Tegra 2 was step forward in graphics and processing, bu the PC-level gaming and computing power would come to mobile devices with Tegra 3, demo from nvidia already proves that.

HTC Zeta is pretty much in works, but the leaked specs look like a dream come true. It sports Tegra 3 Quad-core 2.5GHz APQ8064 CPU along with 1GB of RAM. Screen would be the humongous 4.5-inch 720p HD display.

According to the rumors, HTC Zeta would come with Ice Cream Sandwich pre-installed with Sense UI 4.0 .

It would accommodate a 32GB of internal storage space, an 1,830mAh battery, Beats Audio, Bluetooth 4.0, an 8MP rear camera with dual LED flash, 1080p video capture and a 1.3MP front-facing cam.

It would be released in a thin form factor of 4.32 x 2.4 x 0.39 inches and weigh 146g. It would have a unique shape with the sharp corners. Pricing and availability would be available soon.

We write latest and greatest in Tech Guides, Apple, iPhone, Tablets, Android,  Open Source, Latest in Tech, subscribe to us@geeknizeron Twitter OR on Facebook Fanpage:

Nvidia is now proudly showcasing the capabilities of its upcoming mobile processor with a new Glow Ball tech demo.Quad-core Kal-El processor, aka Tegra 3, shows it power with  a demo that involoves true dynamic lighting on mobile devices  along with some impressive physics calculations.

This would be a giant step ahead of static lights that we see on mobile games today, Tegra 3 can create light sources that responds realistically to its environment — all rendered in real time.

The demo was done on Honeycomb 3.1 at 1280 x 800 resolution and framerates clearly exceeded 50fps at all moments. All this was made possible using all 4 cpu cores and 12 core GPU thats embedded to Tegra 3 SoC. The production chip will be 25 to 30 percent faster than the one on display today.

Checkout the demo below:

We write latest and greatest in Tech Guides, Apple, iPhone, Tablets, Android,  Open Source, Latest in Tech, subscribe to us@geeknizeron Twitter OR on Facebook Fanpage:

Nexus 3 is coming out in next few months, but until recently the processor was unknown. But what was known for sure is that it would ship with Android 4.0 IceCream Sandwich.

But at NVIDIA’s earnings call yesterday, CEO Jen-Hsun Huang hinted at a possible partnership with Google for the release of Ice Cream Sandwich, saying:

… we’re working very closely with Google on Ice Cream Sandwich, and it’s a very important new generation of operating system based on starting from the Honeycomb base and I’m expecting it to be really terrific. And so we’re working very closely with the Google team, and Tegra will be surely be wonderful for Ice Cream when it comes.

We’re really excited about the work that they’re doing on Ice Cream. And I can’t comment too much more other than that, but we’re working very closely with their teams on the Ice Cream Sandwich. And as all of these products — they will come to the market when they’re great, and I’m certainly expecting them to be great on this year.

And Google already said at Google IO that Nexus 3 would be the first device to get IceCream sandwich. All rays of light form one beam: Nexus 3 is going to be powered by Tegra 3, a super processor for the smartphone.

Nvidia Tegra 3 Specs & facts:

• World’s first mobile quad-core CPU
• New 12-Core NVIDIA GPU with support for 3D stereo
• Resolutions upto 2560 x 1600.
• 5x faster than the Tegra 2

Qualcomm, TI aren’t going to rest, lets see what offerings would they come up with. Android is going to get a lot of traction.

We write latest and greatest in Tech Guides, Apple, iPhone, Tablets, Android,  Open Source, Latest in Tech, subscribe to us@geeknizer on Twitter OR on Facebook Fanpage:

Nvidia has compiled the list of best apps on android market and retains the beauty of Android market by redirecting downloads and purchases through Market.

So if you own one of those Tegra2 devices, or planning to buy any of the  Motorola XOOM, LG G-Slate or Motorola ATRIX 4G, LG Optimus 2X, Samsung Galaxy S II, LG Optimus 3D, etc,  then the Tegra Zone app is one you should definitely be downloading.

In addition to what android market offers, there comprehensive reviews and previews of games like Dungeon Defenders: FW Deluxe, Samurai II: Vengeance THD, Backbreaker THD, Fruit Ninja THD, and Hardwood Solitaire IV, along with teasers of upcoming titles such as Galaxy on Fire and Hardwood Spades.

Checkout the video review from androidcommunity done on a Motorola Xoom 10″:

For more Android, apps, Tips n Tricks, Android, Gaming, Tech News, catch us @taranfx on Twitter.

Nvidia has plans of leaping the current gen smartphone processors Tegra 2. Within few months, the graphics giant will launch Tegra 2 3D, a 3D version of Tegra 2 with high performance 1.2Ghz dual core processor and 3D display.

At CES 2011 we learned that existing Tegra 2 chips will power flagship Android devices like the LG Optimus 2X and Motorola Atrix 4G smartphones, as well as Motorola’s Xoom tablet.

That’s just a taste of things to come in the near future. Think new breed of portable devices incorporating glass-less 3D displays, Blu-ray support and enhanced graphics, paving the way for stereoscopic 3D gaming, exciting user interfaces and other perks.

