nVidia Preview 'Tegra' MID Platform

wild_berry writes "nVidia have previewed their Mobile Internet Device platform which will be officially unveiled at Computex in the next few days. The platform features CPU's named Tegra paired with nVidia chipset and graphics technology. Tegra is a system-on-a-chip featuring an ARM 11 core and nVidia's graphics technologies permitting 1080p HiDef television decode and OpenGL ES 2.0 3D graphics. Engadget's page has more details, such as the low expected price ($199-249), huge battery life (up to 130 hours audio/30 hours HD video) and enough graphics power to render Quake3 anti-aliased at 40FPS."

Imagine a Beowulf-Cluster...

[Kokuyo (549451)]

But seriously, this sounds interesting. If they actually manage to pull it off, this might actually make TV on the go a real possibility (compared to strain your neck trying to watch Sex and the City on your phone...).

Now the only question is, how heavy is the battery to allow for such a long lasting device. You can't tell me it actually is this efficient, if it boasts that kind of computational power.

Re:

[Svartalf (2997)]

Heh... Odds are, it's got the same performance profile in that regard, to the OMAP3 devices. And they're delivering that sort of muscle to the prototypes we're seeing from those devices- with estimated 10 hour operating times on a charge.

Re:

[qoncept (599709)]

"(compared to strain your neck trying to watch Sex and the City on your phone...)."

Yeah, I hate it when that happens. Not that those are the two things I hate most in the world or anything.

Re:Imagine a Beowulf-Cluster...

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

The CPU is one of the Cortex MPCores. Other devices with these IP cores at their heart use under 250mW (compared to 2-5W for Intel's 'low power' offerings). The GPU is likely to use more power when in heavy use, but I'd expect it to scale back well. For reference, the iPhone's GPU is almost identical to the 3D chip found in the Dreamcast, which got similar Quake 3 performance (note they don't specify a resolution for this).

Re:

[OrangeTide (124937)]

LCD backlight or OLED probably consumes the biggest slice of power anyways. Playing a movie using hardware acceleration and flash media is not that much of a power hog (compared to worse case).

Yer! ARM laptop

[jabjoe (1042100)]

I've been waiting for ARM laptop thing. Real battery life! Why do I need x86 compatibility? Give me battery life every time.

Re:Yer! ARM laptop

[bsDaemon (87307)]

x86 compat is less important for us slashdotter types because we can compile the vast majority of software that we use from sources for whatever platform (bsd, linux) and architecture (x86, arm, sparc) we're usuing.

The people who expect to be able to buy software to run on hardware that they also bought -- they might care -- just a little bit -- I would imagine.

Re:Yer! ARM laptop

[LWATCDR (28044)]

Maybe but maybe not.
Most smart phones don't use WindowsXP "I don't know of any that use an X86" and people do buy software for those.
If used a good Linux distro and then provided repositories than you would have your software.
A software package system that worked like iTunes would be an Ideal system.
Provide lost of free and pay software from an easy to use online store and you would have a great business model. Steam shows that it already works for games.
It should work just fine for this as well.
Of course this chipset could also be the heart of a new iPhone/iPod Touch as well.

Re:Yer! ARM laptop

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

And yet close to 100% of these people are quite happy with their mobile phone, which probably has at least a 200MHz ARM CPU, get upgraded four times as often as their PC, spends more time being interacted with by them than their PC, and doesn't contain an x86 chip or (for 93%) run Windows.

Re:

[bsDaemon (87307)]

But OP specifically was talking about laoptops, not phones. For phones, yes -- people understand you have to get whatever it is for that specific device.

Re:Yer! ARM laptop

[zeromorph (1009305)]

Yes, looks like a new round in the CISC (now represented by Intel Atom) vs. RISC (now represented by Tegra) flame war. Ars Teechnica had an interesting article [arstechnica.com] about the new relevance of the differences of the two architectures two weeks ago.

Re:

[Scootin159 (557129)]

Interesting that they say it has 'enough graphics power to render Quake 3 @ 40fps'... does Quake 3 actually run on any non win/x86 platform?

