It's the next biggest thing in CPUs, and Nvidia thinks it will kick Intel's behind - but what exactly is Tegra? Check out our sneek peek.
Nvidia have released the Tegra, a system-on-a-chip that is expected to rival the likes of Intel’s Atom for running mobile devices, at Computex in Taipei.
We had a sneak preview of the Tegra at the Nvidia Editor’s day a week ago, where we saw a working demo of the Tegra in action – it had been fitted inside the shell of a 12 inch laptop, and was showing a 720p video on-screen. The Tegra can be used to run a display either inside a laptop system, or an external LCD, based on the demo we saw. The whole operation consumed less than 3 Watts -- which Nvidia claim is around 1/10th the power used by the new Atom-based Eee PC. Mark Rayville of Nvidia, speaking about the Eee PC, commented that “they’ve sold 700,000 of those. Can you imagine if it was useful?”
‘Useful’ is the minimum expected of the Tegra. Nvidia think the only way to get both productivity and entertainment is to design from the ground up – so the Tegra was built with portable devices in mind. It’s the same approach Intel took for the Atom, but the difference is in the approach. Where Intel have opted for a CPU that requires a motherboard the size of a credit card containing graphics processor and other components, Tegra chips are just 144mm2 in total, with an inbuilt CPU, GeForce GPU and controllers for all other core operations.
Both models of Tegra are able to code and decode 720p and provide up to 30 hours of playback, but the Tegra 650 is also capable of HDMI playback and can play 10 hours of 1080p on a single battery charge. Importantly, they also support a touchscreen interface and can run games such as Quake 3 with anti-aliasing on at playable framerates or play up to 130 hours of audio.
The Tegra 600 and 650 are expected to find a home in smartphones, media players and navigation devices and mobile internet devices (MIDs), although their potential obviously extends much further. Nvidia recently took Tegra on a tour round OEM manufacturers, and the demonstrations were standing room only: “everyone wants one”. Nvidia is planning Tegra II and Tegra II over the next couple of years to continue meeting expectations of power and energy efficiency.
We’ll see Tegra 600 and 650-based devices start to emerge by the end of the year, most likely as navigation devices first. By early 2009, we’re likely to see Nvidia’s first Eee-killer. Don’t’expect XP or Vista on it, though, Nvidia have been working with Microsoft to get the next generation of Windows mobile operating systems on board. Pricewise, Nvidia thinks it can enable systems at $199 – $249, at lower end.