Nvidia Tegra 2 officially announced; 4x the power of its predecessor

Nvidia has formally announced the 40nm Tegra 2 chipset. The new chip combines a dual-core ARM Cortex A9 processor (running up to 1GHz speeds) with Nvidia graphics to create a platform expected to be used in a number of HD tablets, smartbooks and smartphones launching this year.

As you would expect, Tegra 2 can stream 1080p video, has HDMI-out and benefits from Flash Player 10.1 hardware acceleration. It does all this with an all day battery life. According to Nvidia, Tegra can deliver over 16 hours of HD video (140 hours of music) on a single charge – astonishing if true. Read more

Shootout: 1.6GHz Intel Atom vs. 500MHz dual-core Cortex A9 [Video]

For those doubting the threat that ARM poses to Intel in the portable space should watch the following video. It shows a 1.6GHz Intel Atom netbook pitted against a 500MHz dual-core Cortex A9 development board in a browser rendering test.

Both devices are running the same operating system, using the same browser and are running on the same corporate network. Whilst you may expect the ARM chip to severely lag the Atom, it’s amazing to see how close it keeps up to Intel’s CPU (especially as the Atom platform has integrated graphics which is lacking on the Cortex A9). Smartphones with the power of netbooks coming soon? Check out the video after the break. Read more