Chip news from Nvidia, Marvell, and Gemalto

Tegra K1 debuts in tablets
The Tegra K1 made headlines with its 192 cores when Nvidia launched the chip, and now the processor is showing up in real products. China’s Xioami was the first to launch at Tegra K1 powered tablet, and now U.S. consumers will have a chance to experience what Nvidia describes as PC and game console-style power and graphics, on a mobile device.
Google’s Tango tablet, expected in the U.S. this year, will sport a Tegra K1 mobile processor. The PC-style power comes at a PC-style price: the tablet is expected to retail for $1024. It will offer 3D depth sensing and mapping. The Tango comes from Google’s ATAP group, formerly part of Motorola Mobility. Google is folding ATAP into its Android business, instead of selling it to Lenovo along with the other parts of the Motorola device business.
Apple anoints Marvell, Texas Instruments, Broadcom
The three chipmakers were called out by Apple last week when the company announced its HomeKit APIs, which will enable developers to create applications that integrate home appliances with Apple’s mobile devices and use Siri for voice control. Marvell was quick to announce specifics about its Internet of Things solutions. The company is launching Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and ZigBee microcontrollers designed for M2M applications.
Much of Marvell’s IoT software expertise comes from its 2010 purchase of Kinoma. The deal brought Marvell Kinoma’s Peter Hoddie, who developed QuickTime for Apple.
China Telecom taps Gemalto
The move to contactless payments is accelerating in China, and China Telecom is at the forefront. The carrier is rolling out a multi-tenant NFC SIM that will enable its customers to use many different mobile devices to make contactless payments. The high-end SIM is embedded with Gemalto’s LTE management software.
Gemalto is a leader in digital security and NFC technology, and has been a partner with AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile US in their ISIS contactless payment venture here in the United States. The company says it is very excited about the opportunity in China, where an NFC ecosystem is evolving rapidly. Gemalto says that China’s banks had issued 400 million contactless chip payment cards by the end of last year.