: this is what happens when you have a fast kayak.
My small, light watercraft is more maneuverable and much faster than my friends' larger kayaks tend to be. The guys were using the behemoth Ascend FS128-T and the comparatively smaller Ascend FS12-T. Both are great boats for kayak fishing. For simple paddling trips like ours, however, I still prefer mine.
We hit a few areas of choppy water and a couple of spots that might qualify as rapids. Maybe. I'll give them a Class 1 status because I'm feeling generous. We also hit a few shallow patches in which the bottoms of our kayaks and the ends of our paddles scraped rock. One area had a long pipe going from bank to bank surprisingly near the surface of the water. It created a bit of a slide for us, but had the water been lower, it could have proven a major obstacle or even obstructed our journey.
We paddled about four miles down to Combs Park in Hamilton, OH. The ramp here is old and eroded, with chunks of concrete having broken off in abundance. Nevertheless, it is capable of handling larger watercraft. As we were pulling our kayaks up, a family was backing their trailer and jon boat into the water.
The entire trip, complete with a hike across a dry riverbed and a spontaneous dunking, lasted a bit less than two hours. It was scenic and refreshing – and it left me plenty of time to do laundry before work! All in all, I recommend a good paddle down the Great Miami. Just don't try to be clever and bypass the shallow water, like I did. You might end up getting wet!
Amanda Bull Chafin


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Environmental Sciences Division
Student and Post-doctoral Research
(last updated 8/21/2013)
Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education
Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy Postdoctoral Fellowship
DOE Krell Institute Fellowship Program
National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis
2009: Peter Schweizer. PhD Ohio University (2008). Peter is interested in relationships between watershed landcover, water quality, and fish diversity. Peter developed mixed models to forecast how projected increases in biomass fuel production might influence fish biodiversity in the Midwest. His first paper, which required advanced statistical methods to represent the distribution of fish richness, is in review in Transactions of the American Fisheries Society. Peter is also contributing to research to quantify risk to fishes in marine kinetic turbines with Mark Bevelhimer, Glenn Cada, and Vince Neary.
2001: Annett Sullivan, PhD in Geology, U. of Wyoming (1999) and ORNL Wigner Fellow. Annett developed a spatial reservoir model linked with CE-QUAL2 output to examine the ability of white sturgeon to avoid and, thus, survive, seasonal water quality deterioration in Brownlee Reservoir, near Boise, Idaho. Annett is a hydrologist with the USGS office in Portland, Oregon. Annett's homepage
Summer 2012: Jamie Smedsmo, PhD student Univ. North Carolina, combined downscaled GCM climate data produced by the Climate Change Science Institute (S-C. Kao, B. Naz, Moetasim Ashfaq) with our SWAT model setup for the Arkansas-White-Red river basin (L. Baskaran) to examine the effects of future climate variability on the relative sustainability of winter wheat and switchgrass. Jamie was supported by DOE's Krell Institute Computational Fellowship
Summer 2012: Mike Kelly, PhD student in mathematics, contributed to research in the Roanoke basin, VA. After reviewing studies of spatial optimization and prioritization of decisions relevant to the hydropower industry, such as where to develop new dams, remove existing dams, and provide passage, Mike developed Python tools needed to implement decision tools. Mike is a NIMBioS fellow at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville: (NIMBios page)
Fall 2010: Lin Shi, UG student from Knox College, Illinois contributed to our bioenergy research research at ORNL by developing PATH or structural equation models of fish richness in the Arkansas-White-Red river basin to better understand the direct and indirect influences of land cover on water quality and fish richness.
2009-10: T. Alex Perkins, PhD student from UC Davis conducted research at ORNL as part of the DOE Krell Institute fellowship program. Alex's research sought to understand how juvenile Snake River Chinook salmon use conditional strategies to adopt either a sub-yearling or yearling migration life history. Alex developed a model of life history choice and incorporated this into an age-based population viability analysis model. He developed and applied optimization methods to identify parameters most consistent with the observed proportions in each life histories across spawning areas and years, and summarized his results in a paper to appear soon in Transactions of the American Fisheries Society.
