What in the world is Tegra?

Tegra is Nvidia’s 1st foray into the mobile computing realm. Nvidia is the company that makes the awesome video cards for your desktops and laptops. Most higher end machines use some type of powerful GPU made by ether Nvidia or ATI. For instance, my Gateway FX laptop uses a GeForce 8800 GTS & my desktop uses a 9800 GTX. Why are GPU’s good for computing? Once again take a look at the laptop. In most laptops the CPU does the heavy lifting for the GPU also, this is called “integrated graphics”.  In the Gateway FX, a GPU handles the task of blasting pixels to the screen, allowing the CPU focus on more important stuff, like processing and cruching non visual data. A setup like this is called “discreet graphics”.

Everything above applies to phones as well, on a much smaller scale of course. Most phones and portable media players can barely handle standard-def content, much less HD. Tegra aims to change all of that with support for 720 & 1080P video, along with advanced 3D gaming capabilities. Tegra promises to revolutionize Phones, Digital Media Players and much more.  In the videos posted below, you will see that Tegra has chance to change the way mobile UI’s are thought of and used.

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Check out some of Tegras drop dead amazing specs

  • Processor and Memory Subsystem
    • ARM11 MPCore
    • 32-bit LP-DDR
    • NAND Flash support
  • HD AVP (High Definition Audio Video Processor)
    • 720p H.264 Baseline Profile Encode or Decode
    • 720p VC-1/WMV9 Simple & Main Profiles Decode
    • D1 MPEG-4 Simple Profile Encode or Decode
    • Supports multi-standard audio formats, including AAC, AMR, WMA, and MP3
    • JPEG Encode and Decode acceleration
  • ULP (Ultra Low Power) GeForce
    • OpenGL ES 2.0
    • Programmable Pixel Shader
    • Programmable Vertex and Lighting
    • Advanced 2D Graphics

    •        Display Subsystem

    • True dual-display support
    • 720p (1280×720) HDMI 1.3 support
    • FWVGA (864×480) LCD and SXGA (1280×1024) CRT support
    • Composite and S-Video TV output

    Wondering how this relates to Microsoft?

    Back when Nvidia launched Tegra,  Microsoft was one of their “featured partners”.  Tegra is also primed to launch in “mid 2009” right around the time that MS has few big launches. If everything goes according to plan, expect to see a plethora of devices running on Tegra sometime later this year. If Tegra runs as good as it looks… Sign me up!

    What about you, what do you think of Tegra?