Nvidia Tegra 2 hailed as Honeycomb CPU of choice ( Honeycomb is followon to Gingerbread )

The Register ^ | 20th December 2010 10:39 GMT | Tony Smith

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Google OS tablet reference design?

Samsung's Galaxy Tab 2 will run on Nvidia's Tegra 2.

So says Citigroup analyst Glen Yeung, by way of Barron's, who last week told investors that Samsung has “placed a sizeable order with Nvidia for Tegra 2 chips in the first half of 2011, geared for both tablets and smartphones”.

Yeung went on to claim that the Nvidia ARM-based system on a chip - which was launched at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) almost a year ago - forms the basis for the reference platform Google is testing Honeycomb - aka Android 3.0 - against. Honeycomb is expected to bring tablet-specific support to the Google OS.

Right now, Honeycomb isn't expected to debut until late Q1 2011. Whenever Honeycomb debuts, it puts Nvidia in a strong position to supply all the vendors awaiting Honeycomb in order to release their own tablet offerings.

That's probably why Ambrish Srivastava, a chips analyst with BMO Capital Markets, said last week that he expects Nvidia to power a number of tablets in 2011, according to a report by Forbes.

"Nvidia is clearly emerging as one of the top design wins,” he told investors after a trip to Asia's technology centres. ®

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

From Anandtech...Jan 2010:

NVIDIA Introduces dual Cortex A9 based Tegra 2

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In order to compete in that space you need a competent chip. Today NVIDIA is announcing its second generation Tegra SoC. It's creatively named the Tegra 2 and this is what it looks like in block diagram form:

The SoC is made up of 8 independent processors, up from 7 in the original Tegra. The first two are the most exciting to me - a pair of ARM Cortex A9 cores. These are dual-issue out of order cores from ARM running at up to 1GHz. If you thought the A8 was fast, these things should be much faster.

The original Tegra used a single ARM11 core. It was multi-core capable but the only version NVIDIA ever shipped only had a single ARM11. By now you know that ARM11 is unreasonably slow and thus you see my biggest problem with Tegra 1. Tegra 2 addresses this in a grand way. NVIDIA skipped over Cortex A8 entirely and went to what it believes is a more power efficient, higher performing option with the A9. I'll go deeper into the A9's architecture shortly, but to put it bluntly - A8 is dead in my eyes, Cortex A9 is what you want.

[smokingfrog]

Sweeet!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

From the Forbes article:

NVIDIA Seen As Big Winner In 2011 Tablets

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Dec. 13 2010 -

Next year looks to be much more productive in terms of mobile devices. Tegra chips have already been spotted in several soon-to-launch, highly anticipated gadgets, including Motorola’s first tablet and LG’s Android-based “Star” phone.

NVIDIA may have picked up another, more surprising customer recently: Samsung. Srivastava said he thinks the next Samsung Galaxy tablet will be based on an NVIDIA chip. Up to now, Samsung has relied on its own processors, which it calls Hummingbird, to power its Galaxy line of smartphones and tablets.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

A honeycomb graphic won’t be as striking as the Gingerbread graphic...

[refermech]

I prefer waffles!

[ShadowAce]

[topspinr]

On Dec 10th l purchased a Notionink tablet by the name of adam. There are no tablets currently available now or in the next 6 months that can compare to the adam, that includes the Ipad from apple.

The size is 10.1” and has the tegra 2 chip from Nvidia with 1GB memory and 1GB SLC memory, with 8GB of storage.

It uses the glass screen from Pixel Qi - scratch free and fingerprint free, with GPS, wifi and 3g.

It comes with Android ver 2.3 (Gingerbread) and can be updated to Honeycomb 2.4 when available.

Price for the high end adam is $599.00 Shipping date is approx. 20th of Dec.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

That is the one I have been interested in following....Any feedback from you would be very interesting!

[09Patriot]

honeycomb,honeycomb,honeycomb me like honeycomb

[antiRepublicrat]

Interesting strategy. Hummingbird (Samsung Galaxy) has an ARM core plus 2D/3D, and relies on the ARM’s SIMD to do the video encoding and decoding. Apple’s A4 adds hardware video decoding to save battery life. This goes further adding hardware video encoding. But it’ll be at the cost of an overall larger chip, but probably offset by Moore’s Law. IMHO, this will rock. No longer will video recording suck up your battery.

Apple had better have something serious in the works for the A5, or they’re going to be way behind.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Related thread:

TI Reveals OMAP4440 Specs: Dual 1.5GHz Cortex A9, 25% Faster GPU, HDMI 1.4 3D, 1080p60 (Tablets?)

and:

ARM Aims at Intel, Cortex A15 Headed for Smartphones, Notebooks and Servers

[antiRepublicrat]

I’m still not into the HDMI on a mobile device thing. First I question including a digital video out at all. I still still don’t personally know anyone who’s plugged his iPod or phone into a TV. But if you’re doing it, go with DisplayPort. You need an adapter cable for your phone’s HDMI out anyway, so you might as well go for the highest-capable video standard.

[topspinr]

Their first batch of about 100k has sold out

By the way it also has a HDMI connection for device to big screen.

You could watch 1080P streaming video on the adam.

Believe NI will be at 2011 CES as part of Nvidia or Pixel-Qi since they are not registered as a stand only.