2008: Alexandre Lockhart, MS student from North Carolina State University, participated in the Snake River Chinook salmon project. Alex imputed missing temperatures and contributed to the development of a temperature-driven model for incubation in tributaries and mainstem spawning areas of the Snake River Hell's Canyon reach written in C.
2007: Kendall Ernst, BS
student from Stanford U, worked on the
2007: Sarah Lewis, recent
2006: Emmanuel Isang, BS student in microbiology/pre-med at ETSU, conducted a literature search to support a life history analysis of fishes that focuses on the relationship between the number of years between spawning events and other costs associated with spawning, such as parental care and migration.
2005: Darrell Hoy, BS
student in Mathematics,
2003: Liliya Hartman, BS
student in Computer Science,
2002: Eric Carr ,
Post-MS (Math,
2001: Brian Maskarinec, BS in Math, U. Georgia, developed the skeleton for an object-oriented landscape model, reading an initial vegetation map and spatial disturbance data for fires, oil spills, and brine spills
2000: Brian
Maskarinec, worked on our trout model to
evaluate habitat use and its response to flow in a
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ESD Research Staff Listing
Last Modified: February 15, 2011

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John Carmack suspicious of Nvidia's outlandish Tegra K1 claims
- By Joel Hruska on February 20, 2014 at 3:47 pm
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When Nvidia unveiled the Tegra K1 last month, they made a great many impressive claims about its performance, underlying architecture, and the fact that it would debut as two different parts — a quad-core based on the Cortex-A15r3 with the now-standard Companion Core for added energy efficiency, and a dual-core 64-bit chip that supports ARM's 64-bit instruction set. John Carmack himself has just tossed water on these claims, telling people that Nvidia's statements should be taken "with several grains of salt."
Take Nvidia's comparisons between their K1 SoC and consoles with several grains of salt.
— John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) February 19, 2014
That's a fairly strong statement for a developer to make, particularly one with Carmack's influence. So what, exactly, has Nvidia said? The Tegra K1 whitepaper states that "A vast majority of Xbox 360 and PS3 titles could be easily ported to Tegra K1 devices with minimal effort, delivering similar visual quality and gameplay experience."
Nvidia has claimed that the Tegra K1 is substantially more powerful than last-generation consoles and has trotted out charts like the following to prove it.
Nvidia has a history of playing fast and loose with product comparisons, but it's not the first company to claim a new mobile part would offer console-level graphics — Sony and Qualcomm have made similar statements in the past when trotting out new products or GPUs. I also agree with Carmack, however, that the numbers alone aren't going to tell the whole story on this one.
The Tegra K1's FLOPS count is much higher than the Xbox 360 or PS3, but its texture fill rate and memory bandwidth are both significantly smaller. The PS3 had eight render mapping units, whereas the K1 has just four. However, the K1's architecture is significantly more efficient than the older console chips, and DX11 introduced some efficiency-boosting capabilities that DX9 simply lacked.
There's also the fact that resolution targets make a substantial difference, especially in mobile, where devices are bandwidth constrained. One way to level the playing field compared to older consoles would be to natively render a game in 720p, then upscale it for 1080p or higher. Another is to use more efficient texture compression, to reduce bandwidth load, and improve overall performance.
There are two issues muddying Nvidia's claims to console-equivalent performance. First, there's the fact that we have no idea what clock speeds Tegra K1 is using to hit these performance targets. Is this the performance the chip can offer in a tablet? In a smartphone? In a device with active cooling, like the Nvidia Shield? The second is the company's blithe assurances that console titles can be "easily" ported. That's not necessarily true — the ARM microarchitecture is nothing like what either console used, the control systems are different, and any mobile port would have to develop touchscreen-based controls as well as physical button mapping if devices like the Shield were the target.
