If you’ve paid attention to quarterly earnings reports from the major computer OEMs, you’ve likely noticed that the hard drive shortage this fall had an impact, but not a disastrous one. Companies like Intel reported that manufacturer inventories were substantially affected as company’s held off on restocking to see what prices would do, but net sales only fell modestly.

The GPU market, on the other hand, seems to have taken a hit. Nvidia has stated that its Q4 results were hurt by the hard drive shortage, something AMD also mentioned in its Q4 results. We didn’t break it out initially — AMD’s overall GPU results were fairly decent — but in the wake of NV’s statements it’s worth revisiting.

The company has cut its profit forecast by ~12 percent, from $1.06B in sales for the quarter down to $950 million. The stated reasons are the aforementioned HDD shortage as well as “the Tegra 2 mobile business declined more rapidly than expected, ahead of devices based on the Tegra 3 processor ramping into production in the first quarter of calendar-year 2012.”

Both impacts are a bit surprising given NV’s previous guidance. During the company’s last conference call, CEO Jen-Hsun Huang indicated that he thought the HDD shortage situation would be a non-issue, while talking up momentum for Tegra 3 and Tegra 2. One point the CEO hammered several times throughout the call is that Tegra 3 had more design wins going into this quarter than Tegra 2 ever had. If that’s true, Tegra-related revenue will start to pick up again once more phones and tablets start shipping with the chip.

What Do Hard Drives And GPUs Have In Common?

The fact that an HDD shortage would impact NV’s GPU sales is testament to just how much of the industry is driven by integrated graphics. Ten years ago, when only rock-bottom systems shipped with integrated graphics, a discrete GPU was still standard in the majority of configurations. Today, GPUs are a value-added component. As a result, manufacturers hurt by rising HDD prices, compensated by shipping systems with integrated graphics.

The long-term discrete GPU attach rate has been stable for years, but the trend is one reason why NV has pumped so much money into driving products like Tesla and Tegra. The slide below shows the company’s changing revenue — note that “Q3 2012″ refers to Nvidia’s fiscal year. The calendar period referred to as the fourth quarter of 2011 is actually Nvidia’s Q4 2012.

The good news is that both of the factors that’ve hit NV’s revenue should ease off in the first quarter. We expect to see more Tegra 3 design wins announced at Mobile World Congress in late February, while the hard drive shortage will gradually improve throughout the year. We should also hear more about Kepler, and possibly NV’s “Tegra 3+” solution (think Tegra 3 on 28nm) in the weeks ahead.

Source:http://hothardware.com/News/Nvidia-warns-on-Q4-Profits-Thanks-To-HDD-Shortage/

We weren’t sure what to expect from NVIDIA’s press event at CES, but the big news turned out to be that ASUS is shipping the world’s first Ice Cream Sandwich tablet–starting today–an ASUS Transformer Prime, which boasts the NVIDIA Tegra 3 chip.

NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang took the stage and hosted an impressive demonstration of the new Transformer Prime, including gorgeous movie playback from Fandango, real-time photo editing with Snapseed, multiplayer FPS gameplay over a LAN, and remote PC access through Splashtop THD. (The latter included a smokin’ hot demo of Skyrim being played via Steam via Splashtop THD.)

Then, he announced that the Tegra 3-based ASUS Transformer Prime with Ice Cream Sandwich starts shipping today.

Although there’s no official name for some reason and no ship date for it, Huang and ASUS CEO Jerry Shen showed off a 7-inch tablet, which sports a lot of the same specs as the Transformer Prime–including a Tegra 3 chip, great camera and sound, Ice Cream Sandwich, and so on–and will retail for $249.

NVIDIA also demoed some of its other technologies, including PRISM, which dynamically adjusts backlight levels and color to achieve a great picture while consuming less power, and DirectTouch, which significantly boosts the sample rate for touch input by leveraging the fifth companion core in Tegra 3. With DirectTouch, sample rates went from about 80 samples a second with 10 finger input to over 200 samples a second.

Huang shared the stage with a Microsoft Executive who demoed and discussed Windows 8. Some of the premier features of Windows 8 (which will apparently launch in 200 markets) will be connected standby, which keeps the device connected and up to date even when in standby mode; a picture password that requires a series of swipes and gestures on specific parts of a photo to unlock the device; and the Windows app store. Microsoft will only claim a 20% fee, leaving 80% to the app devs, and enterprises will be able to easily customize app deployments on Windows 8 devices.

Finally, Huang briefly mentioned the car industry and its growing integration of mobile technology, teasing an announcement coming in the near future regarding NVIDIA technology and car maker Audi and noting that the Tesla Model S and a Lamborghini model already have Tegra chips inside.

If you were expecting a desktop GPU announcement, too bad–the Tegra 3 was the star of the show so far. We do have meetings with NVIDIA at which we hope to hear more about their GPU plans, for both desktop and mobile applications.

Source:http://hothardware.com/News/NVIDIA-CES-Showcase-Tegra-GeForce-3D-Vision-and-More/

NVIDIA has open sourced its CUDA compiler for the benefit of “academic researchers and software-tool vendors.” To enable them “to more easily add GPU support for more programming languages and support CUDA applications on alternative processor architectures”. The NVIDIA compiler is based on the popular LLVM

The NVIDIA CUDA is a GPGPU(General-Purpose GPU) solution that enables software to take advantage of a computer’s graphics hardware for non-graphics related tasks. The kind of highly parallelized computation that graphics hardware excels at can also be beneficial in processing other kinds of data. Video encoding and decoding, mathematical / scientific calculations, and other tasks that can benefit from massive parellization could be run on the GPU to greately accelerate throughput.
Currently CUDA is restricted to NVIDIA hardware only, however with the this opening of the CUDA platform it could be used for other architectures, such as those by Intal and AMD. An alternative open standard OpenCL, by the creators of OpenGL is also available and can be used across platforms.

The NVIDIA compile source code is not available openly — at least not right now — but only for “qualified academic researchers and software tools developers,” who need to register at NVIDIA’s website in order to obtain access to the source code.

Source:http://devworks.thinkdigit.com/Internet/NVIDIA-Open-Sources-its-CUDA-Compiler_8228.html

CyberpowerPC announced a laptop bundle that enables users to stream content to a large-screen TV via WiFi in full 1080p. It follows that users can browse the Internet with the same connection, using the TV as a monitor.

The bundle is comprised of a Netgear Push2TV 2.0 adapter and Intel’s WiDi technology and will ship with CyberpowerPC’s Xplorer X6-9100 ($825) and 9200 ($885) notebooks for a limited time.

There’s no need to crowd around a laptop screen to view and share content from your hard disk, home network or browser. CyberpowerPC, www.cyberpowerpc.com, a leading manufacturer of custom gaming desktop PCs, gaming notebooks, and performance workstations, today announced a pair of high-performance laptop computers that combine Netgear’s Push2TV 2.0 adapter and Intel Wireless Display (WiDi) technology, which allow you to enjoy personal and online content on a big screen TV with a simple wireless connection.

