NVIDIA really has a technical wonder in the Tegra APX 2600 chipset, and is more than happy to show it off, with a myriad of tech demos on display here at MWC. Some of this they showed off
back in June of last year, but it's no less impressive -- there aren't really any mobile devices out there capable of this stuff right now. Still, we're here for the new, and
NIVIDA showed up with Android running on one of its proof-of-concept units, and with another unit pumping out 1080p video, with a claimed 10 hours of battery life at that task. NVIDIA says it took them just a few weeks to port Android to the system, and we found it already quite snappy and even usable on the capacitive touchscreen-ed device. We also saw the forthcoming Android-running Yulong N8 and IAC S2 Tegra APX phones, along with an untitled CompalCom set -- they were all in non-working prototype form, but it's clear this chipset isn't
just for MIDs. Check it all out in the videos after the break and the gallery below!
posted Feb 17th 2009 10:02AM
And what is the difference with the Zii chip from Ziilabs?
Is it true that after you use this handset and put it in your pants it will set them on fire?
liar liar
Marco,
Well although this is nice and impressive, the Ziilabs ZMS 05 is capable of much more than that. Remember ZiiLabs Zii chip is flexible and programmable to anything you want to do.
ONE of the demonstrated capabilities was the HD video showed at the previous post.
Therefore, its not tied to just Video processing.
What I would like to see is how the Tegra matches with the Zii in power consumption based on the same task.
Another thing to notice is how the Zii does multiple things and mostly more than the Tegra. Creative have already paired up with OEMs and hopefully we can get some more comparisons around them both.
So I think the Zii is a bit more of a win here.
@Varuna
They just showed Zii a little while ago while Nvidia was shown a year ago and is a perfectly working device, though big as a brick (a real brick, not a big phone or WinMo communicator). I think that brick is a reference platform in a piece of plastic.
I'd love to see Zii vs Tegra some time soon but something tells me we won't see Zii in actual devices till 2010 while Tegra is promised to appear as soon as mid-2009 (by Nvidia's words).
I think that microsoft (will) give money to Samsung and LG in order to avoid much more Android systems like this one.
Dear Jesus,
I know there was a time I didn't believe in you.
I'm sorry, you've made made a believer now.
Now please make the nice man put it into a cheap tablet pc before I graduate.
Ttyl
wasnt jesus. sorry
You sure have a funny way of spelling Jen-Hsun.
I wanted this phone since I saw it months back!
can't wait to see what it can do!
its not a phone its a chipset
looks like a phone to me... jk...
everyone who has eWood over this has it because of nVidia's powerful chipset.
iPhone buttraped.
like an altar-boy
Well the mobile device sector is definitely going to start heating up now. Now all we need is a real competitor for ARM.
Are there any ARM competitors left? Renesas offers chips with similar functionality
(and IMHO superior processing power at equal clockrates with the SH-Mobile line)
but outside of Japan they're essentially unknown; and the surviving MIPS users
have focussed on networking instead (Cavium, Broadcom, ...). The only other MIPS
user I know with a "Mobile-y" featureset (the Alchemy line) is a generation behind
in terms of features.
Well, Intel's trying to get Atom's platform power down to the ARM range, but the problem is, Cortex-A8 gets the PROCESSING power up where it's harder for the low-power Atom models (stuff like the Z500 and such) to compete on speed, and the A8 is better on power, too.
There's a Dual Core ARM now.
Listen... I've had dual arms for years. The only things that could replace these babies are chainsaws or machineguns, not some new-fangled computing device.
Same old demo as last year's MWC. nVidia's going to have a hard time against Qualcomm. Not a single Handset with Tegra devices announced after one year of hype...
Actually at the last MWC, they said the first Tegra devices won't be before 18 months, which means they are right on schedule for a summer 09 release.
Everyone is planning their top phones around the iPhone (HD?) release.
No they said (and it was plastered all over their website and pdfs wich I still have) that the first Tegra devices will be available buy the end of 2008. Now it's changed to mid-2009 and still no announcement in sight. So that's more than 6 months late.
I get the impression that manufactures are scared of this and the Ion platform. Both of them make a lot of much higher priced stuff instantly obsolete. I hope I'm wrong and we see the Tegra and the Ion coming out soon.
