nVIDIA Coming To Android

Details

Published on Monday, 17 May 2010 14:31

When it comes to desktop computers and gaming, there really is only two brands of graphic cards you consider buy which are ATI cards or nVIDIA cards. nVIDIA has dabbled in the mobile sector on and off for awhile now and announced today that they will be building GPUs for the next generation of Android phones which us gamers should rejoice about!

nVIDIA has said it will be putting Tegra 2 GPUs inside third generation Android phones. According to nVIDIA this will start to happen in Q3 and Q4 of this year no less. With the rate current hardware is improving in Android phones, this means we will start to see some real gaming power with Android devices. We already have the EVO and Samsung Galaxy S which both boost huge improvements in both power and internal storage/memory allowing for large games to be installed without worrying about using up all your storage for one game.

Here is a quote from nVIDIA CEO and President Jen-Hsun Huang:

“Although it made sense for the first-generation androids to use available phone processors, the follow-on generations of Android are really going to go after performance,” said Huang. “And iPhones are out there, the iPhone 4G is coming, the iPad is obviously a revolutionary product. The bar is pretty high for all of the mobile players, and so they need a processor that can keep up with the A4. If not, be much better than what the A4 can do because they have to take on the leader in the space.

“And so I think the second-generation Tegra has been doing incredibly well because Android is doing incredibly well. So we’re going to come to market with the second-generation Tegra with the third-generation Android.“

Quick List Of Tegra 2 Features:

• Dual-core ARM Cortex -A9 MPCore Processor
• Full High Definition Multimedia
• Ultra Low Power NVIDIA Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)
• NVIDIA Low Power Management Architecture

This will compete directly with the upcoming iPhone 4G and the iPad that is currently out and as we all know, competition is always good for the consumer and in this case, gamers!  For a full list of Tegra 2 features and specs you can check out nVIDIA official Tegra 2 website. Any other guesses as what we could end up seeing inside Android phones in the near future?

Update April 20, 2010: Engadget got a hold of a prototype Android tablet made by Foxconn running one of the Tegra 2 chips from nVIDIA. While this didn't boot fully into the Android OS, there was some gaming action available on it which is what matters to us! Check out the video they made of a 3D football game running on it.

In case you were curious about the tablet's specs, it has 1GB of RAM, 1GHz ARM Cortex 9 CPU, a front-facing camera, and the WSVGA screen measures 8.9-inches. And just to clarify, even though in the video you hear the guy ask about it being a Tegra 2 and you hear a 'No', it actually is a Tegra 2 which Gizmodo later confirmed.

Source: Engadget

• < Prev
• Next >