For a limited time CyberpowerPC is bundling its Xplorer X6-9100 and Xplorer X6-9200 series of gaming notebooks with a free Netgear PUSH2TV (Version 2.0) adapter for Intel WiDi 1080P, and a visibly smart 2nd generation Intel Core processor. The combination lets you kick back and experience your favorite movies, videos, photos, online shows and even game in full HD on your big screen TV with outstanding image clarity and sound.

Simply connect the wireless Netgear PUSH2TV adapter to your High-Def TV, follow a few simple steps, and you are ready to beam full HD 1080P straight to the big screen. Experiencing your videos and pictures in HD resolution up to 1080p on your TV is as easy as pushing a button. You can also surf the internet from your couch on your TV; watch TV shows and movies online, or go anywhere a web browser will take you.

The CyberpowerPC Xplorer X6-9100 features a 15.6″ 1920×1080 Full HD display; Intel Core i7-2670QM Processor; 8GB (4GBx2) DDR3-1333 RAM; Intel HD3000 Integrated Graphics; Intel HM65 Chipset; 640GB 5400RPM SATA300 HDD; and 8X DVD Rewritable Drive. The MSRP is $825.

The CyberpowerPC Xplorer X6-9200 features the same specs as the X6-9100 series but includes a discrete NVIDIA GT540M 2GB GPU with NVIDIA optimus technology for improved battery efficiency. The MSRP is $885.

CyberpowerPC’s Xplorer gaming notebooks can be customized with a number of performance hardware and components such as Solid State Drives, Blu-Ray drives, memory, gaming gear, business and productivity software, and more at the company website, www.cyberpowerpc.com.

Additionally, CyberpowerPC loads every gaming notebook with Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Operating System for an enhanced gaming and multimedia experience. All CyberpowerPC Xplorer gaming laptops includes a 1-year limited warranty and free lifetime phone support.

Source:http://hothardware.com/News/CyberpowerPC-Laptop-Bundle-Lets-You-Stream-HD-Content-To-Your-TV/

Going from making good motherboards to going head to head with Samsung for Google’s affection is a pretty big step for ASUS, but it’s one that the company has taken and done very well with. None of its peers have made the same transition, especially not while continuing to thrive in their existing businesses. I don’t think anyone can say that ASUS’ motherboards have suffered over the past several years as the company has transitioned, much like Apple, into the world of being a mobile computer manufacturer.

ASUS’ first Android tablet was a knock out of the park. The original Eee Pad Transformer gave us a glimpse of the future with its keyboard dock while delivering a good Honeycomb experience for $100 less than the competition. As many sacrifices as ASUS had to make to reach its price point, the original Eee Pad remains one of the best Honeycomb tablets on the market. But the show must go on and simply being the cheapest on the block doesn’t work anymore, particularly with companies like Amazon redefining what cheap means. It was time for a new flagship and today we have that tablet:

Whereas Motorola was first out of the gate with a Tegra 2 based Honeycomb tablet, ASUS is done with playing second fiddle. ASUS is NVIDIA’s first and only launch partner for its new quad-core Tegra 3 SoC. The Google OS of choice is still Honeycomb, although I hear the Eee Pad Transformer Prime also happens to be Google’s development and validation vehicle for Ice Cream Sandwich on Tegra 3.

The Prime is everything the original Eee Pad Transformer was missing. It’s thinner than an iPad 2 or Galaxy Tab and built out of aluminum and glass. Other than minor details like the buttons and connectors, your hands never touch plastic when using the Transformer Prime. Even those plastic buttons look and feel great. The tablet is just beautiful. It echoes the design language of ASUS’ Zenbook, but without the disappointment in the panel department. ASUS’ latest tablet actually has the best display of any tablet we’ve reviewed, including those made by Apple and Samsung (more on this later).

The usual suspects are carefully placed around the perimeter of the Transformer Prime. Held in landscape mode the power/lock button is at the top left corner, with the volume rocker perpendicular to and just below it on the left side. Also along the left side is a micro HDMI output for display cloning and a microSD card slot. A standard 1/8″ headset jack finds itself on the right side of the tablet, and ASUS’ standard dock connector is bottom center. The original Eee Pad had two speaker grills, while the Prime has a single, larger speaker on the back of the device. Audio output is surprisingly full but the tablet doesn’t get loud enough to overpower a noisy environment.

ASUS went a little crazy with the rubber stoppers all over the Prime. The dock connector and its two mechanical retention/secure points are plugged with these things, as is the USB port on the optional transformer dock.

Just like last time, the Eee Pad Transformer Prime can be mated to an optional keyboard dock for an extra $149. The dock adds a QWERTY keyboard, trackpad, an SD card reader, USB port and comes with its own 22Wh battery. The dock’s battery not only powers itself but it can charge the Prime’s battery, almost doubling battery life.

We’ll spend the next several pages going through every detail of the new Eee Pad Transformer Prime as well as NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 SoC, but on the surface, ASUS has built a formidable tablet. How does it fare under closer scrutiny? Very well it turns out…
A Lesson in How Not to Launch a Product

Of all of the things ASUS has learned from running the PC side of its business it seems that the proper way to launch a brand new platform didn’t translate over to its tablet business. I received the Eee Pad Transformer Prime 39 hours ago and the NDA lifted just now. While this is not atypical for many mobile launches, ASUS should know better.

To do a thorough review of any product the minimum time we need to adequately integrate that product into our daily routine and come away with a deep understanding of the product is at least a week. I say that’s the minimum amount of time because if you give us more, then we can do even better analysis and spend even more time bug hunting. Most of the players in the mobile space don’t really get this, and as a result they are complicit in the disappointing amount of analysis that’s done on their hardware. This will change as time goes on, but I honestly expected more from ASUS.
My WiFi is Broken

What’s one of the biggest risks when you give reviewers only 39 hours to review a product? If something is wrong with the review sample, there’s hardly any time to fix it. This time I drew the short straw and my Transformer Prime review sample arrived with highly questionable WiFi performance. Both range and performance were impacted by whatever plagued my sample. I got less range and much lower performance than the original Eee Pad Transformer regardless of location or wireless access point. How bad? My Prime had difficulty sustaining more than 2Mbps over WiFi. ASUS and NVIDIA both sent me proof that there wasn’t something wrong with other samples, and from their data it looks like the WiFi stack in the Prime is at least comparable to the original Transformer. The problem may just be limited to my unit, although I tend to believe that if something goes wrong once, it’s bound to go wrong more than once.

Based on the fact that wireless performance improves when docked and upstream speeds are almost normal, if I had to guess I’d say that the receive antenna is either not fully connected or somehow impaired from doing its normal duty. I should have a replacement unit in by tomorrow, but unfortunately that means you won’t see any WiFi dependent results here.