Re:

[hr.wien (986516)]

The Quake 3 source is released under the GPL, so yes. :)

Re:

[Yvan256 (722131)]

The real question is, at which resolution? Because 40 FPS @ 320x240 isn't that useful...

Re:Yer! ARM laptop

[CaptnMArk (9003)]

Also, proper Quake 3 requires 125fps

Re:

[Missing_dc (1074809)]

Nevermind Quake3, This sounds like it could run World of Warcraft(a special Arm version, of course). Combine this with an EVDO card and I'm set!!

Re:

[thue (121682)]

You can already buy a cheap ARM laptop here [bestlinkeshop.com].

Worth waiting for...

[LinuxGeek (6139)]

I almost bought an Asus EEE pc this weekend, this is worth waiting to see how it is implemented in consumer devices. Give me a small laptop type that can run linux and I'll buy one or two. Heck, 30 or 40 hours would be enough battery time, don't need 100.

Re:

[ooze (307871)]

Been waiting for something like this for years too. But considering nVidia's history, I don't think we will get proper linux drivers for this.

Re:Worth waiting for...

[freedumb2000 (966222)]

Then have a look at this little machine: http://openpandora.org/ [openpandora.org]

Sounds like the same advertising from the EEE...

[PC and Sony Fanboy (1248258)]

When I heard that a company was making an inexpensive computer with great battery life, adequete performance and it was going to be 'ultra portable', I was so happy! ... then they released it and it was more expensive than originally planned, and not quite as robust.

... and now nVidia is going to do the same thing to me.

Re:Sounds like the same advertising from the EEE..

[Svartalf (2997)]

Patience...

Pandora [openpandora.org] comes...and it is looking like it's going to largely deliver on the "promises" it makes.

Re:Sounds like the same advertising from the EEE..

[AnyoneEB (574727)]

Except Pandora promises at best a third the battery life. Then again, Pandora is due out very soon, and reading about both it sounds like Pandora is the type of machine nVidia would expect Tegra to be used in.

ffdshow or VLC at 1080p?

[TheMiddleRoad (1153113)]

If it can run ffdshow or VLC at 1080p then we're talking something special.

Nope, it's nVidia we talking about

[DrYak (748999)]

If it can run ffdshow or VLC at 1080p then we're talking something special.

Read again. The chip is made by nVidia. You can pretty much be sure that the decoding capability will be handled in BLOB.

At best, maybe they'll put some hooks in ffmpeg's library (or directly in VLC as an alternate engine) to call their BLOB to handle the accelerated decoding.

At worst you'll have to use a binary only nVidia-specific player. And given that the ARM+nVidia platform isn't going to be very popular fact, probably not a lot people are going to reverse engineer it (ala "Nouveau" project) - expect

Vista

[gbjbaanb (229885)]

I read an article about the Atom platform, which competes in this space. Apparently only the most powerful version of Atom would have enough oomph to run Vista, so can this nVidia MID handle it acceptably? (I know, the review mentioned it runs Windows Mobile, but I'm curious.)

Re:Vista

[Khyber (864651)]

Short answer: no.

Atom is x86 based (I think) whereas this is ARM-based. Vista isn't even ARM compatible.

Re:Vista

[neokushan (932374)]

Vista doesn't have an ARM version, you'll have to stick with Windows mobile for now.
However, TFA states (that's right, I actually read it) that nVidia is open to running other platforms, not just windows CE, so if enough interest is generated, they MIGHT actually have Linux running on it.
It's a chipset, though, not a device or anything so ultimately it would be up to the mobile manufacturers to decide what happens, providing nVidia has support for it.

Re:Vista

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

They aren't even in close to the same space. This is not x86, so won't run Windows. It is in the (well) under 500mW power bracket, while the Atom uses 2W idle and needs a very power-hungry northbridge. Intel are trying to tell everyone that Atom is competitive with ARM, but it's still an entire order of magnitude more power hungry for similar performance at the moment. The 'ten times less power than our competition' dig on the nVidia site is aimed directly at Intel.