We are probably going to see lots of IO design wins in the coming months IMO. Tegra? not so much. Why go for Tegra (ARM11 cpu/fpu+nVidia GPU only) when you can get SnapDragon (ARM11cpu/fpu+AtiGPU+IO+3Gradio+GPS etc).
Ike turner:
- Tegra is much lower power. Incomparably lower power.
- Tegra renders 3D graphics a lot better, take a look at the Toshiba's Snapdragon gaming video, and choppy 3D UI, even though -on paper- Snapdragon is faster.
While snapdragon was struggling to render the choppy 3D transitions on the new Toshiba phone, Tegra has no problem rendering the Opera browser in 3D waves while scrolling.... it's really incomparable performance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0U_Zzcwc10
Just shill and stop believing nVidia's PR hype for a second. And please don't compare a real product (TG01) and nVidia's protoype.
So far Tegra is jsut hype and nothing else. Or maybe you just work for nVidia...
Actually snapdragon has ARMv7 based CPU. It is called scorpion and is something in between cortexA8 and A9. It combines integer performance of cortex A8 and A9 floating point performance thanks to 128bit NEON instructions. If everything should go right snapdragon should offer better CPU performance than competing A8 based SoC's until A9 comes with OoOE.
Considering that nvidias show off UI is just a custom made skin/application for winCE I wouldn't expect similar performance on winmo. It serves it cause and toshiba's device is probably totally not optimised for hardware graphic acceleration yet so I wouldn't judge its performance until we see final version/revision.
SNAPDRAGON IS BASED ON ARM CORTEX-A8, NOT ARM11!
Although the Nvidia Tegra may have an excellent GPU bult-in, the PowerVR SGX is more than capable, and why would you want a dual-core ARM11 when the Cortex-A8 is already out and Cortex-A9 on the way in a year.
Does anyone know if you can buy one of these devices anywhere?
"Still, we're here for the new, and NIVIDA showed up with Android running on one of its proof-of-concept units"
I'm going to take a stab at this and say you can NOT buy them any where.
are we going to have a massive heat sink and fans to cool this thing down?
LOL!!
OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD.
It's happening.
No not yet. :(
Here's a MUCH MORE IMPRESSIVE Tegra demo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0U_Zzcwc10
It's months old, but a lot smoother and you can see how powerful it is when it 3D renders Opera browser while scrolling... crazy
Wouldn't it be really cool if your phone had the processor and memory of a PC? You could bring it home, put in a docking station and run your monitor, keyboard, and mouse with just the phone. Or you could have the laptop that is just a docking station for your phone (like in the video).
We almost have the technology now but again it would undermine the PC business. PC makers are already struggling to make money. To me this doesn't make sense for overall growth and profits of a company. I hope we see all of this soon anyway though.
well there you go, that laptop mid/phone integration is just what i need, i mean y usually need a bt keyboard and would love a bt display for my phone, integrating it with a laptop looks pretty cool, and if someone could come up with a way to be able to switch between the laptops interface and the phones in the same screen that would be even better
Now let's hope the manufacterers can put a nice shell arounds this chip before my contract expires.
I don't know, Android seems like a good OS but if it wants to compete with WebOS, Mobile OS X, etc. its gonna need some flashier icons and I would like to see more devices and carriers before taking a plunge. I've been hearing about tegra for a while now.
Nvidia will probably (/hopefully) take the Tegra UI to Android as well...
I think you're going to keep hearing about it and not actually seeing it.
I agree. The Android icons are far too "toyish", and generally ugly. But again, it's FREE.
But yeah I would love future porters to modify it JUST A BIT to look better. It won't cost a lot, and it's open source so this could be the easiest skin ever.
a much better theme for android, just look at the pics
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=482799
OK, it's official: I'm inlove.
Hope they release sometime sooner than Q3 tho... :(
...so creative does this with the zii...
...and its 'not very impressive'...
...and nvidia does it with a less capable chip and engadget creams its pants...
...hmm...
...whats the word to describe engadgets bias...
...oh thats right...
...doucherific...
Notice however, that although the Zii can do stuff like this, it's much bigger.
Yes, there are versions of the Zii that are just as big as this, but we haven't seen any real footage of those.
(Don't believe me? Just look at the videos of it and look at the board that's powering it...)