ASUS chose Broadcom’s BCM4329 for WiFi/Bluetooth duty. Although the controller supports both 2.4GHz and 5GHz operation, the Prime is limited to work on 2.4GHz networks. The rest of the design is pretty standard – you get a single spatial stream at a maximum of 72Mbps. Real world performance, if ASUS/NVIDIA’s numbers are to be believed, should top out somewhere in the upper 30Mbps area.

Source:http://www.anandtech.com/show/5163/asus-eee-pad-transformer-prime-nvidia-tegra-3-review

If you weren’t already excited about the upcoming release of Google’s Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) platform or the Eee Pad Transformer Prime tablet from Asus, you will be after watching a video of the two working together with NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 quad-core processor. This is the kind of technology threesome that should appeal to anywhere, regardless of which way you swing (yes, we’re looking at you, diehard iOS fans).

“Google has done a great job on ICS and has made the platform open to the ecosystem and easy to develop on. Thanks to Google’s developer support, NVIDIA’s experienced software team was able to work with Asus to quickly bring up Android 4.0 ICS on the Transformer Prime,” NVIDIA said in a blog post.

NVIDIA says the embedded video above was recorded on November 16, just two days after the source code for ICS was made publicly available. Even though it’s only an early demo, you can already see Ice Cream Sandwich dripping with all kinds of rad, from silky smooth transitions to impeccable 1080p playback performance, and even a quick look at fully optimized gaming that taps into all four cores of NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 processor.

In addition to the Tegra 3 chip and Android 4.0 software, the Transformer Prime also features a 10.1-inch WXGA IPS+ capacitive touchscreen display, 1GB of DDR2 memory, 32GB/64GB eMMC flash memory, 8MP rear-facing camera, 1.2MP front-facing camera, micro HDMI port, microSD card slot, and various other odds and ends.

Source:http://hothardware.com/News/Nvidia-Tegra-3-Chomps-Through-Ice-Cream-Sandwich-on-Asus-Eee-Pad-Transformer-Prime-Video/

Toppling the iPad has proved more difficult than some manufacturers might have anticipated. Is it because the iPad is a superior tablet to everything else that’s available? Some would argue that’s precisely why Apple’s magical slate is able to conjure up so many sales, but as far as Nvidia is concerned, there are other factors that give the iPad a distinct advantage.

While speaking to the press in New York on Friday, Jen-Hsun Huang, the often outspoken CEO of Nvidia, said the iPad’s main advantage is that Apple can sell the device through its own store instead of having to lean on retailers like Best Buy, The Wall Street Journal reports.

“Everything sold through Best Buy has to pay Best Buy a margin,” Huang explained.

As far as Huang is concerned, everything else is secondary and more easily solved, like creating a better usability experience, craftsmanship, and cost. On that latter point, Amazon (Kindle Fire) and Barnes & Noble (Nook Tablet) seem to have it solved, though both ended up cutting corners in the features department and are leaning heavily on their own content platforms in order offer a lower cost slate.

With regards to future tablets, Huang talked up its recently introduced Tegra 3 platform and said it will show up in $299 tablets within the next couple of quarters. He didn’t say whether those would be full size (9.7-inch) tablets or 7-inch slates like the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet, but either way, a $299 Tegra 3 slate sounds rad, doesn’t it?

Source:http://hothardware.com/News/Nvidia-Talks-299-Tegra-3-Tablets-and-the-Challenge-of-Competing-Against-the-iPad/

Wondering if ARM-based chips are powerful enough for the real world? Here’s your answer. NVIDIA has just unveiled a new prototype system with Tegra ARM CPUs and CUDA GPUs, and that system just so happens to be a supercomputer. The company has announced that the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) is developing a new hybrid supercomputer that, for the first time, uses energy-efficient, low-power NVIDIA Tegra ARM CPUs, together with high-performance NVIDIA CUDA GPUs.

BSC is planning to develop the first large scale system based on this technology, with a near term goal of demonstrating two to five times improvement in energy efficiency compared with today’s most efficient systems. BSC’s ultimate research goal is to deliver exascale-level performance while using 15 to 30 times less power than current supercomputer architectures. This so-called EU Mont-Blanc Project will explore next-generation HPC architectures and develop a portfolio of exascale applications that run efficiently on these kinds of energy-efficient, embedded mobile technologies.

“In most current systems, CPUs alone consume the lion’s share of the energy, often 40 percent or more,” said Alex Ramirez, leader of the Mont-Blanc Project. “By comparison, the Mont-Blanc architecture will rely on energy-efficient compute accelerators and ARM processors used in embedded and mobile devices to achieve a four- to 10-times increase in energy-efficiency by 2014.” To support growing demand for similar ARM-based initiatives around the world, NVIDIA also announced plans to develop a new hardware and software development kit. The kit, with hardware developed by SECO, will feature a quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 ARM CPU accelerated by a discrete NVIDIA GPU. It is expected to be available in the first half of 2012, and will be supported by the NVIDIA CUDA parallel programming toolkit.

Source:http://hothardware.com/News/NVIDIAs-Tegra-CPUs-And-CUDA-GPUs-Hit-Barcelona-Supercomputing-Center/

NVIDIA today announced that system builders worldwide are now shipping the fastest PC gaming platforms ever built, thanks in part to NVIDIA(R) SLI(R) technology and the just-released Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition processors and X79 chipset-based motherboards.

The combination of NVIDIA SLI technology — which allows for multiple GPUs to run on a single PC — and new X79-based motherboards allow gamers to customize their PC experience with up to four NVIDIA GeForce(R) GTX GPUs, including the GeForce GTX 580 and GTX 570, the world’s fastest DX11 GPUs. Licensed by the world’s leading motherboard manufacturers — including Intel, ASUS, ASRock, EVGA, Foxconn, Gigabyte and MSI, SLI technology is crucial for playing this year’s hottest graphics-intensive games, such as the recently released Battlefield 3 and upcoming Batman: Arkham City with detail, resolution and immersion settings cranked up.

“Falcon’s entire desktop lineup will be moving to Sandy Bridge-E, and NVIDIA SLI technology was an absolute necessity for every model we make,” said Kelt Reeves, president of Falcon Northwest. “It was critical for us to offer our clients multi-GPU options, and pairing Sandy Bridge’s monstrous new CPU horsepower with SLI’s monstrous graphics power will give gamers and enthusiasts smoother frame rates and a better visual experience.”

NVIDIA SLI technology is now available for all consumer-based desktop and mobile PC platforms, including previous versions of Intel Core i7, Core i5, Core i3, Core 2 Quad and Core 2 Duo processors, as well as those based on the AMD Bulldozer and Phenom II CPUs.

NVIDIA DX11 GPUs are designed to deliver the world’s fastest performance for DX11 games, and are the only consumer GPUs to feature multiple tessellation engines for advanced graphics rendering capabilities. NVIDIA GeForce GPUs also provide gamers with additional features not found on any other discrete graphics solutions, such as NVIDIA PhysX(R) technology for deeper gaming immersion, and support for NVIDIA 3D Vision(TM) technology, delivering eye-popping stereoscopic 3D on a single display or spanning across three screens for an immersive gaming environment.