Re:

[dave420 (699308)]

Nope. You can run Vista on any Atom, obviously some of the features will have to be disabled when running on the lower-level CPUs, but it's more than possible.

But Will It Run Linux?

[FurtiveGlancer (1274746)]

I'd certainly be willing to offer my meager talents to the effort for THAT kind of battery life. Will an ITIL metrics slide help? :/

Stick that in the next...

[saha (615847)]

iPhone 3.0. Actually the current iPhone uses Power VR MBX and the new one is rumored to be using the Power VR SGX graphics. The Power VR VXD video IP core can supposedly "supports 1080p H.264 Main/High Profile decoding, as well as VC-1 and a variety of other standards" http://www.beyond3d.com/content/news/638 [beyond3d.com] http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/04/30/apples_bionic_arm_to_muscle_advanced_gaming_graphics_into_iphones.html [appleinsider.com]

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations, you are the first apple fanboy who tries to steal the thread with your MacRumors about the iPhone.

PowerVR vs. nVidia

[DrYak (748999)]

The PowerVR vs. nVidia comparison is approximately the same as the ARM vs. Intel Atom.

nVidia are producing classical graphic cores.

PowerVR are employing specific techniques (Tile-Based Deferred rendering) which enable them to cram the same performance using a lot less transistors and running at lower clocks.

The nVidia SoC is probably more targeted toward sub-notebooks, big multimedia PDAs (As a example, the TapWave Zodiac was based on an ARM and an ATI Imageon running PalmOS 5) and small internet-enabled ap

Re:...on a phone....

[LordMyren (15499)]

you manage to miss every relevant point in the book in a very long elaboration of the status quo.

nvidia and amd and every consumer electronics company in the world are doing their damnedest to break that status quo and make your phone and everything else a capable all purpose platform. this nvidia chip can go in mobile phones, but its got a video engine capable of 1680x1050. why is that? because ~~***YOUR PHONE***~~ needs that display? good god no. the point is, we're seeing new embedded devices we expect to function in dual roles of a) phone and b) computer replacement.

long shaders let you do tasks like indirection in ways unfathomable for simpler setups. this in turn lets you run more application code in gpgpu land. this lets you save power. even if you disavow the use of it, i fail to understand how anyone could claim the lack of the feature is a good thing. it requires more advanced caching / buffering, but that should not be a dealbreaker. especially when we start loading our chips with massive onboard caches -- a secret well loved by the gamecube for example.

Quake 3

[ELTaNiN (1297561)]

May it run Doom instead?

Quake3 anti-aliased at 40FPS

[frovingslosh (582462)]

enough graphics power to render Quake3 anti-aliased at 40FPS

Sounds like an interesting toy, but aren't we twisting the measurements a bit here? Quake 3 came out in 1999. Any modern graphic chip has the graphics power to render Q4 at much faster than 40 FPS. Of course, there's the important question of "do you have the computing power behind the graphics power to make the game playable without lag or stutter on anything but a non-trivial map?", as is "do you have the system resources to get a new map sta

Re:Quake3 anti-aliased at 40FPS

[eebra82 (907996)]

Sounds like an interesting toy, but aren't we twisting the measurements a bit here? Quake 3 came out in 1999. Any modern graphic chip has the graphics power to render Q4 at much faster than 40 FPS.

You are missing the point. It's not as much about how fast it can run Quake 3, but rather that it is capable of doing so reasonably well. You cannot compare it to modern graphics engines simply because this is a processor that promises to deliver reasonable performance at incredibly low voltages.

As for the resolution, I agree that it's rather strange that they left out the details on this, but we can assume that it's going to be something like 640x400, which is still very impressive.