Going further, there will be Tegra 3 Quad core Cortex A9 1.5 Ghz CPU with 3x faster graphics, BluRay video, 1900×1200 display. Something of that config is a true desktop replacement.

The ULP designation on this listing stands for Ultra Low Power in NVIDIA parlance, which would indicate an aggressively tuned power management system — the only way we can envision a quad-core anything operating within a tablet. Fall 2011 is when we should know for sure.

For latest Google, Open Source, iPhone, Android, Tech news @taranfxon Twitter or subscribe to us below:

LG Optimus 2x

Nvidia’s Tegra2 is the most powerful processor in the market serving two cores, each at 1Ghz, having onboard powerful Graphics processor capable of playing 1080p video with no trouble at all.

LG is accelerating its Android Optimus line with a new Flagship phone featuring 8 megapixel camera. The phone features 1080p video-recording, and as earlier said, dual-core processor powered by ARM9 based Nvidia Tegra2.

The phone was earlier expected to make first appearance next year, but goodness and gracious, its here! This phone also becomes the first phone (correct me if I’m wrong) to record Video @ 1080p FullHD. In addition, phone features a 1.3MP front-facing camera for video calls, includes microSD memory expandability, microUSB connectivity, and a 1500mAh battery, which should give a much better life knowing the fact that Tegra2 consumes less power than Snapdragon.

It has also got full 1080p TV-out via HDMI.

Right now the Optimus 2x runs Android 2.2 froyo, but LG has promised for Gingerbread in the near future. Its a 4-inch WVGA display (not SuperAMOLED) with 8GB of on-board storage (expandable with up to 32GB of microSD), which makes up 40GB of total storage.
Related:

• Dual Core Tegra2 Android vs iPhone 4
• Cheapest Dual Core Tegra2 Android Tablet – eLocity A7 for $399

For more iPhone, iPhone apps, Tips n Tricks, Android, Gaming, Tech News, catch us @taranfx on Twitter.

Japanese brand, Woow Digital, shows of the First Android Gingerbread based tablet, that runs on Tegra2 Dual core processor with some great specs. The company calls is “The One“.

The tablet is packed with some customized apps to suit the large screen.

The one features NVIDIA Tegra 2 core, 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of flash storage with a 10-inch display capable of doing  1024 x 600 resolution. On the connectivity front, it does Bluetooth, WiFi and WCDMA 3G radios.

Woow plans to launch The One in Japan before Christmas at a price of $504, which will be followed up by availability in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Europe. So in CES 2011, expect this Tablet along with loads of other Tegra2 tablets and Android smartphones.

More Tech news, Apple, iPhone, iPad, Tips, guides via @taranfx on Twitter or subscribe below:

Today, Nvidia announced new Mobile GPU GeforceGTX 480M – The Fastest Graphics on Laptops/Mobile.

the new graphics for mobile is a re-spin of its extravagantly overpowered Fermi desktop counter-parts. The chip, scheduled for release mid-next month, will bring whooping 352 CUDA cores and a 256-bit memory interface to up to 2GB of GDDR5 RAM.

In contrast with Nvidia’s current top of the line: 360M, this is a huge step ahead. However, to save on battery juice, the graphics processor speed is nearly halved from the desktop GTX 480, @ 850MHz, the RAM runs on 1,200MHz, and the graphics run at 425MHz. Normally, good GPUs are meant to be >500Mhz.

The Nvidia 480M has great tessellation performance of 897 gigaflops, stepping more than double from Nvidia 360M having only 470 gigaflops.

Nvidia 480M Benchmark

Its hard to give you an idea of the performance at this time, but as per the estimates, it should run games like Just Cause 2 in 1920×1080 Medium-High detail and anti-aliasing OFF around 55-65FPS.

Nvidia 480M GTX Specs

Here are the detailed specs:

We write latest and the Greatest in Hardware, Tech, iPhone, Android, Google and more @taranfx and you can subscribe to us below:

Well, here is the solution- Get best of both worlds.

Asus’s upcoming AMD-based CrossHair IV Extreme motherboard would satisfy senses. CrossHair IV is the first motherboard to feature Lucid Hydra on Both Intel and AMD platforms and lets users mix and match their graphics cards from either Nvidia or ATI and shoot up the performance.

ATI’s CrossFire and Nvidia’s SLI, do respective multi-GPU systems to boost their graphics-processing power. The current generation of CrossFire, can handle up to four GPUs at once, mixing and matching both single-GPU cards like Radeon HD 4890 and double-GPU cards like the Radeon HD 4870 X2. On the other hand, SLI can support up to three compatible cards at once, or four GPUs with two dual-GPU cards like the GeForce 7950 GX2 or GTX 295.

Crossfire vs. SLI is always an un-solvable argument, no one has ever won the argument.

Lucids Hydra chip will try to solve this debate by supporting different combination of both Radeon and GeForce cards. Last year’s test system used a Radeon HD 4890 and a GeForce 260GTX card working together pretty nicely, the cards consistently performed better than either single card, and often slightly better than one of the dedicated dual-card setups.

MSI launched the first Lucid Hydra motherboard (called Big bang) for Intel chips in January and Asus now brings Lucid Hydra to both platforms with CrossHair IV things would start to look better.