For more information on NVIDIA SLI technology, please visit: http://bit.ly/grvFP8 .

Note to editors: to download images of new X79/SLI systems and motherboards from companies listed in this press release, please visit: http://bit.ly/srWPgJ .

Partner Quotes

“The combination of an Intel X79 motherboard and NVIDIA GeForce GTX SLI will break all the existing performance barriers raising the gaming standard for the power user. The wait is finally over.” — LL Shiu, Chief Operating Officer at ASRock

“PC gaming is growing at a rapid pace. With so many hot games rolling into the market, it’s time for gamers to switch the gear. All hardcore gamers looking for the best bang for the buck will naturally gravitate towards an Intel X79 motherboard and GeForce GTX GPUs as this combination will provide enthusiasts with the best gaming platforms for 2011 and 2012.” — Kent Chien, General Manager, Multimedia Business Unit at Asus

“CyberpowerPC gaming systems powered by Intel’s blazing fast X79 chipset along with NVIDIA’s fastest single GPU on the planet in single, dual, triple or quad GPU configuration yields uncompromising gaming performance for maximum high-definition gaming.” — Eric Cheung, CEO of Cyberpower

“A Digital Storm Hailstorm system equipped with three NVIDIA GTX 580s in TRI-SLI and Intel’s new X79 platform has blown away all our previous performance records making it the most dominant gaming system we’ve ever built.” — Harjit Chana, chief marketing officer at Digital Storm

“EVGA is extremely excited to be launching new NVIDIA SLI-ready Intel X79 chipset based motherboards. Right now is a great time to be a PC gamer, and with the latest game titles, the need for enthusiast performance hardware is more apparent than ever.” — Bob Klase, VP of Sales at EVGA

“For playing any of today’s hottest PC titles, the pairing of Intel X79 motherboard and GeForce GTX SLI is one awesome combination that our customers have been asking for.” — Henry Kao, Vice President of GIGABYTE Motherboard Business Unit

“MAINGEAR’s got what gamers want: expertise, extreme performance, and options galore. If you’re looking for a new PC featuring the new Intel X79 platform with extreme overclocking and NVIDIA GeForce graphics in single, dual, 3-way or even quad SLI, combined with MAINGEAR’s EPIC liquid cooling solutions, gamers can have the best immersive gaming experience possible.” — Wallace Santos, CEO of MAINGEAR

“Gamers know that the best way to experience their games is with an Intel CPU and NVIDIA GPUs. Now, they will be able to harness the power of multiple GPUs for even more performance and immersion features with our Intel X79 motherboard and GeForce GTX GPUs.” — Jeremy Liao, Assistant Vice President of Multimedia Department at MSI

“ORIGIN PC is gearing up this holiday season with NVIDIA GeForce GPUs and the new Intel X79 processors. Our ORIGIN PC GENESIS desktops and EON laptops are ready for battle, using Intel X79 processors to slay dragons, and NVIDIA GeForce GPUs in SLI to clean out Arkham City. It’s time to gear up for the win!” — Kevin Wasielewski, CEO and co-founder of ORIGIN PC

Source:http://www.marketwatch.com/story/nvidia-sli-multi-gpu-technology-paired-with-intel-core-i7-extreme-edition-processors-power-worlds-fastest-desktop-gaming-platforms-2011-11-14?reflink=MW_news_stmp

Asus and Nvidia have collectively taken the wraps off the next-generation version of Asus’ well-received Transformer tablet line, and the new system aims to carve out a slice of the premium tablet market. It’s far from a sure bet given the tremendous difficulty Android tablets have had cracking into the iPad-dominated industry, but the Prime impresses—at least, so far. We reserve final judgment until we’ve actually seen shipping hardware.

The Transformer Prime incorporates Nvidia’s new Kal-El processor and it’s one of Tegra 3’s upper-end launch systems. We’ve discussed Kal-El in depth several times before; the new chip contains a fifth ‘Companion Core’ to reduce idle power consumption and contains 12 GPU cores, up from Tegra 2’s eight. NV claims that Tegra 3’s GPU is up to 3x faster than Tegra 2’s thanks to additional architectural enhancements.

The Transformer Prime uses the same dock as the Transformer and the tablet itself is the same size and offers the same size screen at a 1200×800 resolution. One new feature of the Prime, however, is what Asus is calling “Super IPS+.” The display’s normal brightness tops out at ~500 nits, but the Prime offers an alternate ‘Super IPS’ mode that pushes display brightness up to 600 nits for use in bright outdoor environments.

Asus has also worked with Nvidia to improve touch-screen lag and claims the screen responds with just a 50ms lag time, compared to an average lag of 110ms on competitor’s products. Battery life has improved over the Transformer’s claimed 9.5/16 hours for mobile and docked mode; the Transformer Prime can supposedly run 12 hours independently and up to 18 hours when connected to the dock. When we asked Asus how it conducted its battery life tests, the company responded: ” In addition, battery life results were obtained with a constant 720P video playback with all ports on and screen brightness at 60nits. We are still optimizing battery life with NVIDIA and expect these numbers to hold true or improve slightly.”

The new tablet will launch with Honeycomb 3.2, but Asus intends to offer an update to Ice Cream Sandwich once it finishes testing that OS.

Asus is positioning the Prime remarkably well, at least as far as the original Transformer is concerned. An extra $100 buys you 16GB more storage, a significantly faster system, and an improved camera, plus the Super IPS+ display. There’s no arguing that the Transformer Prime’s specs are much stronger than those on the iPad 2—even if Kal-El only matches the A6 overall, the Transformer Prime would come out ahead in terms of its price/performance ratio. It’s an impressive, exciting machine and we’re curious to see if the new generation of Android tablets can finally chip away at Apple’s iPad.

Unfortunately for Asus, it’s unclear if impressive specifications and good design are going to be enough. Thus far, none of the manufacturers that’ve introduced Android tablets have seen them go on to become smash hits, though we suspect the less-hyped devices from smaller players have done far better than the dramatic failures of the Motorola Xoom or BlackBerry PlayBook. Even so, the Transformer Prime is expensive, all the more so considering Asus wants $149 for a keyboard with a small battery, USB 2.0 port, and an SD slot in it. That’s not nearly the rip off that the Atrix 4G’s dock was earlier this year, but it’s scarcely a compelling value. $649-749 buys a nice laptop these days, and we’re not convinced that the Transformer Prime’s price structure is going to win it any converts.