Yeah, nice video, now release some phones to the public already, please!!!
I'm not too sure about Android being so great. It's supposed to be free, so is much cheaper for manufacturers to use, but what about the T-mobile G1, it was and still is damn expensive like the rest of the top smartphones and for the same cash, I bought the best netbook on the planet - Asus N10J with vista, xp, external dvd +-\Rw, Nvidia Geforce 9300, 8 hour battery life, 2 year warranty, 250GB hard drive and lots more. These damn phones are overpriced, no wonder the manufacturers did so bad last year.
IMO the ui of Android sux, when is someone going to put their own one on top of Android like most of the best Winmo phones.
As for the ziilabs chip, looks similar spec to tegra, but nowhere is there performance figures like mhz/ghz and the graphics are probably not as good as tegra's.
Blah blah... EVERY trade show I go to NVIDIA shows Tegra, with NO design wins and a price point to handset mfr's that keep most away. NVIDIA's mobile phone team can design a good chip but they can't bloody well sell it NOR get any Design Wins. Jensen needs to hire some real handset chipset guys not some crack in desktop GPU guys (and yes I've met their sales team - bunch of idiots who just don't listen to ANY of the handset mfr's)
What's really amusing is that they're trying to build handsets that are probably more powerful than netbooks. Nothing wrong with that, but I think some companies are getting just a wee bit carried away with this computer/cellphone in your pocket concept.
Great idea to have a device that you can pull out and hook up to your HDTV to play videos or games.
Getting carried away?
You are arguing against more power, even when they say they can pull 10 hours off playing HD content or games with this chip?
Are you kidding me?
Thank God the devices coming out this year are leaving behind the iPhones of yesteryear in the dust where they belong.
i personally would much rather have something much bigger with crappier hardware that only lasts for 1.5 hours....
Yea, that's cute and all but when will this thing, if ever, be able to be in my hands?
I'm really impressed with the battery life numbers, and hope they don't turn out to be exaggerations. Can't wait to start seeing phones with these.
Seems like this chipset would be a win for the customer that Dell would appeal to. That or maybe NVidia just needs to dive into the hardware arena finally. With that skin they showed off before it seems like a logical move. All it needs is a sliding QWERTY and I'm not only in, but I'm tossing my laptop to the curb!!
I was wondering if we'd ever see tegra based mid's. Guess this with Android is win.
Wonder how expensive it'll be?
Dear Nvidia
You have sold me on this idea. HD video, quake 3, and full 3D multitouch browsing, i want it.
Now when and where can i buy it? It will probably cost a lot, but i dont care since i dont have a laptop anyway.
Give me a sign nvidia!
PS: dont forget to put some gaming buttons on the thing so we can actually play games on it.
===
Seriously though, i want this thing, ASAP. But since there still isnt any developer/provider/model known im afraid this will come somewhere very late in 2009, if it doesnt get pushed back to 2010 :(
HTC wants this in one of their phones by the end of this year ... so i would say that itll cost alot and only come out for the russian market ... poor poor usa :(
tegra ftw, i cant wait till i can have a pc in my pocket, that would be amazing.
makes me wonder if nvidia scored any design wins with apple on the next iphone iteration since they already scored on the macbook designs... then i might probably consider an iphone otherwise no dice i'll wait for winmo 7.
I hope they tool with Android to make it look like that incredible WinMo skin they've demoed for the last year. So impressive. This video shows the menu opening with just as much chop as on the G1 - which is, I'm sure, far less powerful than a device like this boasting a Tegra. Tegra impresses me, and it's the reason I'm holding out for a new phone at the moment.
That, and I don't think the iPhone 3G is enough of a jump to upgrade from the original. Every time I've put them side by side and ran speed comparisons, the 1st gen is mere seconds behind (both with good reception). Not worth the $200 + extra monthly fees for 3G. If they do release something new this year, it better be more impressive than the last jump.
Either way, I'm more interesting in seeing more from Android and Tegra.
Can ZiiLabs/nVidia/Intel do video editing on the fly?
Movidia's (http://www.movidia.com) MA1110 can, and much more.
Demo: http://www.youtube.com/movidiacorp
In the last video, at about 27s, the speaker says that the device is running Windows CE.
Isn't that funny ? ;-)
i think i just busted one in class reading this