Santa Clara based Nvidia had a heck of a show this CES 2011, with Tegra 2 finally coming to fruition and seeing a plethora of design wins – but when we asked the firm’s reps about Tegra 3, we were met with stony silence.
Luckily, it seems tech enthusiast blog Bright Side of News has found a leak in that stone wall, revealing that Nvidia’s dual-core Tegra 2 chip is about to be followed up with a stunningly powerful 1.5 gigahertz Tegra 3 chip by the end of 2011.
Tegra 3, it’s rumored, will even be available in both quad or dual-core varieties and support displays of up to 1366 by 768 pixels in resolution, which is something currently only really seen at 13-inch laptop and above levels.
The upcoming chip is also rumored to support Blu-ray video and higher than 1080p HD, which means the graphical future of both phones and tablets sporting the chip is very crisp and clear indeed.
The firm also purportedly has a 3D version of the Tegra 2 chip coming down the pipeline, which could bring the 3D cinema craze to portable devices very soon indeed.
What the rumors mean is that Nvidia is really planning to blow the smartphone and tablet market out of the mobile waters and blur the lines even more between PC’s and handhelds.
Interestingly enough, it’s actually in the PC space where Nvidia is best known for wanting to have the baddest graphics chips on the planet, though quite often at the expense of heat and battery life, which has led to some harsh criticism in the past. The potential with Tegra 3 is that Nvidia is going back to those self-same PC roots with whopping quad core graphics that eat battery life for breakfast. Though, if the firm proves us wrong, we’ll be delighted.
Perhaps, judging by Tegra 3’s specs, though, the chips will be more aimed at small windows 8 netbooks, seeing as they seem to fit in with Microsoft’s planned release of the updated OS. If that’s the case, Intel and its Atom offerings better watch out.
RCR tried reaching Nvidia for comment, unsuccessfully, though the company is known never to comment on rumors and speculation. Joking with Nvidia reps at CES, this reporter pumped the firm for info regarding Tegra 3, only to be told “it’s going to be better than Tegra 2, how’s that?”
That’ll do nicely, thanks!
