Nvidia ‘Kai’ To Tackle Expensive Tablets Like iPad
Nvidia
is touting the ability of its Tegra 3-based Kai platform to allow for much
cheaper tablets to challenge the Apple iPad
Nvidia
executives are readying a major push into the iPad-dominated tablet space,
after they revealed an Android-based platform called “Kai”, which also plans to
use Microsoft’s Windows RT operating system when it’s rolled out later this
year.
The
company is looking to leverage its ARM-based chip technology to enable
high-performance and power-efficient tablets that will cost significantly less
than Apple’s iPad and
the host of Android-based devices already on the market, making tablets more
cost-effective for many consumers who can’t afford the current systems.
Cheap Tablets?
The
Kai platform is designed to leverage the company’s Tegra 3 chip to
offer quad-core tablets that Nvidia officials say will run Google’s Android 4.0,
or Ice Cream Sandwich, mobile operating system and cost about $199 (£127),
significantly less than the $499 (£319) starting price for an iPad.
Rob
Csonger, vice president of investor relations at Nvidia, unveiled Kai during a lengthy review of the company’s products at the GPU
Technology Conference 17 May. The quad-core Tegra 3 CPU is a cornerstone of
Nvidia’s growing mobile strategy, which covers both smartphones and tablets.
Csonger noted that in 2011 – the year the company introduced its mobile
business – there were 18 smartphone designs, all based on the dual-core
Tegra 2.
This year there will be 29 new smartphone designs using
Nvidia technology, with 22 based on Tegra 3, he said, adding that the strategy
will be to migrate from high-end devices into the mainstream. This year, the
company also is turning its attention to tablets
Csonger
noted that after the iPad was released, device makers came out with numerous
Android-based tablets, but that many were too expensive. Amazon’s Android-based
Kindle Fire came out last year and has dominated the Android tablet market, but
he said many reviews said the devices had a good price point but disappointing
performance.
Nvidia is hoping to bridge the gulf between performance and
price, Csonger said.
“Our strategy on Android is simply to enable quad-core tablets
running Android Ice Cream Sandwich to be developed and brought out to market at
the $199 (£127) price point,” he said. “The way we do that is a platform we’ve
developed called Kai. So this uses a lot of the secret sauce that’s inside
Tegra 3 to allow you to develop a tablet at a much lower cost, by using a lot
of innovation that we’ve developed to reduce the power that’s used by the
display and use lower-cost components within the tablet.”
Windows RT
Csonger didn’t give any details about who will develop the
devices or when they’ll hit the market.
Toshiba on 24 May rolled out the AT300 tablet, which is powered
by the Tegra 3 chip. The 10.1-inch tablet runs Android 4.0, but its starting
price of about $500 (£319) is more akin to the iPad than the device envisioned
by Nvidia.
During his talk, Csonger
said the second prong of Nvidia’s tablet push will come with Windows RT,
the version of Windows 8 that will support system-on-a-chip (SoC)
architectures from
ARM. ARM’s chip designs are found in most smartphones and tablets, and are
manufactured by such vendors as Nvidia, Qualcomm and Samsung Electronics.
Windows RT will be the first version of the OS that doesn’t run on systems
powered by x86 chips made by Intel or Advanced Micro Devices.
The new operating system
signals the “end of the Windows and
Intel – the Wintel
– monopoly” in PCs, he said. Windows RT will enable a new generation of PC and
PC-like devices that will offer new models and designs that are more mobile and
more energy-efficient, Csonger said. “It changes the PC,” he said.
Via TechweekEurope
Comments
Post a Comment
Be sure to check back again because I do make every effort to reply to your comments here. Karibu :)