Personally, I'd split the difference on this one. I think Nvidia is overstating the degree to which titles can be brought to Tegra K1, partly for reasons that have nothing to do with the actual chip and everything to do with economics, ergonomics, and return on investment for the publisher. While I agree that one should take the console performance claims with a grain of salt, though, the fact is Kepler and K1 move us closer to that parity than we've been in the past. Even if Tegra K1 can't match older consoles altogether, it should still be able to come far closer than anything we've seen before.
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Chances are it's overhyped.
Why is this statement even worth considering?
Maybe he is right in a way though – the only way the K1 is not on par with those consoles is that it is above them.
Heck, even the alpha prototype ran Battlefield 3 a year ago.. and the actual developers who actually got the real prototypes( guy from CroTeam aka Serious Sam devs) are impressed with the performance.
Don't forget how much lower quality that version of BF3 was and how low the resolution was that it was being played at. I could theoretically do real time raytracing on my old BlackBerry, but that doesn't mean that a game consisting of a 40×40 pixel image of two squares is going to be anything worth playing…
Of course it wasn't comparable to what you see on the pc but it pretty much looked like a console version.
Joel Hruska
The Alpha prototype of *what?*
Of the K1 chip.
It has been referred to as the Tegra 5 back then
Joel Hruska
Ah, ok. Sure. I'm not necessarily surprised by that. But Shield is also the highest-end Tegra 4, with an active cooling solution. It would have had to be running in DX9, because T4 doesn't *support* DX11.
The differences here are going to come down to detail levels and resolution. I have no doubt that there were cases where the T4 could hang with either console. But as a *general* rule, there were going to be more cases where that wasn't true. You can't handwave memory bandwidth, for example.
Uh..I think you missunderstood me.
Staying up too late? : )
Like I said, that wasn't the Tegra 4 but THIS very chip(The K1, or Tegra 5) in the early stages of working product development.
This was in April last year:
Btw, here's the funniest part..even if K1 doesn't match last gen consoles..Snapdragon 805 will.
Its Adreno 420 is estimated to reach around 200GFLOPS BUT with a 25GB/s memory bandwidth at disposal.
And the PowerVR SGX 6 XT series and Mali t760 GPU's will both be over 300GFLOPS and over 20GB/s ..at half the TDP of Tegra K1
Marc Guillot
Supporting only DirectX 9 and Open GL ES, so, no thank you, I'll go for a full GPU like the Tegra K1.
Sure , the K1 is a more complete solution.(Adreno 420 is DX 11 capable btw)
I'm just referring to people who clinch onto the supposed bandwidth bottleneck of the K1. .they won't have anything left to say against Snapdragon 805, despite of its overall probably inferior GPU.
It will match the last gen consoles in everything, topping them massively in the CPU and RAM department
Joel Hruska
I'll believe it when I see it, from any console. The chances that it can *maintain* clock speeds high enough to provide an over-the-top advantage are small. Sustained clock is what will matter, not burst.
Abram Carroll
The PS3 was helped by the CELL. The 805 would need some of the graphics code to also run on the CPU. That's a tall order.
The 805 will beat the Tegra 4 and has an integrated modem. It's not dead. The K1 has almost 2X the compute though. It's not really comparable.
Benny X
then how about the IGP in the 14nm Cherry Trail' Atom CPU's coming at the end of the year? That will support DX 11, 'real' OGL and will be just as powerful as the Snapdragon 805 (or more) and will have the best TDP.
Battlefield 3 already runs on current Atoms found in devices such as the Dell Venue 8 Pro. Mind you, it only averages 15fps @ 800×600 and medium details and only in campaign and not in multiplayer, but take into account Cherry Trail Atoms will be easily 4 times more powerful.
The 'Broxton' Atoms due in 2015 will surpass the capabilities of last-gen consoles.
Exciting times we live in!!
Marc Guillot
Yes, but I'm against monopolies. I prefer to stick with ARM SOCs.
