On Monday, Nvidia upped the ante on Intel. The company introduced the Tegra family of processors, a single-computer chip that promises rich high definition and Internet exploration consumers have grown accustomed to on PCs — but on small mobile devices.
The Nvidia Tegra is a computer on a chip, smaller than a U.S. dime. Nvidia designed the chip from the ground up to enable the “visual PC experience” on a new generation of mobile-computing devices while consuming the smallest amount of power.
“Creating Tegra was a massive challenge. Our vision was to create a platform that will enable the second personal-computer revolution — which will be mobile-centric — with devices that last days on a single charge and yet have the Web, high-definition media, and computing experiences we’ve come to expect from our PC,” said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of Nvidia.
A Multimedia Approach
The Nvidia Tegra 650 processor is the second product in the Tegra line. The first was the Nvidia Tegra APX 2500 processor, which will find its place in the next generation of Windows Mobile smartphones. The company said its Tegra products will reach consumers toward the end of the year.
Nvidia described the Tegra as a heterogeneous processor architecture with multiple processors, each architected for a specific class of tasks — an 800-MHz ARM CPU, a HD video processor, an imaging processor, an audio processor, and an ultra-low-power GeForce graphics unit. With this architecture, the company claims Nvidia Tegra processors achieve up to 10 times the power efficiency of existing products in battery-operated computer systems running visual computing applications.
“What will be interesting is to see over time how well vendors can support different types of multimedia functions on mobile Internet devices,” said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT Research. “If you take a look at some of the initial…