We write about Google, Twitter, Security, Open Source, Programming, Web, Apple, iPhone,Android and latest in Tech @taranfx on Twitter or by subscribing below:

With GTX 480, NVIDIA is stressing that GTX 480 has a  superior tesselation benchmarked performance over the ATI HD 5870, but it was very levelled for most of the other tasks. Tesselation is all about the extra detail you can embed using DirectX 11 APIs and GTX 480 handles extreme amounts of tesselation pretty well.

Nvidia’s claims makes all sense but we will have to wait for the Real Game Benchmarks to conclude who’s better. But enticing  part in Nvidia‘s tech is the 3D vision, Which makes you jump into the 3D Reality world, which still needs time to mature on ATI platform.

More about: Nvidia Fermi Tesla GPU Insights

We write Latest in Hardware: Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Research,Gadgets: Android, iPhone, Apple, Google andTech Guides, Tech News @taranfx on Twitter and:

Well, not really. They have been around since years but they haven’t lived up to user expectations. Nvidia will change that with their new Optimus technology (hopefully).

We are not talking about PowerMizer which only changes the clock (and that too is absent in Windows 7). It’s rather about switching between integrated and discrete graphics. Switching between integrated and discrete graphics started with physical toggles, which needed restarts, followed by Windows In-Tray utility that blanked your screen for a while.

Nvidia Optimus promises to make it all easier fro the end-user. When the system detects a 3D application, game or video, the GPU simply turns on. When its done, it goes back to the integrated GPU. There are no flips, banks or noticeable stoppages on the video.

You must be thinking, was it that tough to make this truly transparent all these years? Read on.

Previous graphics had multiplexers (MUXes) connecting both the integrated and discrete graphics to the display. This was costly, and required software to change the system’s rendering between the two graphics systems.

Optimus is a lot cleaner. When discrete GPU needs to switch, it powers up in a split second and copies the results of its frame-buffer to the frame-buffer of the integrated graphics chip over the PCIe bus. Because the system is technically always displaying the contents of the integrated graphics chip’s frame buffer, there is no flicker or blanking of the screen, and no series of MUXes required to connect them both to the display.

The other part of it is the software, which will detect the need and usage that relies on Nvidia’s drivers having application profiles for the games or applications. The technology will ultimately makes its way to other Nvidia driver features that require profiles, like SLI and 3D Vision.

Currently, Optimus supports pretty much all Intel notebooks: Core 2 Duo, Atom N4xx Pine trail, Core i3, i5, and i7. Optimus-enabled GPUs will be found in the GeForce 200M, 300M, Ion, and future-generation notebook GPUs.

Obviously, this not a revolution. This is something we expected to see already, but was absent. Ironically,  the average consumer assumes that switchable graphics already works the way Optimus does, so here we have a technology that finally delivers on customer expectations.

We write Latest in Hardware: Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Research,Gadgets: Android, iPhone, Apple, Google and Tech Guides, Tech News @taranfx on Twitter and:

Intel claims that Nvidia Ion is overkill for Netbooks battery. But practically, Intel’s Pine Trail Atom n450 chips are pretty bad in almost everything. Their power management is not as good as Nvidia’s and when it comes to performance, there’s no comparison.

Today surfaces the prototype Nvidia Tegra Tablet powered by Windows CE and a Resistive Touch. What comes good is the HD capability of this device. The 720p and 1080p playback on the device is smooth and power efficient. Since the device is just a prototype, its pointless to comment on the battery life.

As per Nvidia, the project is known as ICD Ultra and promises to play 10 hours of 1080p HD content, and 3 times the battery when listen to music (screen off); practically, give FullDay juice to the battery at any kind of usage. On the gaming and graphics side, you can’t expect much from Tegra based MID coz they are designed to give extended battery life. For standard games like COD MW2, it should give out 40FPS over medium-low graphics settings.

The NVIDIA Tegra processor is a heterogeneous multiprocessor architecture. Each processor unit is architected for a specific class of tasks—a CPU for running html and Java, an HD video processor that makes streaming HD video playback possible on a netbook for the first time*, and an ultra-low power NVIDIA GPU for a compelling user interface and for Flash acceleration. These processors are used together or independently to deliver a wonderful experience while utilizing minimal power. With its ultra-low-power processor design, NVIDIA Tegra processors achieve up to 5 times the power efficiency of existing products in battery-operated computer systems running compelling visual computing applications.

[via engadget]

At this year’s SC09 supercomputing trade show in Portland, Oregon, Nvidia unveils its plan for the next-gen Chip ‘Fermi’. Overall, the GPU co-processors aimed at personal supers and massive clusters were the stars of the show. This is something much more powerful than AMD’s Fusion.

The video card versions of the Fermi chips will be called the GeForce 300 M line. Nvidia  is keeping the Tesla brand for its next generation GPU co-processors for workstations and servers. The Fermi chips will be sold under the Tesla 20 brand.

Last month El Reg talked about the architecture.