Benny X
it's funny you should say that. Guess who is going to be manufacturing ARM SOC's for its customers? Intel! lol
You might want to be specific to say "against that particular monopolist" since it has arrogant bad behaviour towards others and trying to squeeze the market for its advantages. Yet its Atom got nowhere in mobile. It is dead and people has been saying that for 2 years yet Intel keeps trying. It is a lost cause since they are behind on both cpu and gpu in mobile. Even better process node cannot save them since that is not a cheap solution. They have been proven to keep price high thus restricting the market. Arm is way open and way better in prices, hence their popularity. When AMD's arm server chips start to get lots of customers, then Intel will notice. Otherwise, they stay on their high horses …..pity.
Even 4x faster than the current graphics chip in Bay Trail is actually not even near the K1 GPU.
Keep in mind that K1 GPU is comparable to the HD 4400!
Right now, Intel graphics on Bay Trail are just far and away behind.. only at about 50% performance of the Adreno 330
Matt Menezes
Yeah, also Qualcomm is much better about meeting the expectations they set forth. I'd be much more inclined to go with the Snapdragon 805 than the K1 sight unseen.
Apparently, device makers agree with me, too…
Sure, it is Proven vs Risk choice from what you said. But some vendors might hedge their bets to do both in separate models just to be sure they can capture the target user either way. Products like SGS3,4 and soon to be 5 has two SoC variants just for that fact. Of course they choose the model for each market they think wants that product spec. Later can introduce both to provide choices within their product range.
Abram Carroll
The K1 slaughters both of those.
memory bandwidth is mostly going to effect resolution, but if you don't have the compute power to run those graphics what's the point.
It's worth considering because it's John Carmack. When it comes to tech, I'd place my money on him anyday. He has years and years of knowledge under him.
I share some doubts about the claims. Having said that I don't understand the author's comment about how doing so would be unprofitable for publishers. Given that there would be more of these devices produced and sold than the original systems, I don't see why publishers wouldn't do it.
To clarify, no there may not be more Nvidia chip based devices sold than the original devices, but 64 bit Arm chips, well everyone can see where that is going. Not to mention that this would be the first generation with these type of chips, in a year another generation would come out, but the games should still run on those as well. This process will, of course, keep going for at least a decade.
Joel Hruska
This is easily explained. Let's take a hugely popular game of the late 1990s — Final Fantasy VII.
If Square-Enix wanted to bring out a mobile version of FFVII, it would have to rethink the entire control system so that it worked on a touchscreen. It would have to program the game to run on a modern ARM processor with an entirely different CPU/GPU structure. It would have to reoptimize the code to make sure it could run efficiently across multiple generations of ARM chips and graphics cores.
Square-Enix could go to Sony and say: "How about we put an updated graphical version of FFVII on the PlayStation Now network? Then people can just stream it to their homes or Vita, no problem at all.
Each of those decisions has a cost and an opportunity associated with it. But the act of porting the game and rethinking its control systems to run on touchscreen hardware is nontrivial.
Yeah if you want to fully convert it, and some companies will want to do that. But some could just use the tablet as a console, using blueray controllers just like a PS3, hooked up to the tv. I see quite a market for that.
Oh there is a potential..so big that it's actually unprecedented.
It's only a matter of the pricing strategy – in other words, do you have the balls to go "freemium" or not.
Look at the highest budget native mobile games: the ones that go "premium" have a really minor revenue. The most successful such games earn up to a few million dollars from the base price and then collect profit via micro transactions cummulating over time.
It's a very thin profit margin overall, and publishers are ditching the model in favor of the freemium one.
The most striking example of the potential of freemium vs premium is the Real Racing 3.
The sub-5 million $ budget game has reached over 60 million downloads (leaving every other racing game in history in the dust!) and earned tens of millions so far, and is actually still upping the pace.
During the first few weeks it earned more than its two premium priced predecessors COMBINED, in their entire runtime!
Now consider that and tell me that people wouldn't download real classics and blockbusters on mobile platforms in tens, even hundreds of million copies if they come freemium?
It is an epic opportunity for developers actually.
Even the premium-based GTA franchise was increasingly successful so far on mobile.
Porting of the GTA San Andreas has already paid off big time.