Somehow, in all the excitement over the iPad 2, OEMs have apparently forgotten that netbooks became popular precisely because they didn’t cost as much as full size noteboooks. Nvidia’s Tegra 3 isn’t going to be able to match the performance of an x86 laptop, which is going to make it harder for any tablet this expensive to carve out a niche for itself, particularly given the enormous economic uncertainty gripping the US and Europe. With tablets like the Kindle Fire set to debut at $199, Asus may have priced the Transformer Prime too high for the buyers it’s hoping to attract.

Source:http://hothardware.com/News/Nvidia-Asus-Unwrap-Transformer-Prime/

Tablets and smartphones will soon get quad-core processors with Nvidia’s new Tegra 3 chip, which will eclipse the application and graphics performance provided by dual-core processors found on tablets like Apple’s iPad and Motorola’s Xoom.

The Tegra 3 chip, announced Wednesday, is the first quad-core processor for tablets and smartphones, Nvidia said. Its performance will be five times better than Tegra 2, the dual-core predecessor found in tablets from Dell, Lenovo, Acer and Toshiba.

The chip, formerly code-named Kal El, will run at up to 1.3GHz in a quad-core configuration and appear in Asustek Computer’s Eee Pad Transformer Prime tablet, which was announced on Wednesday. The Transformer Prime tablet will have 12 hours of battery with the help of a Tegra 3 chip, a Nvidia spokesman said.

Tegra 3 is based on the Cortex-A9 processor design from ARM, whose processor designs are found in most tablets and smartphones today. The chip will run Google’s Android OS. A Tegra 3 tablet with Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 was shown at the software giant’s Build conference in September. Smartphones with the chip are expected in the first quarter next year, an Nvidia spokesman said.

A shot of the Tegra 3 die. [Photo: Nvidia]The chip combines CPU cores with a number of processing units for tablet and smartphone functions. It has 12 GeForce graphics cores, which could provide a massive multimedia performance boost. A low-power fifth core can run secondary tasks to reduce the processing strain on the four main CPUs. For example, the low-power fifth core is activated if a user wants to listen to music, and the four high-performance cores are shut down to extend device battery life, Nvidia said.

Though advertised at 12 hours, the battery life of devices like Asus’ Eee Pad Transformer Prime with Tegra 3 could vary with tasks, said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research.

“It’s going to depend on the workload. We’ll see once we get our hands on the hardware,” McCarron said. “The general rule of thumb is the more intense the workload, the less life you get out of the battery.”

Nevertheless, Tegra 3 provides more performance headroom, McCarron said. Mobile devices are demanding more computing power and many form factors are evolving, and Tegra 3 could be an effective gaming platform, McCarron said.

The additional performance provided by Tegra 3 may not be needed every time as most tablet and phone applications run well on single-core or dual-core processors, McCarron said. The Tegra 3 chip architecture provides a way to activate only the necessary cores to run programs, McCarron said. The chip also consumes very little power in idle mode, McCarron said.

Nvidia’s prime competitor is Qualcomm, which is also heading in the direction of quad-core chips with its Snapdragon S4 integrated chips, also built around ARM CPU architecture. They will have an integrated 3G/4G radio. On the other hand, quad-core chips are not a top priority for Texas Instruments, which argues that software hasn’t yet been designed to take advantage of four processing cores, and that it will bring those chips to market only when they fit in a device and meet the thermal budget.

Source:http://www.pcworld.com/article/243453/tablets_get_snappier_with_nvidias_quadcore_tegra_3.html

In the 1990s, Intel (INTC: Charts, News, Offers) and Microsoft (MSFT: Charts, News, Offers) were widely regarded as the dominant growth forces in tech. Together, they started the “Wintel” dynasty – a time where Pentium clock speeds were an industry standard and Windows was synonymous with the personal computer. Both companies were big bullies – Intel marginalized long-time rival AMD (AMD: Charts, News, Offers) using controversial strong arm tactics and Microsoft was probed by the Justice Department for its anti-competitive practices against Netscape. Microsoft’s former rival Apple (AAPL: Charts, News, Offers) was broken, shriveling in the corner without its iconic founder, Steve Jobs. What a difference a decade makes.

Today, Intel and Microsoft are among the worst performing tech stocks in the Nasdaq. Microsoft rests at less than half of its all-time high, and Intel is at approximately a quarter. That doesn’t mean these companies have shrunk. On the contrary, they have continued growing earnings, more than doubling their earnings per share. However, investors are indifferent to “Wintel” stocks since the prevailing view in 2011 is that the Wintel dynasty has ended. With the industry shaking return of Apple with its iPhone and iPad devices, the tech industry has shifted away from focusing on desktop and laptop based processors in favor of low-power consumption mobile processors – a field dominated by ARM Holdings (ARM: Charts, News, Offers). Other names dominate key supply chain parts of the tablet/smartphone revolution – Qualcomm (QCOM: Charts, News, Offers), Broadcom (BRCM: Charts, News, Offers) and Texas Instruments (TXN: Charts, News, Offers) being its most important industry peers, each producing specialized fabless microprocessors for specialized hardware. Even graphics chip giant Nvidia (NVDA: Charts, News, Offers) has thrown its hat into the mobile processor ring with its Tegra all-in-one chips. With the decline of personal computers – as evidenced by Hewlett-Packard (HPQ: Charts, News, Offers) and Dell’s (DELL: Charts, News, Offers) poor quarterly earnings and guidance – Intel is steadily losing ground to specialized processor manufacturers in niche markets. In the end, even long-time partner Microsoft announced that Windows 8 would be optimized for ARM processors.

However, Intel hasn’t completely given up on making a mark in the mobile revolution. This week, the company announced that it was now working with Google (GOOG: Charts, News, Offers) to port Android to the aging x86 architecture used by Intel and AMD. While this won’t be a silver bullet against the onslaught of tablets and smartphones powered by its smaller rivals, it buys Intel valuable time to manufacture a proper competitor to its more energy efficient competitors. The hardware giant is most likely to design a new batch of processors for mobile devices as none of their current Atom CPUs are power-efficient enough for phones or tablets. They also need to work on a solid GPU, since Intel integrated graphics have become an industry punchline for mediocre performance. ARM and Nvidia have been churning out powerful hardware for the mobile platforms for a while now, so Intel has some catching up to do. Despite Intel’s cross-licensing agreement with Nvidia, the latter still remains an efficient competitor which threatens to chip away at Intel’s market share.

Analysts have long touted Intel’s attractive valuations. With a trailing P/E of 9.3. a dividend yield of 4.3%, and a RoE of 25.9%, it’s hard to argue. However, shares of Intel have gone nowhere over the past decade. Intel’s operating (30.13%) and net profit margins (22.67%) both shrunk over the past year, and its core business is based on maintaining gross margins over 60%. While the company was able to keep its head above water with gross margins of 60.64% in the most recent quarter, its younger industry rivals are perfectly content with gross margins of 40% on higher sales volume. In addition, the geek revolution in the 1990s, when computer users would compare clock speeds religiously, is long over. Normal computer users no longer care about nor understand processor speed – rather superior branding, packaging and software interface (such as Apple) – has become far more important. Ironically, Intel confused consumers even more with its i3, i5 and i7 lines – which was originally intended to “simplify” its product line – perhaps to mimic BMW’s 3,5 and 7 series. The idea backfired and confused consumers even more than its Ghz measurement standard. Throw in the idea of multiple cores (physical and logical), and ordinary consumers would just rather buy “something that works out of the box” than fret over technical details.

