The first generation Tegra graphics chip really only hit the big time in the Zune HD and while that was to much critical acclaim it didn’t make much of an impact in the marketplace. However, NVIDIA appears to be looking to do for the Tegra what they did with the ION netbook graphics chip and put it in as many different devices as possible so as to become the industry standard for high-end smartphone/tablet graphics chips. This is especially important as both Broadcom and AMD are preparing their own new ventures in the burgeoning mobile graphics market while Intel is looking to leverage their chip supremacy to make their integrated mobile graphics more then just a bad joke.
At the earnings call, Jen-Hsun Huang, NVIDIA CEO and co-founder, has this to say about the Tegra 2:
On the second generation, we were able to expand to focus a lot of our energy around Android. And although it made sense for the first-generation androids to use available phone processors, the follow-on generations of Android are really going to go after performance. And iPhones are out there, the iPhone 4G is coming, the iPad is obviously a revolutionary product. The bar is pretty high for all of the mobile players, and so they need a processor that can keep up with the A4. If not, be much better than what the A4 can do because they have to take on the leader in the space. And so I think the second-generation Tegra has been doing incredibly well because Android is doing incredibly well. So we’re going to come to market with the second-generation Tegra with the third-generation Android. And so that’s our focus now, which is the — and I think it comes together at the end of the year, and we’ve talked about smartphones, we’ve talked about tablets. We have a very large number of designs in pipe and flight, and so we’re looking forward to starting in third quarter and fourth quarter, many design wins to show up in production.
Now I admit that was a bit roundabout from Mr. Huang, but expect to see lots of next-generation Android (Froyo or later?) tablets and smartphones rocking Tegra 2 chips by the end of the year. On top of that, I agree that if tablets do begin to take off, driven by the iPad as mentioned by Huang (Is it some kind of law that you can’t say “iPad” without also saying “revolutionary”? Just asking if I missed the memo.), then the Tegra 2 is a natural choice to soup up the graphics capabilities of slower, low power chips.
NVIDIA is one of the companies which could really benefit indirectly from a wave of successful tablet/MID devices…so if companies would just stop cancelling the damn things, it would be a good thing.
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Labels: Android , Apple , Other mobile phone brands
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