But if they offered it as a freemium instead, I think the numbers would be incomparable in favor of the latter business model.
Matt Menezes
Yeah, some people seem to think the act of porting a game is as simple as throwing a few switches on a compiler.
Even porting more simple line of business apps that I make for a living have a decent bit of complexity involved…
Joel Hruska
This is easily explained. Let's take a hugely popular game of the late 1990s — Final Fantasy VII.
If Square-Enix wanted to bring out a mobile version of FFVII, it would have to rethink the entire control system so that it worked on a touchscreen. It would have to program the game to run on a modern ARM processor with an entirely different CPU/GPU structure. It would have to reoptimize the code to make sure it could run efficiently across multiple generations of ARM chips and graphics cores.
Square-Enix could go to Sony and say: "How about we put an updated graphical version of FFVII on the PlayStation Now network? Then people can just stream it to their homes or Vita, no problem at all.
Each of those decisions has a cost and an opportunity associated with it. But the act of porting the game and rethinking its control systems to run on touchscreen hardware is nontrivial.
I share some doubts about the claims. Having said that I don't understand the author's comment about how doing so would be unprofitable for publishers. Given that there would be more of these devices produced and sold than the original systems, I don't see why publishers wouldn't do it.
To clarify, no there may not be more Nvidia chip based devices sold than the original devices, but 64 bit Arm chips, well everyone can see where that is going. Not to mention that this would be the first generation with these type of chips, in a year another generation would come out, but the games should still run on those as well. This process will, of course, keep going for at least a decade.
Who give shit, even if its 2x faster then ps3 or x360. Noone making
decent games for droid/ios noone actualy need such powerfull chip on his
smartphone/pad its just wont be used fully.
Sandy Wich
I made the mistake of joining the hype train for phone/tablets. Payed over 500 dollars for my Transformers tablet when it first came out, and it is still, to this day, a youtube/twitch device.
I will NEVER believe that mobile bullshit again. It doesn't have the controls, it doesn't have the hardcore market, it's only plausible for casual, "on the train", games and nobody is going to EVER take that device seriously no matter how powerful they make it because it's uncomfortable as shit for any extended use.
I got a 4k computer setup for a reason. Next tablet I get? Front fucking speakers instead of having to give it a reach around every time I want to hear something I'm watching. Fuck. "In before, GET PLUG IN SPE- then it's pointless as a standalone mobile device, and I ain't wearing buds in bed. A device this limited shouldn't have these problems to deal with."
Most games for mobiles that are high-performance are lazy ports of games designed for different platforms/controls.
This is slowly fading, thankfully. A good example is the decline of fps shooters which will NEVER make sense on mobile.
That being said, adventure games, rpg games and storyline focused games with great graphics continue to make a lot of sense.
If you got burned by the initial hype then don't overlearn the lesson now.
Sandy Wich
I really don't know why devs for mobile aren't taking advantage of it's greatest strengths?
I agree that fps will never make sense, "why does it exist period on mobile?"
It's a real shame all that horsepower is so limited, the games that have a chance to really make a difference are point and click games, turn based strategy role playing games but even for the, "better", ones out there, they are still such low quality it's pointless to give them a go, and in the end? They still go against the grain that is, "quick and on the go", gaming.
I just feel that people would be better served to buy a phone/tablet and use them for things that they are truly intended for. Skype calls, messaging, video calls, hotspot youtube at starbucks, low quality cameras, streaming,and music storage. There are lots of more uses for them of course but my point is, it's not gaming, and as much as Nvidia wants to get in the market, it most likely will never be for gaming.
It's a little less convenient but I honestly believe if people want to game on the go, pick up an amazing 3ds/vita.
I will add though that I hope someday both, "real handheld gaming", and phone use can be combined effectively. Maybe that's why Nvidia wants to make this technology, because, "someday", it may actually be worth using.
Benny X
FPS games can work on mobile, if it has HDMI out and is gamepad-compatible. But then it's not mobile anymore, lol.