Although some investors think that Intel will survive only relying on its core competencies in PC and laptop markets, this would flatten the company’s growth potential. The company’s virgin effort in mobile territory – the Atom – was dubbed a failure. However, the company introduced new smartphone and tablet processors this week in San Francisco at the Intel Developer Forum, demonstrating its latest advances in chip miniaturization and Ultrabook processors. The thin Ultrabook devices, fragmented across multiple hardware retailers, will retail for approximately $1,000 and aimed at refreshing the laptop market with an improved power consumption / performance ratio. However, industry observers are quick to notice a glaring fact – that Intel’s “Ultrabooks” seem to be lackluster imitations of Apple’s three-year-old Macbook Air. Intel’s new processors are also focused on lower power consumption in an all-in-one chipset, showing that the company is evolving to compensate for its weaknesses, exploited continuously by rivals ARM Holdings and Nvidia.

Source:http://www.investorguide.com/article/9563/intel-intc-aint-what-it-used-to-be/

Speaking during a recent interview by Forbes, Jen-Hsun Huang Nvidia’s CEO confirmed that the company’s quad-core processor, codenamed “Kal-El”, would feature in tablet PC devices by the end of this year.

“We’re the only people seriously on the dance floor with Qualcomm, we’re really the only two active players [in the tablet PC processor market],” said Huang.

While Nvidia originally planned for the quad-core processors to feature in tablets and smartphones by the end of 2011, he has now hinted that quad-core smartphones won’t appear until 2012.

The Nvidia mobile business section of the company currently generates around $2 billion annually and the company expects that to grow to around $20 billion by 2015. Huang was quick to point out that Nvidia currently features in 50 percent of the Android smartphone market, and 70 percent of the Android tablet market.

Source:http://mybroadband.co.za/news/quick-news/33496-quad-core-tablets-this-year-%E2%80%93-nvidia-ceo.html

Mini PCs? Check! Admittedly, small form factor machines have seemingly vanished from the spotlight in recent years, but there are still a handful of companies out there pounding the (small) pavement. CompuLab is one of them, and this week they’ve introduced the Trim-Slice. It’s an ARM Cortex A9-powered desktop that runs on NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 chipset, and it’s reaching out to the open-source community with Trim-Slice developers program.

The Trim-Slice H further extends the usability of ARM on the desktop by incorporating an accessible bay for a 2.5″ SATA hard-disk inside the Trim-Slice miniature fanless casing, and it’s offered in a couple of models: the $279 Trim-Slice H Diskless – where the buyer can add the hard disk or SSD, and the $319 Trim-Slice H250 – with 250GB hard disk and Linux pre-installed.

Both models incorporate 1 GHz Tegra 2, 1 GB RAM, HDMI and DVI ports, Gigabit Ethernet, built-in 802.11n WiFi, 4 USB ports, 2 SD slots, RS232 serial port and a USB Bluetooth adapter. Not bad for a micro PC, now the only question is: how are you going to put it to use?

Source:http://hothardware.com/News/TrimSlice-Micro-PC-Runs-On-NVIDIAs-Tegra-2/

Computer hardware maker Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) +3.25% stock is shrugging off a downtrodden tech sector (NYSE:XLK) in trading so far, making it the top gainer on the S&P 500 (NYSE:SPY) at last check. Driving the gains behind the surge in ticker price are reports that the company has upped its market share in both PC and Notebook sectors. “Nvidia gained 8.9 points of notebook discrete [graphics-chip] share to 50.6%. Overall, Nvidia gained 3.8 points of share to 54.6%,” writes UBS (NYSE:UBS) analyst Uche Orji. The news is welcome to Nvidia shareholders that have watched the stock drop 7.27% in 2011. The company likely stole market share from competitor AMD, who did not make any gains in the same period, say analysts, due to a change in business strategy since its acquisition of ATI Technologies.

Another analyst, Jefferies’ Mark Lipacis, argues that long-term trends, especially the push toward more power-efficient PCs, may work against the graphics chips (NYSE:SMH) specialist.

“We expect Intel Corp. (NASDAQ:INTC) and Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE:AMD) to increasingly focus on notebooks with longer battery lives, lowering power consumption by about 50% over the next two years,” Lipacis wrote in a note. “We believe that lower notebook power limits would make it increasingly difficult for [manufacturers] to fit power-hungry discrete [graphics chips] in their notebook designs, representing a secular headwind for Nvidia and AMD’s notebook discrete [graphics chip].”

Source:http://wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/nvidia-riding-high-on-increased-market-share.html/

NVIDIA, the company that awakened the industry to the power of computer graphics when it invented the graphics processing unit (GPU) in 1999, will be at SIGGRAPH, being held this year from August 7th through 11th in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Visitors to the NVIDIA booth (#453) will see how the latest capabilities of NVIDIA’s industry leading graphics solutions are powering a range of new applications that empower engineers, designers and digital content creation professionals to reach their maximum potential. Industry leaders such as Autodesk, Adobe, and Dassault Systemes will be on hand to highlight new tools and techniques that take advantage of NVIDIA professional graphics solutions, which are designed to transform critical production workflows. In addition, NVIDIA will be sponsoring and hosting an array of technology talks, panels, contests, and presentations to provide students, researchers, and industry professionals with many opportunities to interact and discuss state-of-the-art visualization and rendering techniques with industry thought leaders.

Autodesk Student Experience, sponsored by NVIDIA
On Sunday, August 7th at the Vancouver Marriott Pinnacle Downtown Hotel, Autodesk, with the support of NVIDIA, will host an exclusive event for students, the Autodesk Student Experience, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. PDT, with a reception to follow. The Autodesk Student Experience is a series of targeted workshops and presentations designed to improve student skill sets through use of Autodesk 3D animation tools, including Autodesk Maya, Autodesk 3ds Max and Autodesk Softimage software, which will be running on workstations equipped with the latest NVIDIA Quadro professional graphics solutions.

NVIDIA “Tech Talks”
On Monday, August 8th, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. PDT in the West Building, Room 220, NVIDIA will host seven interactive “Tech Talks” that will explore the impact of GPUs on state-of-the-art CG and interactive design, including panel discussions and technical ‘deep dives,’ covering everything from advanced ray tracing, photorealistic rendering and simulation to tessellation.

Highlighting the NVIDIA “Tech Talks” will be an expert panel discussion from 1:45 to 3:00 p.m. PDT, “VFX Trendspotting: Unlocking GPU Performance,” where attendees will be able to tap into the some of the most brilliant minds in visual effects R&D and learn how the GPU is being leveraged to enable dramatic performance gains in rendering, lighting, fluid and particle simulations. Attendees will learn more about how to integrate GPU acceleration into their VFX production pipelines.

