kal-el

Apple's iPad will likely have to contend this year with new Android tablets sporting the latest high-speed silicon coming off production lines in Asia.

Nvidia is on the record saying that tablets powered by its quad-core Kal-El chip are arriving this year. "Kal-El-powered tablets are coming this fall, and phones around the CES 2012 timeframe," Nvidia said in a statement to CNET on Friday.

It's safe to presume that Nvidia isn't just blowing smoke. Its processors today power all of the most popular Android Honeycomb tablets, including the Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, … Read more

Nvidia's CEO boasted about the power frugality of an upcoming quad-core chip, as the company reported better-than-expected earnings today.

The graphics chip supplier swung to better-than-expected earnings in the fiscal second quarter ended July 31, buttressed by revenue from laptop graphics processing units used with systems built around Intel's "Sandy Bridge" processors.

Nvidia reported a profit of $151.6 million compared with a loss of $141 million in the year-earlier period. Revenue surged 25 percent to $1.02 billion. And gross margin--a critical profit indicator--jumped to 51.7 percent from 16.6 percent compared to last … Read more

Android Atlas is one year old! We celebrate by doing the same thing we do every week, discussing the latest Android news. The new Google Wallet may already have a security hole and malware is becoming an issue for the platform. Meanwhile, game developers say that Android is to PC gaming what iOS is to consoles. Holy fragmentation, Batman! Does that mean that apps should now carry system requirements? In other news, Nvidia shows off its ambitiously named Project Kal-El and we overstep dual cores, going straight to quads! All of that, plus the answers to your Android OS questions … Read more

Nvidia, an emerging power in the world of ARM processors for smartphones and tablets, has published a demonstration game called Glowball the company says shows what can be achieved with its quad-core Kal-El mobile processor project.

In the demo, an internally lit ball rolls around a playing board. With "dynamic lighting," shapes on the ball's exterior casting shadows on stacked barrels, lurking jack-in-the-boxes, hanging rugs, and a creepy clown face. The game's physics engine is wired into the tablet's accelerometer to determine how the ball rolls, the rugs hang, and the barrels tumble.

"All … Read more

Android tablets could outsell Apple's iPad in less than three years, says Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, according to Reuters.

Speaking at the Reuters Technology Summit in New York on Monday, the outspoken CEO noted that it took Android smartphones less than three years to outpace the iPhone.

"The Android phone took only two and a half years to achieve the momentum that we're talking about," Huang said at the summit. "I would expect the same thing on Honeycomb tablets."

With Nvidia supplying the Tegra 2 processor that powers many Android tablets, Huang has been … Read more

As chipmakers trip over each other to announce tablet-centric chips packing four processing engines, it's not hard to see where a product like the Motorola Xoom is headed.

Where? The same performance space a mainstream laptop occupies now. A graphic Nvidia released to CNET shows its next-generation Tegra processor exceeding Intel's Core 2 Duo processor (the chip used in many, if not most, laptops today) in performance.

And Nvidia is claiming benchmarks back up this (see second embedded video below). Benchmarks aside, it's easy to imagine a future Motorola Xoom tablet crunching image data at speeds similar … Read more

With its Tegra chip already well-ensconced in some of the most highly anticipated tablets from Motorola and Samsung, Nvidia is keen on moving the market quickly to super-high-octane tablets packing quad-core processors.

Nvidia's dual-core Tegra 2 is already in the Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab, and LG Optimus Pad. Those products are due in the coming weeks and months.

Not resting on its laurels, Nvidia has started sample shipments of a quad-core Tegra processor codenamed Kal-El. "We're providing samples now to our customers. We're expecting the first products with this processor to be out this holiday … Read more