nVidia Preview 'Tegra' MID Platform

wild_berry writes "nVidia have previewed their Mobile Internet Device platform which will be officially unveiled at Computex in the next few days. The platform features CPU's named Tegra paired with nVidia chipset and graphics technology. Tegra is a system-on-a-chip featuring an ARM 11 core and nVidia's graphics technologies permitting 1080p HiDef television decode and OpenGL ES 2.0 3D graphics. Engadget's page has more details, such as the low expected price ($199-249), huge battery life (up to 130 hours audio/30 hours HD video) and enough graphics power to render Quake3 anti-aliased at 40FPS."

Comments

Imagine a Beowulf-Cluster...

[Kokuyo]

But seriously, this sounds interesting. If they actually manage to pull it off, this might actually make TV on the go a real possibility (compared to strain your neck trying to watch Sex and the City on your phone...).

Now the only question is, how heavy is the battery to allow for such a long lasting device. You can't tell me it actually is this efficient, if it boasts that kind of computational power.

Worth waiting for...

[LinuxGeek]

I almost bought an Asus EEE pc this weekend, this is worth waiting to see how it is implemented in consumer devices. Give me a small laptop type that can run linux and I'll buy one or two. Heck, 30 or 40 hours would be enough battery time, don't need 100.

Re:Sounds like the same advertising from the EEE..

[Svartalf]

Patience...

Pandora comes...and it is looking like it's going to largely deliver on the "promises" it makes.

Re:Yer! ARM laptop

[zeromorph]

Yes, looks like a new round in the CISC (now represented by Intel Atom) vs. RISC (now represented by Tegra) flame war. Ars Teechnica had an interesting article about the new relevance of the differences of the two architectures two weeks ago.

Re:Vista

[neokushan]

Vista doesn't have an ARM version, you'll have to stick with Windows mobile for now.
However, TFA states (that's right, I actually read it) that nVidia is open to running other platforms, not just windows CE, so if enough interest is generated, they MIGHT actually have Linux running on it.
It's a chipset, though, not a device or anything so ultimately it would be up to the mobile manufacturers to decide what happens, providing nVidia has support for it.

Re:Quake3 anti-aliased at 40FPS

[eebra82]

Sounds like an interesting toy, but aren't we twisting the measurements a bit here? Quake 3 came out in 1999. Any modern graphic chip has the graphics power to render Q4 at much faster than 40 FPS. You are missing the point. It's not as much about how fast it can run Quake 3, but rather that it is capable of doing so reasonably well. You cannot compare it to modern graphics engines simply because this is a processor that promises to deliver reasonable performance at incredibly low voltages.

As for the resolution, I agree that it's rather strange that they left out the details on this, but we can assume that it's going to be something like 640x400, which is still very impressive.

Re:Sounds like the same advertising from the EEE..

[AnyoneEB]

Except Pandora promises at best a third the battery life. Then again, Pandora is due out very soon, and reading about both it sounds like Pandora is the type of machine nVidia would expect Tegra to be used in.