But I agree, trying to play an FPS on a small screen with on-screen controls is pure madness.
My ten year old nephew is a master in games such as Team Fortress, CoD, Counter Strike, Left for Dead on console, pc and on laptop .. but I swear he will ditch any of them to play Blitz Brigade, Shadowgun Deadzone, Modern Combat, NOVA 3 and Dead Trigger 2 on my Note 3.
You guys just have a massive lack of perspective, and massive amounts of prejudice and bias against mobile games.
Benny X
Sorry, but I'm at the age where I don't feel like squinting to see what's happening on the screen, and touchscreen controls are no substitute for a real gamepad.
But your nephew is 10.. if I were his age I'd be happy enough just to play on a Note 3. He probably brags to his buddies about it, lol
Well the point is you're a pc gamer.
But in the perspective of the entire mobile gaming market your gripes sound ridiculous.
It would hold some weight if shooter games on mobile targeted pc gamers..and that is obviously not the case, haha.
They are simply mobile shooters made for mobile market..for potential hundreds of millions players who aren't bothered by "full" experience.
Vast majority of those potential players never has, nor ever will play a shooter on the desktop or console
Btw, I think it's worth mentioning that I have recently played a modern pc game on mobile that is actually better on mobile than on pc – The Anomaly 2.
The experience is in no way watered down, even the graphics are exactly the same.
Not bad for a 4$ game!
Benny X
hey, I used to be a console gamer up until 2012. I rarely play games on my PC.. I took a stab at Battlefield 4's single player campaign and didn't bother to finish it. I'm mostly just waiting to see how Alien: Isolation turns out later this year. Basically I'm not really a gamer at all, anymore…
Ahti Tamm
Carmack is just pointing out that pure GFLOPS is only part of the graphics equasion – you also need pixel and texel (texture) fillrates to draw the frames and textures, which are pretty abhorrent on mobile devices. K1 has 4 ROPs for pixel fillrate and 8 TMUs for texture fillrate, at an unannounced MHz.
X360 had 8 ROPs and 16 TMUs @ 500MHz
PS3 had 8 ROPs and 24 TMUs @ 550MHz
So to really beat X360/PS3 graphics K1 would have to work at no less than 1GHz, preferably around 1,1GHz. Which is simply not going to happen for a mobile GPU.
Jane Archer
Atrocious article. And Carmack, as Bethesda found out to their great financial cost, hasn't relevant in any aspect of gaming for many, many years. Carmack never really had an interest in GPU hardware, being a coder who likes to find 'solutions' for himself in 'clever' code. Carmack lost touch with current GPU hardware long before programmable shaders replaced the fixed pipelines that were used in Carmack's Quake 3 and Doom 3 engines.
The Tegra K1 is most certainly as powerful as the last-gen consoles, and in several ways significantly more powerful. This should come as ZERO surprise, given how many years later the K1 architecture is, compared to the roughly Nvidia 7800 based PS3, and the roughly ATI 1900 based 360. Since the ATI 1900, AMD/ATI has given us the 2900, 3850, 4870, 5870, 6970, 7970, and Nvidia has had a similar amount of generational improvements.
However, if the Tegra K1 is attached to a mobile battery, it will NOT be able to run even 30% as fast as theoretical performance. Take the Tegra 3 in Nvidia's shield, compared to the Tegra 3 in ordinary mobile devices. Shield, with its insanely large battery, is twice as fast. Mains powered Tegra K1, say in a small Android gaming console, will easily run better games than the Xbox 360, and this fact makes Carmack a liar and a fool.
Sadly, Carmack has reinvented himself as a technology bore for hire., with his ill-informed idiotic quotes now defacing many a technical article. This is a pathetic fall for the genius behind the original Doom, and the father of gaming built using purpose designed engines and tool-sets.
David Hermann
Yes, the 8 GT/s texture bandwidth of the Xbox 360 is much, much higher than the 7.6 GT/s texture bandwidth of the K1. Or not. I seriously doubt this would even show up as a real world difference. Look at the difference between the Xbox and PS3 numbers, and we know games on those systems look about the same.
