NVIDIA Tegra 2 Tablets to Rule Mobile Computing this Year?

CES 2010 saw the unveiling of the 2nd generation of NVIDIA’s mobile computation platform – the NVIDIA Tegra 2. A few tablets that had this chipset at their hearts, were demo’d as well. This new platform is supposed to deliver 4 times the performance than the first generation of NVIDIA Tegra platform.

One of the most striking quality of this chipset is its support for 3D touchscreen interface. Sounds like gaming might be taken to a whole new level, with 3D action. NVIDIA graphics were used in the making of the 3D fiction “Avatar”. And this movie is supposed to be one of the best 3D graphics film made till date.

Tablets integrated with the NVIDIA Tegra 2 chipset, will offer high definition 1080p video playback. It offers compatibility with the Adobe Flash player 10.1.

Battery life is another area where the new NVIDIA chipset is supposed to excel. The power consumption is said to be lower than the previous generation platform. And hence better battery life can be expected. The Tegra 2 is quoted to deliver 16 hours of HD video playback and 140 hours of music, after a single charge.

When compared to smartphones, its not only the screen sizes and resolution that have received a boost, but also speed of processing and performance. Screen sizes are supposed to range from 5 to 15 inches. The resolution offered is said to be 4 to 8 times that of the smartphones. The ARM Cortex A9 dual core processor which can have a clock speed of up to 1GHz is employed in the NVIDIA chipset. There are also supposed to be 8 independent processors, handling web browsing, high-def video encoding & decoding and mobile 3D gaming.

Some of the NVIDIA Tegra 2 tablets that were revealed during CES 2010, Las Vegas, are the Asus tablet concept, the Wistron tablet, the Notion Ink tablet concept, the Viewsonic Alice 2 tablet. We’ll keep you posted about the release and pricing of these tablets. With the NVIDIA Tegra 2 tablets offering plenty on specs, will the Apple iPad be able to stand up against tough competition? Pricing of all the tablets will play a significant role in deciding this.

This YouTube video below shows the NVIDIA press conference at CES 2010.