The SM design contains 32 basic Cuda cores – four times as many found in previous generations of SM – each comprising one integer and one floating-point maths unit. It is able to schedule two groups of 32 threads – a group Nvidia calls a “warp” – at once. The networked cores connect to 64KB of shared L1 cache, also used by four Special Function Units (SFUs) which handle complex maths formulae such as sines and cosines.

One of the 32-core Stream Multiprocessors

image credit

Flavors and Specs:

As per Andy Keane, GM at Tesla supercomputing (Nvidia), the Tesla 20 cards will come in 2 flavors. Nvidia will sell co-processor systems that can plug right into HPC clusters and link to servers through PCI-Express 2.0 links – and at around 130 watts. Keane bristles at anyone who claims that a fully burdened heat budget for a server – not just a microprocessor, but its memory controller (if it is not integrated), its chipset, and its memory – will be any lower.

With the Fermi family of GPUs, Nvidia is adding L1 and L2 caches to the co-processors and is putting ECC memory scrubbing on internal GDDR5 video memory on the card as well as accesses to external server memory. This ECC support, as it turns out, is as important as anything else in the chip if you want to sell GPUs to nuke labs.

The Fermi chip has 512 cores, which is more than twice the cores of the first Tesla GPUs. The Fermis bundle 32 cores together into a streaming multiprocessor that has 64 KB of shared L1 cache. All 512 cores have access to a shared 768 KB L2 cache, and they support the IEEE 754-2008 double precision floating point standard.

In theory, the Fermi chip can address up to 1 TB of memory, but the Tesla C2050 GPU co-processor has 3 GB of GDDR5 memory and double precision floating point performance of 520 gigaflops, costs $2,499. The Tesla C2070 GPU has 6 GB of GDDR5 memory and is rated at 630 gigaflops, costs $3,999. The bang for the buck is best with the smaller unit, which weighs in at $4.81 per gigaflops compared to the $6.35 per gigaflops of the faster GPU.

On the higher Front, a 1U appliance with four of the faster C2070 GPUs delivers 2.52 teraflops of double-precision floating point performance and costs $18,995, or $7.54 per gigaflops.

GPU and Programming

There are two secret stuff in the Fermi GPUs that are going to get HPC freaks thinking about using GPUs.

First one, they will now support Nvidia’s C++ compiler (not just C).

Secondly, a set of new InfiniBand and Tesla drivers that InfiniBand chip maker Mellanox and Nvidia have got together to streamline the movement of data from the InfiniBand ports, to the CPU’s main memory, and then down through the PCI-Express bus to the GPU card.

The way it works now: Data comes in over InfiniBand, works its way into main memory and is copied; before it is moved down to the GPU, it is copied again and that copy is what is moved. The driver changes allow for the data moved into memory to be moved down to the GPU in one fell swoop. The improvements? They ahve been able to demonstrate a 30 percent speedup.

Finally, Nvidia this week released the beta of the CUDA Toolkit 3.0, which exploits the Fermi GPU’s features.

Availability

The Tesla 20 GPU co-processors & the appliances based on them will be available in the 2nd quarter of 2010. The GeForce graphics cards based on the same GPU chips will be seen around first quarter.

Need more Tech? Subscribe below:

Cloud Computing started from the cloud based processing then expanded steps to storage and now comes the third contender: Graphics. Now, Nvidia will power cloud-based GPU rendering which can be deployed as server-farms.

Nvidia looks to be bringing 3D rendering to the cloud with the news it is to partner with rendering expert Mental Images to launch its RealityServer platform. The pair are hoping to develop systems for offering web-based 3D rendering via Nvidia’s high-end Tesla RS GPUs.

As per the plan, On Nov. 30, Nvidia will launch the RealityServer platform, featuring a hardware server based on the Fermi architecture with a minimum of eight GPUs, scaling to 32 and even 100. A developer edition of RealityServer 3.0 software will be downloadable free of charge, including the right to deploy non-commercial applications.

RealityServer is designed around CUDA general purpose GPU technology and features 240 individually addressable cores. The technology is quiet scalable considering the fact that a single implementation can feature a 100 or more Tesla GPUs capable of simultaneously rendering for thousands of users. This will allow for the creation of extremely realistic objects via a simple user interface – and can calculate complex graphics like shadows, anti-Aliasing, anisotropy and reflections swiftly.

The idea is quiet similar to what AMD had with it’s Fusion Cloud. Although, fusion is  more aimed at allowing games to be sold on a SaaS model than for professional graphics creation.

Thin-client Cloud Gaming: Makes Crysis on iPhone possible

Application: The initial target market for the RealityServer product is, of course, corporate – engineering, medical research, product development, and architecture.

The purpose behind RealityServer is fairly simple: change the way Graphics are produced (rendered) today. Most PC users are used to their PC rendering 3D graphics via a GPU. Animation/Movie studios and product development, faced with the task of rendering even more complex scenes, use a series of locally-networked servers or workstations known as a rendering farm.

RealityServer intends on taking the concept one step further by isolating those servers away from the user, across the Internet, in a cloud configuration.

If you wonder is it even practical? Here is a solid slap —  Google Earth uses a similar technique, caching a small portion of data on the user’s PC, then streaming additional data over a broadband connection as the user moves over the virtual map.