Re:Quake3 anti-aliased at 40FPS

[by Anonymous Coward]

It's at 800x480, and the Quake3 port was a quick hack to test the chip, not a serious performance-tuned effort (i.e. it isn't using the vertex shaders at all, and the pixel shaders are using a very crude translation scheme from Q3's shader language). I'm fairly sure I could get a tuned port to run 100's of frames/sec on the same hardware. More modern games (Doom3/Quake4) would actually run better, but we didn't have the source to play with (and the game datasets are probably a bit large for the platform).

Re:

[Bert64 (520050)]

A networkable quake3 that you can play over wifi with random people on the train would be fun.
Infact, a phone with enough power to play good multiplayer games, wifi, the ability to auto detect other devices within range, and most importantly the ability to remote boot games from other users (so you dont need to rely on finding people with the same games) would be awesome...
Just imagine the commute to work, and finding random other people on the train to play games with.

More details

[Meorah (308102)]

for those who actually enjoy RTFA'ing and want a bit more comprehensive info than a BBC fluff piece, nvidia's marketing page, and some pretty vids on engadget:

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/37729/135 [tgdaily.com]

The APX 2500 is far more interesting to me than the 600/650. Qualcomm and Broadcom better watch their backs.

Stationary But With Linux Drivers

[Doc Ruby (173196)]

I don't need mobile TV. What I need is a few cheap, reliable, fanless, low power media terminals to stream HD video date from my Gbps LAN server, convert it into 1080p HDMI/DVI for my big TVs.

So what I need is some Tegra PCs with minimal HW (maybe a DVD/Blu-Ray player, but no floppy, modem, or really even a HD - just 8GB Flash and PXE boot) that's mainly LAN and HDMI/DVI connections, running Linux, and full-featured Linux drivers. Preferably open-source drivers that we can tweak to work right, but which get full performance from the HW.

Or...

[Bert64 (520050)]

Perhaps this technology could be used to produce a very small quiet and low power consuming mythtv box...The noise of my current system can be annoying when trying to watch a movie, but i didn't want to skimp on the cpu because i wanted to play 1080p video on it.

Re:

[DingerX (847589)]

It does look really cool, and has great specs, but Windows CE? Think agile here. The CE platform not only builds in a couple years of lag, it also incorporates those internal Microsoft turf "discussions" to ensure this Windows product doesn't compete with others.

Re:Closed :(

[LuxMaker (996734)]

Who gives a shit? (2)

Over half the slashdotters here maybe?
Open source of course allows for more flexibility as well as a review for vulnerabilities.

Re:

[Fred_A (10934)]

Who gives a shit? (2)

From what I've seen, pretty much anyone who's already run Windows CE (or whatever it's called nowadays) on their little gadgets.
None of them seemed that eager to repeat the experiment. Admittedly, the consensus was that : 1. it had gotten quite a bit better and 2. it still didn't work properly.

YMMV though I guess.

Re:Media player.

[Lord Ender (156273)]

Is that an auto-generated comment? Are you a bot?

The article is about a new processor for mobile devices. Asking if it supports ogg is like asking if your ethernet cable supports MP3.

Re:Media player.

[gEvil (beta) (945888)]

The article is about a new processor for mobile devices. Asking if it supports ogg is like asking if your ethernet cable supports MP3.

How can I tell if it supports mp3? I looked at the printing on the side of the cable and didn't see anything about mp3? Does that mean I can't download mp3s with this cable? Where can I get an mp3 ethernet cable?

(Sorry, been spending too much time over at AVS Forum, where questions like this are asked daily and in all earnestness.)

Re:Media player.

[Hal_Porter (817932)]

I can sell you an isotopically pure copper Ethernet cable which I have personally tested for warm sound when streaming MP3s.

Normal price, $100 per foot. But I have a 50% discount for AVS Forum posters. And special this month I'll throw in an ethernet cable impedance tester to tell you when you need to replace your cables due to oxidation.

Re:

[Svartalf (2997)]

All it'll take is a Linux derived version of the thing- considering that most OGG players are software based, all it'll take is an ARM Linux distribution and the source will be quickly ported from the Maemo or Ubuntu Mobile trees if needed (not that this will be the case...).