[Computex08] nVidia competes with Atom

nVidia announced a new line of smartphones and MID's(mobile internet devices), one day before the official start of the Computex convention. The new chips will be called nVidia Tegra and the first products should be available at the end of 2008. The Tegra chips are based on an ARM CPU core, together with a GeForce derivant, a HD videoprocessor and complete chipset functionality. nVidia speaks of a system-on-a-chip: Tegra would contain all required functionality for a next-gen Smartphone or MID.

The expectations are high: the developers claim a Tegra board will be 10x smaller than a similar Atom platform. Also claimed is a 10x lower power consumption and up to 10x better performance compared to the Atom. nVidia powered these claims with some impressive presentations.

The Tegra chip next to an American dollarcent.

The Tegra sure is small, with its 144m² (package included) the chip is even smaller than an American dollarcent. The maximum power consumption is below one Watt, the real consumption being even lower in most cases. The specifications for that consumption however are impressive: depending on the model, the CPU is clocked at 600, 700 or even 800 MHz. The Tegra chips support the decoding and playback of 720p HD-videos in H.264, VC-9 or MPEG2 format. The topmodel can even handle 1080p. The integrated GPU is OpenGL ES 2.0 and Direct3D mobile compatible, thus offering plenty of possibilities for 3D interfaces or mobile gaming. The imageprocessor is to support camera lenses of up to 12 Megapixels.

Tegra's chip lay-out

nVidia showed the power of its new chips in some impressive demonstrations. A prototype Tegra MID-device, sized like a mobile phone, seemed perfectly suited to play 1080p movies. Thanks to an HDMI 1.3 connection the device can be directly attached to a Full HD television. There was also a demonstration of a special Quake 3 version, which ran at 35 fps on the device. Most impressive however were the power consumption demo's. According to nVidia's powermeters, a Tegra based device could playback 1080p films with a consumption of only 1.3 Watt (display excluded). A similar Atom system needed about 10 to 11 Watt for the same task. nVidia says that the batterylife will not be expressed in hours, but in days. With a battery like modern Atom-based laptops it would be possible to watch up to 25 hours of HD-content, without having to recharge.

The Tegra chips will come in two types. The Tegra 650 (800 MHz) and 600 (700 MHz) will be suited for MID's and small laptops. The Tegra APX 2500 is meant for usage in smartphones. Intel doesn't really have to worry yet, since nVidia's new chips are based on the ARM architecture they are incompatible with Windows XP or Vista. The chips do run Windows Mobile 6.0. Though the lack of 'normal' software support is a big letdown, nVidia doesn't seem to worry about it. According to the company there have been big software developments for ARM chips and with the latest browsers any possible website should work as well. Though a software emulation layer leaves the door open to a potential X86 system, the chance they will ever receive a license for that is extremely small.

Like AMD and Intel before, nVidia proves that the future lies in all-in-one chips with the Tegra. How the battle between X86 and ARM will advance in the future is hard to anticipate.

Tags: hd atom computex geforce hdmi tegra vista

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