It does have one weakness, (as per Nvidia): The geometry of the virtual world is calculated using the local graphics engine, making impossible for some mobile devices from leveraging it.

Consider this: If the graphics are too simple, workstations and a user’s own 3D cards would make the RealityServer irrelevant. But the latency and bandwidth limitations imposed on cloud-based rendering would make rendering realtime video nearly impossible.

As a compromise, the RealityServer will render complex static images using ray tracing, a graphical technique that models the flight of individual photons as they reflect and refract across various surfaces and textures.

It will be up to customers, however, to provide the front-end software and applications to take advantage of the technology, such as a car manufacturer which uses the RealityEngine to render the latest roadster, using the software to dynamically change the color.

It has lot of potential, all we need is the right kind of application that could integrate client and the Cloud in a phenomenal way.

Next is what? Cloud OS: Chrome OS

What do you think ? Is it all worth ?

Magic of Cloud computing: VMware and RDP 6 client: Run Windows 7, Flash on iPhone – Wyse PocketCloud

Well, here is the solution- Get best of both worlds.

Lucid last year promised to develop a chipset that would enable any motherboard to work with any combination of GPUs and still able to get 100 percent of the performance out of both.

It took them more than a year to fight against laws of physics . Now, the company has unveiled its HYDRA 200 Parallel Graphics Chip, a tiny 65nm processor that, when installed on a motherboard or expansion card.

On the motherboard manufacturing and support front, MSI has eagerly showed interest, and they become the first company to sign up.  What’s even more interesting was to see their demonstration Intel P55-based Gaming Motherboard, offering a HYDRA 200 and three PCIe slots for some serious GPU power.

In-house preliminary tests show performance never seen before on MSI Big Bang motherboards running such popular game titles as Crysis, F.E.A.R.2: Project Origin, Left4Dead 2 and Bioshock.

The motherboard will be available in the stores for 2009 holiday season.

Here is the basics of How it works:

This device is capable of intercepting DirectX or OpenGL command stream before it hits the GPU, analyzing the data, and dividing up scene at an object level. Rather than rendering alternating frames, or screens split on the horizontal, this part is capable of load balancing things like groups of triangles that are associated with a single group of textures and sending these tasks to whatever GPU it makes the most sense to render on. The scene is composited after all GPUs finish rendering their parts and send the data back to the Lucid chip. Utterly amazing, no less than rocket science.

via [Anandtech]

CPU has gone multicore, still we need GPU powered applications for all types of complex graphics.

May it be Windows Aero interface or Your photo/video editing/re-sampling application, it now needs and is able to Utilize your GPU (provided you have supported one).

Accelerated Graphics, totally absent from Web world, are now opening up for direct GPU access offloading CPU further. A new venture that includes  Mozilla, Google, and Opera Software — along with graphics processor leaders AMD (ATI) and Nvidia, announced this morning their intention to produce a royalty-free mechanism for producing hardware-assisted 3D graphics using JavaScript-enabled Web pages, for initial distribution during the first half of next year.

The Internet Graphics are planned to be based on OpenGL ES. The new Web-OpenGL or WebGL language could potentially open up the field of Web applications to classes of software traditionally reserved for local, on-system installation, including computer-aided design and engineering, rich visualization, and of course, gaming. While the <CANVAS> element in HTML 5 is already supports 3D geometry, what WebGL would enable is the ability for JavaScript developers to utilize the GPU to produce fast, fluid, rendered scenes, effectively extending the already proven OpenGL ES system used by Sony’s PlayStation 3, to the realm of Web apps.

WebGL is intended on Hardware accelerated complex 2D, 3D Rendering of pixels, which is much faster as compared to Software rendering.

It’s evident that the WebGL would be integrated into browsers, not attached as add-ons. In many senses, WebGL already is integrated, through browsers such as the latest Firefox 3.5 that already support HTML 5. What work remains includes the production of a final, formal specification for WebGL.

Motivating the new WebGL standard, Mozilla standards evangelist said,

“The Web has already seen the wide proliferation of compelling 2D graphical applications, and we think 3D is the next step for Firefox. We look forward to a new class of 3D-enriched Web applications within Canvas, and for creative synergy between OpenGL developers and Web developers.”

At this time, there is no good code to demonstrate power of WebGL.

One of them appeared in December 2005 project SourceForge site, in a file named sample.html. And it’s not that impressive: a live rendering of three sides of a randomly rotating cube. The source code for this little project, shown here, reveals that familiar OpenGL functions that define viewports, object identities, and that scale and rotate an object within a viewport, show up quite clearly as JavaScript functions.

For more than 3 years, the rotating cube corner has pretty much been the Benchmark / “test pattern” for WebGL. But today’s endorsement by the Khronos Group, responsible for OpenGL and OpenGL ES, could catapult this project from virtual stagnation into overdrive.

Tegra is a huge strength for portable gadgets like the upcoming Zune HD, and series of other portable gadgets demoed last year. But in a full-sized Netbook, it’ll have a hard time running media or multitasking. OS is a problem too—does anybody actually like Windows CE? Running Windows 7 or XP won’t be possible since they don’t have ARM distros.