“As usual, NVIDIA will be at SIGGRAPH to showcase the latest research and innovation in computer graphics,” said Jeff Brown, general manager, Professional Solutions Group, NVIDIA. “We and our many hardware and application partners look forward to providing an incredibly rich, powerful, interactive and compelling experience for show attendees.”

NVIDIA Innovation Theater
The NVIDIA booth will feature the NVIDIA Innovation Theater, sponsored by HP, with technology and product demonstrations held on all three days of the SIGGRAPH exhibition (8/9, 8/10, and 8/11), highlighting the latest work from NVIDIA partners and customers such as Adobe, Dassault Systemes, Digital Domain, Geomerics, LookFX and Viewpartners, with demonstrations running on the half-hour throughout show exhibit hours. NVIDIA Technology Theater presentations will also be streamed live on the NVIDIA Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/NVIDIA.

NVIDIA Sketch Match
NVIDIA will again host its popular Sketch Match competition, sponsored by Dell, inviting SIGGRAPH attendees to show off their creativity. Contestants race the clock to compete against fellow illustrators, animators and designers for great prizes, including NVIDIA® Quadro® 4000 professional graphics solutions courtesy of PNY, and software provided by Adobe, Autodesk, and Luxology. The competition will run all three days of the SIGGRAPH exhibition in booth #603.

NVArt Competition
NVIDIA and the CGSociety, a division of Ballistic Media, are again hosting the popular NVArt competition. This year’s theme is ‘NVArt 6: Moving Innovation.’ NVArt is a worldwide digital art contest for artists to explore the future of electronic device design, with over $34,000 in prizes being awarded, including several Quadro 6000 professional graphics cards. Since its inception in 2008, NVArt has inspired artists to create some of the most imaginative and stunning work the world has seen. Winners will be announced at SIGGRAPH.

New Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet For Business
NVIDIA will also be demonstrating and giving away three new, just-announced ThinkPad Tablets from Lenovo in the NVIDIA booth during SIGGRAPH. Designed as a companion computing device for professionals on the go, the ThinkPad Tablet features the NVIDIA Tegra™ 2 dual-core mobile CPU, and includes a precise pressure pen, a full-size USB port, full-size SD card slot, and mini-HDMI for connecting to external projectors and displays, as well as an optional ThinkPad quality keyboard folio carrying case with optical trackpoint.

Source:http://www.vadvert.co.uk/computing/16187-nvidia-to-showcase-the-latest-in-computer-graphics-at-siggraph-2011.html

Eurocom is adding the new MXM 3.0b NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M GPU to its line of available GPUs. The GTX 560M card will be available in single and dual (SLI) configurations. Thanks to the modular MXM graphics cards, users will be able to upgrade to newer video cards when they become available without having to buy a new system. MXM 3.0b technology also makes it possible for Eurocom to offer a number of video cards for each system. Three models from Eurocom—the Panther 3.0, Neptune, and Racer—will support the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M.

Eurocom Corporation (www.eurocom.com), a leading developer of long lifespan, fully upgradable notebooks, high performance mobile workstations and mobile servers is adding the new MXM 3.0b NVIDIA Geforce GTX 560M GPU to its line of available Graphics Processing products. The addition of the GTX 560M card in single and dual (SLI) configurations gives Eurocom customers a complete choice of video processor options to fit any requirement, whether it be to upgrade their existing notebook or configure into their new Eurocom system. Eurocom has been a leader in integrating MXM technology into systems since its creation, in fact Eurocom introduced upgradeable / modular VGA in 1999, predating MXM specifications – in the 3300A and 3500 models.

Eurocom Configurability

Eurocom offers a complete line of fully configurable Performance Notebooks, Mobile Workstations and Mobile Servers; from VGA to storage, from RAM to Processor, everything can be configured to the application and performance requirements of the individual user. With this new GPU Eurocom adds another option to its long line up of VGA products.

Source:http://hothardware.com/News/EUROCOM-Panther-30-/

Computex Taipei 2011 opens today with the expectation that more than 35,000 buyers from around the world will descend on Taipei to participate in Asia’s biggest IT trade show. About 1,800 global exhibitors, utilizing over 5,200 booths, up 8% from 2010, will hopefully supply up to US$23 billion in business as a result of the show.

And while Computex is first and foremost an event where IT buyers and suppliers can make deals and solidify relationships, it is also a major IT venue for industry leaders to jostle for mindshare. The hot topics this year include market trends such as color e-book readers, 3D Television and cloud computing, but it will be the tablet market that is expected to grab the main spotlight during the show this year.

The Apple iPad has created a surge in demand for tablet PCs, resulting in a situation where semiconductor firms focusing on x86 architecture – mainly Intel – will face off against ARM-based architecture vendors including Nvidia and Qualcomm, while competition in the software arenas will pit Microsoft and its upcoming Windows 8 operating system against Google Android and Chrome.

Intel to beat drum for tablet PCs

Intel executive vice president and Architecture Group general manager Sean Maloney will introduce Intel’s latest R&D and road map of product development as well as Intel’s competing strategies for tablet PCs and smartphones, market segments where Intel has not been able to claim a leadership position. In addition, corporate vice president and PC Client Group general manager Mooly Eden, corporate vice president and Netbook and Tablet Group general manager Doug Davis as well as Software and Services vice president and System Software Division general manager Doug Fisher will disclose the company’s planning for their respective business units.

Intel is expected to showcase Oak Trail tablet PCs supporting MeeGo, Windows and Android as well as inexpensive netbook models and Chrome notebook PCs jointly developed by Google. Sandy Bridge models and Z68 motherboards developed by Intel’s Taiwan-based hardware partners will also be exhibited and Intel is expected to release details on its next-generation Ivy Bridge platform.

Intel will also exhibit the X79 chipset (code name Patsburg-HEDT) that will be offered in August 2011, with the chipset to match three 6-core and quad-core Sandy Bridge-E processors to form the Waimea Bay platform.

During Intel’s recent analyst day, the company indicated it would be making two major high level changes in its roadmap and those changes should be evident at the Computex show. The first initiative is a renewed focus on essentially reinventing its vision of the PC, one that was much more CE device oriented and featuring ultra-thin, ultra secure and ultra-responsive devices in its plan. The company is stressing features that put it into head-to-head competition with its rivals from the ARM camp, including features such as instant on, always on and always connected, as well as 10 hours of battery life.

While not directly conceding that it needs to better compete with ARM in the tablet segment, Intel most definitely reminded the world why it is the industry leader in the semiconductor industry with its second initiative, which is to accelerate its SoC development strategy. The company plans to halve its two-year process technology development cycle for SoCs for smartphones and tablets starting from 32nm products next year (Medfield) and then 22nm (Silvermont) products in 2013 and 14nm products (Airmont) in 2014, essentially doubling the speed of Moore’s Law to help the company improve its standing in the ultra-mobility market.

