Analysts Surprised, Kindle Fire To Use TI Processor Instead of NVIDIA’s Tegra 3
If you caught our coverage of Amazon’s new Kindle and Kindle Fire HD announcements, you may have noticed that the new Kindle Fire HD includes a TI OMAP 4470 processor. If you were surprised to see that Amazon didn’t opt for the NVIDIA Tegra 3 chip, you weren’t alone.
According to Reuters, a number of industry analysts had expected Amazon to use the Tegra 3 processor in the new Kindle Fire HD tablets and were taken aback to find that the company stuck with TI.
For example, Moor Insights & Strategy’s Patrick Moorhead (formerly of AMD) said “They probably should have gone with Tegra but they (Amazon) have a history with TI”, and he further noted that gamers might be turned off by the TI processor that they believe won’t be on par with the Tegra 3’s graphics capabilities.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announcing the Kindle Fire HD (Image credit: Slate)
Patrick Wang of Evercore noted that the exclusion of Tegra 3 is indicative of the intense competition in the mobile processor market, where companies like TI and Qualcomm have dug in.
The Tegra 3 processor has found its way into marquee devices including Google’s Nexus 7 tablet and Microsoft’s impending Surface tablets, and we’ve seen firsthand how well it performs in our own testing. However, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos believes that the TI OMAP 4470 offers superior processing power and bandwidth, so the Kindle family will remain married to TI for the foreseeable future.
According to Reuters, a number of industry analysts had expected Amazon to use the Tegra 3 processor in the new Kindle Fire HD tablets and were taken aback to find that the company stuck with TI.
For example, Moor Insights & Strategy’s Patrick Moorhead (formerly of AMD) said “They probably should have gone with Tegra but they (Amazon) have a history with TI”, and he further noted that gamers might be turned off by the TI processor that they believe won’t be on par with the Tegra 3’s graphics capabilities.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announcing the Kindle Fire HD (Image credit: Slate)
Patrick Wang of Evercore noted that the exclusion of Tegra 3 is indicative of the intense competition in the mobile processor market, where companies like TI and Qualcomm have dug in.
The Tegra 3 processor has found its way into marquee devices including Google’s Nexus 7 tablet and Microsoft’s impending Surface tablets, and we’ve seen firsthand how well it performs in our own testing. However, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos believes that the TI OMAP 4470 offers superior processing power and bandwidth, so the Kindle family will remain married to TI for the foreseeable future.