What would have made more sense would be a Linux distro or Chrome OS, but even that’s kind of limiting the scope of the platform.

Anyways, Let’s look at what Nvidia has to offer with their powerful Smartphone Platform:

The Size: The “computer” itself is the size of a DIMM memory module and the Idea: Use powerful handheld technology to drive a Netbook experience. The Result: Ultra-thin form factors and an uber-long battery life expressed in days, rather than hours.

Overview of What you would get:

• HD movie playback
• Ultra Small computer platform
• Utra-low power
• Runs on Windows CE (Android is on the horizon)
• Full support for Internet Graphics

“Days of battery life”?

Yes, NVIDIA claims that its Tegra platform can play an audio file continuously for 600 hours (25 days!) assuming that the display is turned off.

Other smartphone-based platforms like Snap Dragon from Qualcomm would last only 60 hours, says NVIDIA.

The current proposed model is 13.3″, but expecting smaller in future won’t not wrong.

The Purpose: (Why Smartphone Platform on Netbook?)

Imagine things like real Instant-ON computers, just like you would get from a phone. That would work because the computer is never actually off. It consumes so little power that you can leave it in standby mode for a very long time. The whole computer system consumes 1W (cpu, graphics, motherboard), which is really small compared to even Netbooks, more of a comparable to gadgets like iPhone(if you include LCD too).

Of course, most of you would not expect to experience the same level of performance than you would from more familiar computers. It’s partly true. From what we’ve seen, application can load slower and overall, the early prototype seemed slower than a Netbook, but in some ways, the Tegra platform is more powerful than Netbooks.

The graphics sub-system is capable of playing 720p and 1080p movies at full speed a feature that only another NVIDIA powered Netbook can do. Most importantly, this graphics muscle is used to accelerate Adobe Flash, which is a critical component of a good web experience.

The only bad part, it runs Windows CE, which is arguably no one’s first choice, rather the last one. Because you cannot install Windows apps, NVIDIA presents Tegra and Windows CE as a web-apps friendly platform. Android and Android market might alleviate this situation later, but that’s far away (Android does not support high-resolutions like 1280×720).The prototype that I have seen runs Firefox with full Adobe Flash support. I have not had time to test some apps, but at the moment, I will assume that this version of Firefox can handle it.

If you rely on many desktop apps, this will be a serious issue.

NVIDIA is betting that the “low-power” value will outweigh the inconvenience of not having a “first choice” OS like Windows XP or OS X (Linux Netbooks have staggering customer return rate).

To help overcome this, the price will be very low: $199 range.

Questions: We will see how this will behave in the real world, where the display consumes many times the power than Tegra. How long will the battery life really be when tested in the field? Is the speed good enough? Is the experience good enough? Can we live with Windows CE?

Chrome OS: May be this is the best combination with Chrome OS. First developer test versions of Chrome OS will land around October end, just around the launch date of Tegra netbooks. If Chrome OS runs on Tegra ARM, it would be a remarkable success. When you get the best grpahics, Multimedia architecture for Chrome OS, the combination could be a Other-Netbook-killer.

Currently as per the Facts we know about Chrome OS, we don’t know if there be any support for ARM, specially Tegra ARM. But I heard that Nvidia would partner with Google for Chrome OS for Netbooks, we can’t really say what the plan is, but atleast Nvidia will get it running on their Tegra, after all Google is serious on getting the popularity that was once just hyped

Some Blogs like Gizmodo totally rejected the idea, quoting:

“Hey, Nvidia, just keep the Tegra in the industry where it suits the best, smartphones! “

But I would rather be positive, as the platform is promising. Chrome OS could make it a GO.

Vendors have not ignored this, they are closely watching and now we have netbooks with better power than before. Now we see a new rising trend, its about packaging more into the Netbooks.

The ultra-thin laptops based on Intel’s ULV processors or AMD’s Athlon Neo are an obvious alternative to netbooks. Dell took a different approach with the Vostro 1220, which it announced earlier this week. The Vostro 1220 is also based on a 12.1-inch display, but it uses standard Intel mobile processors. At 0.9-1.5 inches thick, it’s not as thin as the HP Pavilion dv2, for example, but it is still highly portable weighing 3.4 pounds (with the 4-cell battery). Interestingly, Dell claims the 6-cell is good for 9 hours of battery life despite the fact that the Vostro 1220 does not use the ultra low-voltage chips.

The Vostro 1220 starts at $729 with a 2.2GHz Intel Celeron 900, 2GB of memory, Intel GMA 4500M HD integrated graphics, 160GB hard drive and Vista Home Basic. The 6-cell battery adds $60. That’s more expensive than a 12-inch netbook–the Dell Mini 12 starts at $500 with Windows XP–but you also get more, including an internal DVD drive. There aren’t many standard 12-inch business ultraportables in this price range, so Dell deserves some credit for trying this out. I haven’t seen any full reviews yet, but it will be interesting to see how the Vostro 1220 stacks up.