Well, most people agree that the Xbox looks "slightly" better than the PS3 on the same games, so maybe the numbers where the Xbox has an edge over the PS3 are more important. And for those numbers, the K1 is even better.
I'm sure the K1 can render games as well as the 360, especially considering most games are rendered in 720p 30Hz on the 360. Maybe Carmack was thinking about the Xbox One and PS4 — the K1 won't hold a candle to those.
Benny X
most games on the 360 were rendered at sub-high def rez then upscaled, so with that in mind, it's even less of a reach for the K1 to match the 360.
Joel Hruska
Being able to match the Xbox 360 in some raw FLOPS calculations and being able to match the Xbox 360 in reality are two completely different things.
The Xbox 360's GPU had the ability to write directly to the CPU's L2 cache. Tegra K1 can't do that. The Xbox 360's interconnect was high bandwidth, with a 10MB EDRAM core on die. No analogous part exists in Tegra K1.
Finally: The Xbox 360 could run at full clock speed with no need to down-clock. K1 will always be running in a thermally constrained environment. The figures given for the two chips are burst in one instance, sustained in the other.
Abram Carroll
BF3 works on Tegra K1
Joel Hruska
Never said it didn't.
Abhishek Kumar
You could also look at it the other way: most XBox360/PS3 titles have already been ported to Windows. If these chips are used in Windows-based tablets, you could just run these Windows-ports. And given the specs, they should be able to get reasonably close to the quality and performance of the console-versions. After all, the Windows-version would mainly have higher CPU-overhead, and the CPU performance of the K1 seems to totally eclipse that of the older consoles, so they should be able to compensate easily.
I'm suspicious of anything an old hack, no longer relevant in the gaming industry, has to say.
I'm suspicious of anything an old hack, no longer relevant in the gaming industry, has to say.
I suppose You could use a tablet with k1 or new nvidia shiled k1 like a console, plugging it to TV and use external controller like keyboard or joypad. Running Unreal Engine 4 on k1 is awesome.
Nvidia over-promising on Mobile graphics? say it ain't so
John "F" Carmack is the man. When he says something related to tech, you at least take it into consideration. Nvidia did this with Tegra 4 as well, essentially the way Nvidia represents the stats is misleading. Everyone needs to read this:
This is what the Tegra K1 was running on:


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March 9, 2008
The Kings is the fourth in the 70-Seas extended series, I wrote and drew it over a twenty four hour period starting March 9th 2008, making a page an hour.
When I started I already had the main characters Bludgeon and Boomerang worked out, I just needed to figure out something for them to do.
The Kings
Boomerang and Bludgeon King stand in a doorway looking imposing.
Boomerang: Hello, I believe you know who we are.


text:
Several important new benefits for dependent care will be available for W&L staff and faculty during 2012.
The new benefits especially improve the availability of both infant care and backup child care for W&L employees. They are based, in part, on recommendations made by Bright Horizons Family Solutions, which conducted a study last April of both child and elder-care needs at W&L.
The added benefits:
Yellow Brick Road
Through the University's support, Yellow Brick Road will add a second infant/toddler room, which brings its capacity to eight infants or toddlers. In addition, Yellow Brick Road will give priority to W&L employees.
Woods Creek Montessori
Beginning in August 2012, Woods Creek Montessori will use underwriting from the University to add 10 additional days to its calendar - five in August and five during the academic year. This responds to one major concern , about the availability of care while the University is in session. There also will be scholarships available for children of W&L employees.
A national clearinghouse for reliable caregivers, Care.com will offer Washington and Lee employees access to child care, backup child care and elder care, as well as contacts for transportation, housesitting, housekeeping and even pet care. With Care.com, W&L employees will also have access to Senior Care Planning services, which provide guidance through the planning and decision-making process associated with caring for aging parents and loved ones anywhere in the country. W&L will offer a 60 percent subsidy, up to $200 per employee, for backup care arranged through Care.com.