Nvidia Corp., a 5,000-employee company known for its graphics processing units, is gearing up for battle against giant chipmaker Intel. During the first day of the Nvision 2008 conference Monday, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsuan Huang said his Santa Clara, Calif.-based company plans to focus on the smartphone market.
He added that he expects smartphones to become the next personal computer and noted that today’s smartphones are focused on the phone first and computing second. He said it should be the opposite.
On one side of the ring is Nvidia’s Tegra, a graphics system on a chip. In the other corner is Intel’s Atom, the smallest mobile-device processor.
Bill Henry, general manager of Nvidia’s mobile Internet devices division, said Tegra, which has one-tenth the power consumption of the Atom, is at the heart of an experience that gives users the better battery life of a cell phone, the graphical environment of a computer, and Internet browsing capabilities.
Nvidia has been working with Taiwan-based Via Technologies, maker of the Nano central-processing unit, on other products that are notebook-focused.
Asked if Nvidia plans to partner with Via in the smartphone market, Henry said, “We have a solution all our own and don’t need other components.” From a smartphone perspective, he said, the Tegra has everything it needs.
Henry added that he sees a lot of opportunity in mobile Internet devices, calling Tegra a big move forward in computing.
“One of the demos we did (while in Taipei, Taiwan), is compare our Tegra that uses one watt versus the Atom-based Netbook that was using over 13 watts,” Henry said from the Nvision 2008 floor. “When you are trying to make something mobile, you have to make things small. Everything is integrated into one chip.”
With Intel’s chip there are different components doing different jobs, according…