Meanwhile plans to boost the performance of netbooks are in full force. Lenovo had already announced plans to offer a version of its IdeaPad S12 12-inch netbook with Nvidia’s Ion chipset. Now Samsung will soon release an 11.6-inch netbook, the N510, with Ion later this year. Nvidia’s chipset promises to improve the performance of Atom-based PCs by replacing the integrated graphics with the GeForce 9400M GPU, but to date it has largely been confined to nettops such as the Acer AspireRevo, not netbooks. Samsung already sells a 12.1-inch netbook, the NC20, for $510 with a 1.3GHz VIA Nano U2250, 1GB of memory, 150GB hard drive and Windows XP Home. I’ve also seen the Samsung N10 and N20 10-inch netbooks, which have received positive reviews.

Future could be a high performance Net-Note book combination like the one we see MacBook Air today.

Laptops and handheld computers based on Nvidia’s Tegra computing platform will hit the market before the end of this year, the company said Tuesday.

Built around an Nvidia graphics processor and two Arm processor cores, Tegra packs nearly every component required for a computer on a motherboard that’s slightly bigger than a stick of chewing gum. It also encodes a hardware encoder and decoder for full high-definition video playback.

Tegra consumes less than half a watt of power, allowing devices that use it to run for many hours on a single battery charge, even while remaining constantly connected to a cellular data network, said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of Nvidia, speaking at the Computex exhibition in Taipei.

“With the proliferation of 3G mobile networks, it’s now perfectly clear that computing technology and communications will converge,” Huang said.

This is the second time that Nvidia has “launched” Tegra at Computex. Last year, the company showed a working prototype of a Tegra board. The prototype board was shown running inside an Asustek Computer Eee PC that had its original motherboard removed.

This time around, Nvidia had Tegra-based computers to show off instead of a mockup. In all there were seven prototypes on display, including models from contract hardware makers Compal Communications, Inventec and Wistron, among others.

These systems will cost around US$199 when they hit the market and could be as cheap as $99 if the price is subsidized by a mobile operator, Nvidia said. They will hit the market at roughly the same time as systems based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor, a rival chip that also uses an Arm processor core.

“The technology itself is ready,” said Hsu Shao-chung, deputy director general of the Electronics and Optoelectronics Research Laboratories at Taiwan’s publicly funded Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI).

The research group has already licensed the technology to at least one company in Taiwan and said it will be on display at a major exhibition in Taipei next year.

Initially, the 3D technology will be used in digital signs.

Digital signs are a place for the technology to launch because companies always want to attract people’s attention, said Hsu, in an interview.

The research group has been able to create 3D LCD TVs with screens as large as 56 inches, but the technology still needs some work before it can be sold for TV viewing. Colors on the 3D LCD TVs are not as vibrant as a standard LCD TV.

For people willing to wear the special polarized glasses needed for most 3D viewing, ITRI has developed 3D LCD TVs, computer monitors and mobile phone screens that could be on the market any time.

Products would already be out if it weren’t for the global downturn, said Hsu.

Companies in Taiwan that ITRI had licensed the technology to had already started manufacturing 3D LCD TVs and monitors in small quantities, with a view to having them on the market this year.

When the global recession hit, production slowed. Companies now want to see how global demand shapes up before committing more resources to the new technology.

Devices made using the 3D technology that requires viewing glasses will not be much more expensive than regular LCD monitors and TVs, said Hsu. He estimated about 10% more on average.

Computer gamers will probably find the technology a must-have in the near term. It works well on some games but most are not made for 3D screens.

To get content makers on board with 3D, ITRI is promoting the technology to game developers, TV stations and movie makers in Taiwan to help them capture, render and develop 3D products.

The research group will also host a conference next week in Taipei to promote 3D technology, IDMC 3DSA Asia Display ’09 (International Display Manufacturing Conference, 3D Systems and Applications, Asia Display 2009) with software and content makers from around the world slated to attend.

It would be a worth wait.

 New NVIDIA Quadro FX 5800 Graphics Card Featuring CUDA Massively
 Parallel Processing Architecture; Offers Most Robust Performance
 and Features to Date for Oil and Gas Exploration, Medical Imaging,
 and Styling and Design Applications.

That’s some serious boasting by NVIDIA, but this is some serious graphics horsepower. The Quadro FX 5800, already seen in NVIDIA’s Quadro Plex D data cruncher, replaces the 5600 at the top of the NVIDIA heap with 240 CUDA-programmable parallel cores and the industry’s first card with 4GB of graphics memory. MSRP? Just $3,499 for you big spender — pennies for the companies who can harness the power for the purposes of oil and gas exploration, 4D modeling, and graphics design.

    SANTA CLARA, Calif., Nov. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Professionals searching
for oil, diagnosing illness or styling the next high-performance luxury
vehicle all have one thing in common, the need for advanced visual
computing solutions. NVIDIA Corporation, the world leader in visual
computing technologies, today unveiled the most powerful professional
graphics card in graphics history -- the NVIDIA(R) Quadro(R) FX 5800.

    (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20020613/NVDALOGO)

    "The size and complexity of data is growing at an exponential rate. The
challenge for today's professional is to make sense of the mountain of data
by distilling it into a form they can comprehend, analyze and use to make
impactful decisions," said Jeff Brown, general manager, Professional
Solutions, NVIDIA. "At stake can be billions of investment dollars, or even
people's lives. The Quadro FX 5800 has advanced features to allow massive
datasets to be viewed beyond traditional 3D enabling professionals to make
fast and accurate decisions."

