Tegra

Nvidia's chief executive officer is emphatic that his company has a strategy for building processors beyond its mainstay graphics chips.

During an interview with CNET, Jen-Hsun Huang addressed an issue with the company's chips and spoke about ongoing Intel litigation.

On Thursday, Nvidia reported a second-quarter net loss of $141 million, or 25 cents per share, worse than the net loss of $105.3 million, or 19 cents a share, a year earlier. The graphics processing unit (GPU) supplier--whose chips are found in PCs from Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Acer, Sony, and Toshiba--cited muted demand for consumer graphics chips and economic weakness in Europe and China, which drove consumers to lower-priced products. Nvidia products typically are targeted at the upper end of the market.

In the earnings announcement, the company addressed a longstanding issue--and ongoing financial burden--centered on a defect in some of its earlier GPUs and chipsets. The problem was first cited by Nvidia in July 2008 when it announced a charge ranging from $150 million to $200 million to cover costs to repair and replace GPUs and chipsets due to "weak die/packaging material" in older laptop products. "Die/packaging" essentially describes the chip. Nvidia also announced additional charges after July 2008.

On Thursday, Nvidia said it recorded an "additional net charge" of $193.9 million related to the same problem. "The charge includes additional remediation costs as well as the estimated costs of a pending settlement of a class action lawsuit related to this matter," the company said in a statement. Combined with the $282 million of net charges announced previously, the total net charge related to the issue comes to $475.9 million, the company said.

I asked Huang Thursday if he thought the problem was now largely… Read more

Toshiba announced Monday that it will ship an Android-based laptop, the first among top-tier laptop makers to sport a dual-core ARM processor.

By one definition, the Toshiba AC100 (see video below) is a smartbook: an always-on, 3G-enabled Linux-based laptop using a processor based on a design from U.K.-based ARM. That term--in vogue briefly--has lost its luster, however. Principally because real, shipping smartbooks have failed to materialize.

One of the most highly touted smartbooks, the Lenovo Skylight, has never shipped despite plenty of hype earlier in the year from both Lenovo and Qualcomm--the latter was slated to make the Sklylight's silicon. (The fact that a German company disputed the smartbook trademark didn't help matters.)

And a word of caution: The 10-inch Toshiba AC100 is not yet commercially available though it's slated to ship in the third quarter in Europe. There's no word on availability in the U.S., though a Toshiba spokesman contacted Monday said U.S. availability typically comes a couple of quarters after introduction in Europe.

That said, it is a truly unique design, quite different than its Windows-Intel based Netbook cousins. The two marquee features are its Nvidia Tegra 250 processor and the Android 2.1 operating system. The Tegra 250 is a cutting-edge dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor running at speeds of up to 1.0GHz. Virtually all laptop-class ARM processors shipping to date have used a single-core central processing unit, or CPU, design. Android is Google's popular OS that has been used, to date, almost exclusively in smartphones, such as Motorola's Droid.

Another key feature is the integration of mobile broadband: the laptop is designed to be "always on" like a smartphone, needing less than a second… Read more

Motorola is looking to trump the iPhone 4 by raising the performance bar for high-end Android smartphones, according to a report.

Conceivably Tech, a technology blog, cited general comments about the future phone from Sanjay Jha, the CEO of Motorola's Mobile Devices Division, who was speaking at the Executives Club of Chicago Wednesday.

The report went on to say that another Motorola executive, "who asked to remain anonymous," said that the phone would include "everything that is technologically possible in a smartphone today" and will be based on Android, like the current Motorola Droid. Unlike … Read more

There are many intriguing new laptops, tablets, and related mobile computing devices currently on display at the Computex 2010 trade show in Taiwan. Keep in mind, however, that many of these are either proof-of-concept prototypes or products unlikely to ever see the light of day in the U.S.

With that caveat, here are a some notable show highlights (a few of which have the word "pad" as part of their names), gleaned from the coverage of our colleagues at CNET Asia.

As the Apple iPad and its A4 chip get ready to ship on April 3, the competition is not standing still--and, by all appearances, there's plenty of it.

As reported back in January, the A4's central processing unit, or CPU, design, as it stands now, is thought to be based primarily on technology from U.K.-based ARM. Linley Gwennap, who is the president and principal analyst of The Linley Group, believes the A4 uses a fairly common ARM CPU designed by Intrinsity and manufactured by Samsung.

Where Apple, instead, may have chosen to enhance the A4's … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Before CES, one of our predictions as to what would be a big story on the show floor was the emergence of smartbooks, or mini-notebooks as they're sometimes called. The term was coined by Qualcomm in referring to tiny laptop-like devices using processors that are derived from smartphone-level CPUs, but are in many cases even more powerful. The two most common CPUs seem to be the Snapdragon from Qualcomm and the Tegra/Tegra 2 from Nvidia, both using ARM-based processors.

Consider the concept, ideally, as a device somewhere between a smartphone and a Netbook--hence "smartbook." Unfortunately, … Read more

LAS VEGAS--At CES here on Friday, graphics chipmaker Nvidia showed a tablet, or slate, computer running a "demo" Motorola-Verizon tablet interface on top of the Google Android operating system.

I stopped by the Nvidia booth, where an Nvidia representative gave a quick demonstration (see video) of the tablet from Seattle, WA-based ICD. It has an Nvidia Tegra 2 chip, which is expected to find its way into a number of tablets this year.

The tablet performed well for a prototype, though the unusable Wi-Fi connection on the CES show floor made wireless connectivity impossible. The device will also … Read more

LAS VEGAS--The smartbook is now a tablet, at least according to Nvidia, whose upcoming Tegra 2 chip will power these mobile computers in 2010.

Device makers using Nvidia's Tegra 2 chip will, for the most part, initially bring out tablets--not classic clamshell designs--according to Mike Rayfield, general manager of Nvidia's mobile business. "A year ago there was a lot of talk about clamshell devices," Rayfield said, speaking in a teleconference before the Consumer Electronics Show. But that's changed, according to Rayfield, because consumers may mistake a clamshell-design smartbook for a Windows-Intel-based Netbook.

"The tablet … Read more

As if Apple and Microsoft didn't already make it clear (editor's note: by Apple, we mean the ever-pervasive rumors of their upcoming "slate"), 2010 looks like the Year of the Tablet. First viewed sitting on a table of an Nvidia executive, the Vega tablet will try to beat Apple's tablet (if the rumors are true), Microsoft's in-process Courier concept, and the semievaporated Crunchpad to the punch.

ICD, the manufacturer of the Vega, has confirmed the existence of the tablet as a real product, whose details will be more fully revealed at CES. Vega...Vegas...… Read more