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LG opts for Nvidia's Tegra in its Optimus smartphones
GPU DESIGNER Nvidia has finally managed to get its Tegra chip into a mobile phone worthy of mention, with LG Electronics confirming that it will use the chip.
The Green Goblin had previously seen its Tegra chip ship in Microsoft's ill-fated Kin handset, but is likely to see far greater success with LG's Optimus smartphones, which frankly won't be difficult compared to the Vole's Kin debacle.
The Android powered LG smartphone is likely to tip up before the end of 2010 and vie with Samsung's Galaxy S and HTC's Desire at the top end of the smartphone market.
With the smartphone market dominated by chips manufactured by Samsung, Texas Instruments and Qualcomm, both Intel and Nvidia are trying to muscle in on this lucrative market by pitching up with multi-core chips.
Tegra is a dual core 1GHz ARM A9 based chip. Its best qualities are in its graphics performance, which as you'd expect is pretty nifty from a firm that is known for GPU design. The problem is, Qualcomm has already pencilled in a dual core version of its Snapdragon chip for later this year and given the number of design wins it has, the company is unlikely to have much trouble flogging units.
Nvidia must have been worried whether any device using Tegra would ever tip up. Though few would question that Tegra is powerful enough, given the reluctance of manufacturers to incorporate it one must wonder what the costs are to put Tegra in a mobile device.
After seeing LG put some faith in its chip, Nvidia must be hoping that other firms will decide to plump for its version of the ARM A9 chip in their upcoming smartphones and tablets. µ
Tags: Nvidia
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At least by me, but took so long to materialise that I settled for a N1 in the mean time. Which btw I'm very happy with.
I remember the demos of what the Tegra chip could do. Now we get to see how it performs in an actual phone.
Either way I'm thankful for the added competition
Tegra's idles at less than 2 milliwatts. This is perfect for phones. Video decoding is around 250 mW. These numbers are on par or better than the iPhone's or TI's OMAP processor (used in Droid). Tegra is still quite new though, the OEMs are still getting to know the system. LG is the first to complete the design process, good for them.
Tegra is powerfull enough to run quake, that's a lot to such small device. The problem is that this much power drains the battery really fast, and Tegra doesn't have a nice consumption at idle speeds. Nobody want to get back to old times, were you need to carry a battery or two in your pocket because it won't last a day.
Microsoft's Kin and Zune both have Tegra1 inside, tegra1 is an older, single core, ARM11 chip, released in 2008.
From the sound of this article it seems that LG will be using Tegra2 - a dual core ARM A9 chip. There is a big difference between the two and it had to be pointed out by the author to avoid confusion.
Wow, I would never have guessed that Tegra was in the Kin. I frankly think it was overkill for Kin. I'm glad LG is putting a little faith in the Tegra. Nvidia really needs to find a new market to round out itself and it was planny for this. I would not mind seeing Intel drop into the market to heat things up where ARMs prosper. One thing (luckly) in Intel's favor is that they should have no problem running android on their processors. Unlike the barrier of other CPUs in the Wintel desktop market.
Wow, I would never have guessed that Tegra was in the Kin. I frankly think it was overkill for Kin. I'm glad LG is putting a little faith in the Tegra. Nvidia really needs to find a new market to round out itself and it was planny for this. I would not mind seeing Intel drop into the market to heat things up where ARMs prosper. One thing (luckly) in Intel's favor is that they should have no problem running android on their processors. Unlike the barrier of other CPUs in the Wintel desktop market.