Nvidia’s quad-core test tablet code named “Kal-El” is set to launch in s tablet this coming fall. Kal-El’s speed, named after Superman, is said to be 5x the speed of the Tegra 2, Nvidia’s current dual-core CPU on the market.Nvidia tellsAndroidCentral:
“Project Kal-El-powered tablets are coming this Fall, and phones around the CES 2012 timeframe.”
That translates to phones in Spring or summer. Originally, Nvidia said at CES 2011 we were going to see the tablet in August, but we’ve learned to never go off a company’s timeframe. Will the Kal-El be dubbed Tegra 3?
Check out AndroidCentral’s video of the Kal-El below:
In what is another indication of a rumored Amazon tablet, Taiwanese trade publication, DigiTimes, this morning quoted sources from the supply chain who said Amazon has become the second largest buyer of tablet parts as component suppliers are lining up to provide parts for Amazon’s seven- and ten-inch slates. That’s a notable change from previous reports asserting Apple had gobbled up pretty much the entire supply of tablet parts. The Amazon devices are apparently due for a fourth quarter launch and the online retail giant is targeting to ship four million tablet PCs this year.
The publication named suppliers which include an unnamed processor from Nvidia, gravity sensors from Sitronix and touch panels from Wintek (also an Apple supplier) in addition to J Touch and Chunghwa Picture Tubes. Note that the mention of the seven-inch Amazon tablet probably means a new Kindle e-reader while the ten-incher most likely refers to a brand new Android-powered tablet said to be integrated with their cloud stores carrying mobile apps, music, movies, e-books and other digital warez. A Retrevo survey indicated that 79 percent of buyers would consider an Amazon tablet if priced less than $250. Apple is said to be considering cheaper components for next iPad amid the increasing pricing pressure in the market.
Huang Jen-Hsun, Nvidia’s co-founder and CEO, predicts tablets will outperform mobile PCs five years from today, echoing a similar sentiment from UK fabless chip maker ARM Holdings. The Tegra revenue could even surpass Nvidia’s GPU business, he tells chatting with reporters at a Computex press conference in Taipei, Taiwan. The CEO dismissed Intel’s latest mobile strides by expressing pessimism about their re-newed focus on tablet and smartphone silicon. Taiwanese trade publication DigiTimes quoted Jen-Hsun as saying that “consumers do not care whether their products use x86- or ARM-based processor”, adding:
As for the impact bring by the tablet PC, Huang pointed out that PC and tablet PC each has its own unique functionality; therefore, the traditional notebook should not see any danger of being replaced. However, netbook, which does not have a full functionality as a traditional PC, is being impacted deeply by tablet PC.
Nvidia, of course, is betting big on ARM-branded processor designs (versus Intel’s desktop x86 and mobile Atom architectures) that dominate the smartphone industry and are slowly but surely becoming a norm in the tablet space. Tegra chips typically combine ARM processing cores and Nvidia’s custom graphics cores. Even the iPad’s A5 chip is custom-designed around ARM’s CPU blueprints and the graphics unit licensed from Imagination Technologies. Nvidia’s technology roadmap is pretty convincing and they’ve been working their way up the mobile chain. The company is set to become the leading silicon provider for mobile gadgets…
Asus yesterday unveiled the Eee Pad Slider, a gadget designed around Nvidia’s Tegra 2 chip.
For all the talk about the graphical prowess of so-called supertablets coming later this year with Nvidia’s Tegra 3 chip inside, we’ll have to do for the time being with the old-fashioned Tegra 2 devices. That may not be such a bad deal, because Nvidia’s dual-core Tegra 2 is a capable piece of silicon that can produce some remarkable visuals.
TouchArcade pointed at Shadowgun, a Madfinger-produced game for Android devices that takes full advantage of the Tegra 2 chip, courtesy of the Unity engine. The video you see above shows console-quality graphics running natively on a Tegra 2-based Android tablet. And yes, Apple fans, it’s coming to the iPad/iPhone near you as well. Another in-game video follows below.
A few months back, we unveiled Project Kal-El – our next-gen Tegra super chip – as the world’s first mobile quad-core processor. Kal-El combines a battery-friendly, powerhouse of a quad-core processor with a 12-core NVIDIA GPU that supports 3D stereo.
Jen-Hsun Huang, the CEO of graphics giant Nvidia, sees Android-driven tablets powered by his company’s speedy processors overtaking Apple’s iPad in about the same time-frame it took Android smartphones to beat the iPhone, he told Reuters:
The Android phone took only two and a half years to achieve the momentum that we’re talking about. I would expect the same thing on Honeycomb tablets.
The comment is a 180-degree turn from Huang’s previous analysis which blamed lackluster sales of Android tablets on the lack of software richness, sub-par marketing and high price points, to name a few. A Jefferies analysis (see tablet below the fold) echoes this sentiment, conceding that a small percentage of users are currently considering buying an Android tablet over iPad. Nevertheless, Android tablets are expected to catch up next year, the survey notes.
If Android slates are to zoom past Apple’s device, Huang now argues, more apps are needed, especially high-quality games and entertainment titles. He suggested that Android vendors iterate Honeycomb devices using Nvidia’s next-generation Tegra processor code-named Kal-El. Plugged-in sources describe the chip as a screamer…
