Nvidia shows off Tegra chips, eyes mobile market

BEIJING, Jun. 2 (Xinhuanet) -- Nvidia on Sunday launched its new Tegra processors targeted at the market of next-generation mobile computers, media reported.

The company believes the Tegra 600 and Tegra 650 processors will power a new class of fast, small devices with long battery life that can surf the full Internet, play high-end games and display high-definition video.

Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors, but has been taking steps toward a mobile future since its purchase of PortalPlayer in 2006. The company is a member of the ARM universe, with an ARM11 processor core at the heart of the Tegra processors.

Nvidia's push with Tegra and Intel's own efforts with its Atom lineup of processors foreshadow a battle between two types of chip architectures for dominance in the nascent tiny-but-powerful computing market.

But Rayfield, general manager of Nvidia's mobile business, said Nvidia can carve out a niche by promoting the power consumption of its Tegra processors.

The Tegra 600 series processors won't consume more than a watt of power running at either 600MHz or 800MHz, while Atom is capable of exceeding that limit, according to Nvidia.

"ARM is coming from a position of having built the best performance-per-milliwatt devices for the last 10 years or more," Rayfield said. "I'm very comfortable that it's a battle being fought on their turf."

Prices for mobile Internet devices with Tegra would range from 200 - 250 U.S. dollars and be on store shelves by the holiday shopping season, Rayfield said.