LAS VEGAS — Chipmaker Nvidia just introduced its most powerful mobile processor ever, the Tegra X1 — which is capable of doing teraflops, or trillions of calculations every second. But it isn't for necessarily phones, tablets or even gaming, at least for now.

No, the target market appears to be cars.

Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang took the stage at CES 2015 Sunday night to unveil the tiny, remarkably powerful CPU with 256 processor cores, a mobile chip that can pump out 4K video at 60 Hz. Huang called it "the world's first mobile super chip."

Based on Nvidia's Maxwell GPU architecture, the chip is said to outperform similar mobile CPUs, including Apple's recently released A8x.

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NVidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang holds up the tiny, yet powerful, Tegra X1 Image: Mashable, Lance Ulanoff

To demonstrate the chip's raw power, Huang ran a live demo of the Unreal 4 gaming engine running the game Elemental IV. It looked amazing. However, as Huang explained that the Tegra X1 is the world's first teraflop-capable processor, he also noted that the power will be best utilized in cars.

"We believe future cars will be the most advanced computers in the world," said Huang.

NVIDIA just unveiled the Tegra X1, the world's first teraflops mobile processor. (Unreal4 running Elemental). #CES2015 #MashCES A video posted by Lance Ulanoff (@lanceulanoff) on Jan 1, 2015 at 8:14pm PST

They will, he explained, feature multiple high-resolution displays that the Tegra X1 can help run. To that end, Nvidia also introduced a new car computing platform called The Drive CX, with a central computer based on the Tegra X1. It will be compatible with QNX, Linux and Android-based car systems.

To design new interfaces for Drive CX, car developers will have access to Nvidia’s Drive Studio development environment. Huang demonstrated Drive CX's power by showing a live, interactive 3D dashboard and navigation system.

Nvidia demonstrates how future cars might feature multiple HD displays.

In the long run, the chipmaker is planning for self-driving cars. Huang noted that while current cars are festooned with sensor technology, many of those sensors are being replaced by cameras. But in order for auto-pilot cars to work, they have to become "self-aware," said Huang.

Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang holds the new Dive CX. Image: Mashable, Lance Ulanoff

Once again, NVidia is employing its newest and most powerful mobile CPU to help cars develop situational awareness. A pair of Tegra X1s will power NVidia’s new Drive PX. This can, according to Huang, use its combined 2.3 teraflops of computing horsepower to connect to up to 12 HD cameras and process 1.3 billion pixels per second.

How a Nvidia Drive PX-equipped car sees its environment. Image: Mashable, Lance Ulanoff

The company is combining this image processing with something it calls "deep neural net computer vision," a sort of learning artificial intelligence with a vision-based system that could give future cars the situational awareness Huang is talking about.

Nvidia trained the Tegra X1-based neural network to recognize certain objects like crosswalk signs, speed cameras and pedestrians to make real-time decisions. In one Drive PX simulation, a car learned an unknown parking garage and figured out how to find a parking space and park on its own. Huang envisions future cars driving themselves into parking garages, parking and then returning to drivers on their own.

Audi engineers also took the stage to talk about developments in their quest to put autonomous cars on the road, and commended Nvidia on creating ever more powerful mobile processors. Yet while it's currently using the K1 chip, which Nvidia unveiled last year, Audi made no announcements about using the Tegra X1.