Even though Intel has yet to become a major player in the smartphone or tablet industry, the company has the resources and advantages in process technology to keeps its competitors from discounting the prospects of the chip giant. Moreover, Intel is quick to point out based on tablets on smartphones, it is the number one silicon vendor in the market in terms of profits, since every 600 smartphones sold and/or every 122 tablets sold creates the sale of a server, most likely a high-margin Intel product

AMD to showcase Llano

AMD unveiled Brazos, a low-power Fusion APU, in January 2011 and has shipped more than three million chips. AMD will exhibit Llano, its latest Fusion APU, at Computex 2011, with company senior vice president and chief marketing officer Nigel Dessau to introduce details on AMD’s most advanced architectures and technology.

Viewing that Brazos has successfully been adopted by Sony, Hewlett-Packard and Taiwan-based Acer and Asustek Computer for their notebook PCs, AMD will ship Llano to notebook PC vendors first in June and then to retail market in July. According to AMD internal estimates, monthly shipments of Llano will keep increasing from one million units in June to 1.5 million units in July and further to 8.0-9.0 million units at the end of 2011.

Made on a 32nm process, Llano has built-in graphics chip Radeon HD 6550 or 6450 which is functionally equivalent to the Nvidia GeForce GT 240. Liano motherboards equipped with Socket FM1 A75 chipset support Dual Graphics technology and related motherboard graphics performance can be increased by 80% using CrossFire.

There will be three series of Llano APUs for use in notebook PCs, that is, A6-3400M, A4-3300M and E2-3000M. AMD will soon unveil Llano APUs for use in desktop PCs which will include at least five A series and one E series.

AMD will also unveil its road maps of tablet PC architectures, and is cooperating with Microsoft to develop Windows 8-based platforms which will be released as early as the first quarter of 2012.

Nvidia Tegra 2 seeing booming demand

CEO and president Huang Jen-hsun will introduce Nvidia’s road maps of developing Tegra and architectures.

However, Nvidia’s possible participation in Microsoft’s Integrated Development Program specifically for developing Windows 8 is expected to be the question that the media will be asking.

Absent from Computex in 2007-2010, Nvidia will return to the IT event this year to showcase the achievement of Tegra 2, including applications to tablet PCs, smartphones and automotive electronics as well as release quad-core processors and Project Denver. Nvidia plans to unveil quad-core Tegra 3 (Project Kal-El) in the second half of 2011, Tegra 4 (Wayne) in 2012, Tegra 5 (Logan) in 2013 and Tegra 6 (Stark) in 2014.

ARM president Tudor Brown

ARM president Tudor Brown and executive vice president of marketing Ian Drew will introduce ARM’s business outlook and performance of ARM architectures used in tablet PCs and handsets. In addition, ARM will showcase new ARM-based devices developed by hardware partners.

Source:http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20110530VL200.html

NVIDIA announced that the NVIDIA® Tegra® 2 mobile super chip has been awarded the prestigious Computex “Best Choice” award for Smart Handheld Devices Innovation from the Taipei Computer Association.

The Tegra 2 chip was selected from among more than 400 products covering every electronic-product category, including mobile devices, displays and complete computer systems. Rigorously examined by a panel of government representatives, academia, research analysts, technology editors and other experts, Tegra was selected based on overall technical merit, innovation and marketability.

This marks the third consecutive year that NVIDIA is being honored with this award, after been selected for its NVIDIA GeForce® GTX 480 graphics processor in 2010 and NVIDIA ION™ graphics processor in 2009.

“The NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor is truly a super chip,” said the jury of the Best Choice Award. “It has ushered in a new wave of super phones and tablet devices with never-before-seen capabilities and experiences. We selected Tegra 2 from hundreds of entries because it’s an outstanding technological achievement that’s impacted the industry very positively.”

The Tegra 2 chip is built with the world’s first mobile dual-core CPU – which unleashes the best Web experience, with up two-times faster browsing and support for full Adobe® Flash® Player hardware GPU acceleration, plus unprecedented multitasking capabilities. It also includes an NVIDIA GeForce GPU – which provides stunningly rich visual experiences and console-quality gaming.

Tegra 2 chip has ushered in a new wave of super phones and tablets, creating new mobile experiences and never-before-seen content. This new wave includes the award-winning LG Optimus 2X and Motorola Atrix 4G super phones and Android 3.0 (Honeycomb)-based tablets such as the Motorola XOOM, LG Optimus Pad, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, Acer Iconia Tab A500, ASUS Eee Pad Transformer, and Toshiba Honeycomb tablet.

Source:http://teletechwire.com/20110529/4031.php

Nvidia today announced that the Nvidia Tegra 2 mobile super chip has been awarded the prestigious Computex ‘Best Choice” award for Smart Handheld Devices Inn`1ovation from the Taipei Computer Association.

The Tegra 2 chip was selected from among more than 400 products covering every electronic-product category, including mobile devices, displays and complete computer systems, said a press release.

This marks the third consecutive year that Nvidia is being honored with this award, after been selected for its Nvidia GeForce GTX 480 graphics processor in 2010 and Nvidia ION graphics processor in 2009.

“The Nvidia Tegra 2 processor is truly a super chip,” said the jury of the Best Choice Award. “It has ushered in a new wave of super phones and tablet devices with never-before-seen capabilities and experiences. We selected Tegra 2 from hundreds of entries because it’s an outstanding technological achievement that’s impacted the industry very positively.”

“It’s an honor to receive this prestigious award from the Taipei Computer Association,” said Phil Carmack, Senior Vice President of the Mobile business at Nvidia. “This helps validate the very sizable investment we’ve placed in Tegra and demonstrates that the mobile market is significant for Nvidia. But this is only the start. With Project Kal-El, our quad-core processor, we’re planning to take mobile computing to even higher levels.”

The company claims that the Tegra 2 chip is built with the mobile dual-core CPU – which unleashes the best Web experience, with up two-times faster browsing and support for full Adobe Flash Player hardware GPU acceleration, plus unprecedented multitasking capabilities.

It also includes an Nvidia GeForce GPU – which provides stunningly rich visual experiences and console-quality gaming.

Tegra 2 chip has ushered in a new wave of super phones and tablets, creating new mobile experiences and never-before-seen content. This new wave includes the award-winning LG Optimus 2X and Motorola Atrix 4G super phones and Android 3.0 (Honeycomb)-based tablets such as the Motorola XOOM, LG Optimus Pad, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, Acer Iconia Tab A500, ASUS Eee Pad Transformer, and Toshiba Honeycomb tablet, the release added.

Source:http://www.ciol.com/Semicon/Biz-Watch/News-Reports/Nvidia-Tegra-2-super-chip-wins-%E2%80%98Best-Choice%E2%80%99-award/150317/0/