CES 2011: NVIDIA Talks Tegra 2 and Outs "Project Denver" SoC
A little earlier today, in a jam packed meeting room in the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, we spent about an hour listening to NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang speak about the massive influx of mobile computing devices over the last few years and NVIDIA’s plans to better infiltrate the burgeoning market moving forward. During his address, Mr. Huang spoke almost exclusively about the company’s Tegra 2 processor and its capabilities and performance, although he also dropped a bombshell to close his talk about NVIDIA’s “Project Denver”—more on that one in a bit.
While discussing the mobile computing space, NVIDIA’s CEO stated that Tegra 2 will usher in the era of the “Super Phone”; which is essentially a smart phone with increased performance and extensive multimedia capabilities that include full 1080P video playback, the complete Internet, and “console like” gaming. Throughout his talk, Jen-Hsun explained that Tegra 2, which features dual ARM processor cores and GeForce graphics on a single SoC, will offer end users the kind of performance necessary to experience the full internet with true hardware accelerated Adobe Flash, enough processing performance for snappy multi-tasking, and the gaming chops to play not only casual portable games but more graphics intensive apps, including MMORPGs and other on-line games.
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Battery life wasn’t mentioned and we’re still not certain of LG plans (in any) to bring the Optimus 2X to the US market, but it was clear from the live demo that the Optimus 2X is very high performing device in light of the current crop of smart phones. The Optimus 2X handled true-1080P video playback, output to an HD TV, without a hitch.
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After extolling the virtues of Tegra 2 and thanking the myriad of partners who have worked with NVIDIA on the Tegra 2, Jen-Hsun Huang hastily dropped the big news that the rumors that have been swirling the last few years about NVIDIA developing their own processor have been true. The processor, which was developed under the codename “Project Denver”, however, is not x86, but rather a custom designed, high-performing ARM core that will target the HPC space. In its current form, ARM processor cores are used in a vast array of devices from mobile phones, to tablets, to set to boxes. But the low-power ARM architecture hasn’t been geared for the HPC space. NVIDIA aims to change that by pairing their custom core with a GPU on a single SoC. There weren’t many hard details disclosed, but we’re sure more news will trickle out over the coming months.
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