    The Quadro FX 5800 graphics card offers unprecedented performance and
scalability to rapidly visualize and interpret massive datasets that until
now were unattainable on a workstation graphics board. Offering up to 240
CUDA(TM) programmable parallel cores and the industries first 4GB of
graphics memory, the Quadro FX 5800 graphics card is ideally suited for oil
and gas exploration, medical imaging, styling and design, and scientific
visualization. Other advanced features of the Quadro FX 5800 graphics card
include:

    -- Interactive 4D modeling with time lapse capabilities
    -- Massive memory bandwidth of up to 102 GB per second
    -- Fill rates that exceed 52 billion texels per second and geometry
       performance of 300 million triangles per second
    -- Support for next-generation OpenGL and Microsoft DirectX 10
       applications
    -- Advanced multi-system and multi-device visualization environments with
       Quadro G-Sync II

    "Landmark's recently launched GeoProbe(R) R5000 software empowers
geoscientists with an unprecedented ability to visualize large-scale
regional datasets at full resolution from a standard Linux(R) workstation,"
said Nicholas Purday, manager of Geophysical Technologies at Landmark. "The
NVIDIA Quadro FX 5800 graphics card has a more powerful GPU and superior
triangle performance, which make it possible for the GeoProbe application
to quickly render large surfaces, and allow us to move many
computing-intensive processes to the graphics card, significantly enhancing
the overall user experience." Landmark is an industry leading software and
technology services brand of Halliburton, one of the world's largest
providers of products and services to the energy industry.

    "The advanced textured graphics capabilities of the Quadro FX 5800 are
enabling CyberHeart to provide 3D radiosurgical target visualization and
definition tools for the purpose of treating cardiac arrhythmias," said
Thilaka Sumanaweera, CTO, CyberHeart. "Our applications are processing very
large data sets acquired by the state-of-the-art 64-slice CT scanners using
respiratory- and cardiac-gating. The Quadro FX cards provide us with the
extreme bandwidth necessary to support our cutting-edge technology, and
essentially, save lives." CyberHeart, Inc., is a medical device company
developing a non-invasive radiosurgical system for cardiac applications.

    The Quadro FX 5800 GPU features true 10-bit color enabling billions
rather than millions of color variations for rich, vivid image quality with
the broadest dynamic range. Professionals now benefit from viewing their
models with higher degrees of precision and realism never before possible.

    "Our customers are making important decisions about future products on
the basis of RTT-powered 3D real-time models," said Ludwig Fuchs, cofounder
and CEO of RTT. "The new Quadro FX 5800 will be the platform of choice to
bring that arena to the next level. Higher levels of realism, physical
correctness and large models are now made possible through a double number
of cores and a generous frame buffer." Realtime Technology AG, is a leading
supplier of real- time visualization technology and virtual prototyping
solutions to the automotive, aerospace, industrial and consumer goods
design industries.

    Pricing and Availability

    NVIDIA Quadro solutions are widely available through leading PC
manufacturers and workstation system integrators and NVIDIA channel
partners PNY Technologies (US and EMEA), Leadtek (APAC) and Elsa (Japan).
The Quadro FX 5800 graphics board has an MSRP of $3499 USD. For more
information about the full lineup of NVIDIA professional solutions please
visit http://www.nvidia.com/quadro.

    NVIDIA Corporation

    NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA) the world leader in visual computing
technologies and the inventor of the GPU, a high-performance processor
which generates breathtaking, interactive graphics on workstations,
personal computers, game consoles and mobile devices. NVIDIA serves the
entertainment and consumer market with its GeForce(R) products, the
professional design and visualization market with its Quadro(R) products,
and the high-performance computing market with its Tesla(TM) products.
NVIDIA is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif. and has offices throughout
Asia, Europe, and the Americas. For more information, visit http://www.nvidia.com.

    Certain statements in this press release including, but not limited to,
statements as to: the benefits, impact, power and scalability of NVIDIA's
Quadro FX 5800 graphics cards; impact of NVIDIA's Quadro FX 5800 graphics
cards on the GeoProbe R5000 and CyberHeart; and the availability and
pricing of NVIDIA's Quadro FX 5800 graphics cards are forward-looking
statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause
results to be materially different than expectations. Important factors
that could cause actual results to differ materially include: development
of more efficient or faster technology; design, manufacturing or software
defects; the impact of technological development and competition; changes
in consumer preferences and demands; customer adoption of different
standards or our competitor's products; changes in industry standards and
interfaces; unexpected loss of performance of our products or technologies
when integrated into systems as well as other factors detailed from time to
time in the reports NVIDIA files with the Securities and Exchange
Commission including our Form 10-Q for the fiscal period ended July 27,
2008. Copies of reports filed with the SEC are posted on our website and
are available from NVIDIA without charge. These forward-looking statements
are not guarantees of future performance and speak only as of the date
hereof, and, except as required by law, NVIDIA disclaims any obligation to
update these forward-looking statements to reflect future events or
circumstances.