CES: Nvidia, LG Unveil ‘Optimus X2′ Tegra 2 Super Phone; Project Denver With ARM
Posted by Tiernan Ray
Next up, the press conference for Nvidia (NVDA),
which has a line a block long or more inside Venetian hotel.
Nvidia is expected to talk about their Tegra 2 processor and its use in tablet computers. Here’s hoping I get in!
Alright, I’m in now.
And they even have complimentary WiFi set up. Thank goodness. Nvidia’s
CEO Jen-Hsun Huang comes up on stage.
Why is this CES different from all others? Because we’ll look back in years to come and realize that this is when our notions of personal computing changed. He harkens back to Comdex of 1995, when it was clear the world of computing would be different because of the announcement of Windows 95 and Direct X. That changed the PC from an office automation machine into a truly personal computer, with video games, etc. The introduction of the iPad is as revolutionary as Windows 95 and Google’s arrival was, Huang says.
Going forward, we will have more than one of these computing devices in our lives, and the number of devices in the world will be in the tens of billions, Huang says. The company’s Tegra 2 is a superchip, says Huang, able to “leap tall buldings,”
he quips.
The mobile device is going to become a computer first, and a phone only secondarily. The company has teamed with Adobe (ADBE) to develop the world’s first fully accelerated Flash processor.
Huang promisses there will be announcements all week about Tegra 2 related to not just mobile phones and tablet computers, but also as relates to Tegra 2 used in cars.
Tegra can really help with energy consumption of processors in car instrumentation, etc. But today, Huang wants to talk about the category of the Super Phone. “This is going to be a surprisingly fast-growing market,” says Huang, because the carriers have a vested interest in promoting them to drive revenue per user higher. And on that note, Huang welcomes Yongseok Jang, VP for mobile devices with LG Electronics, to announce the Optimus X2, the first Tegra Super Phone.
Huang wants to take the Optimus for a test drive. The device has an HDMI output. He plugs it into a Panasonic television.
He’s playing “Angry Birds on the phone, through the television set. Then he plays back an animated film. Graphics quality in both, playing back through the TV, looks very good, from where I sit.
The phone has an 8-megapixel camera, and e Tegra 2 makes it “super fast,” says Huang.
Huang calls the phone the first truly multi-tasking phone. He goes into a flash demo. But the attempt to pull up the WSJ Web page on the phone us choking. Huang begs the audience to “give me some bandwidth.” the demo continues to choke. “Aw, you guys really suck,” jokes Huang. “Imagine a Web site coming up, and Flash coming up, says Huang.
Huang continues in a tribute to Flash that is very, very intense. “Flash is one of the most important things for a phone to be able to do,” he says. Shows off a video comparing two phones trying to play a Flash game. Definitely a difference in performance, obviously.
Huang introduces Shantanu Narayan, CEO of Adobe.
Huang feeds Narayan all sorts of softball questions, asking him to talk up the extreme important of Flash on the Web.
Now a question about Flash versus HTML 5. “It’s really a non-issue,” says Narayan. (Are you listening, Steve Jobs?).
Huang brings out Jeremy Stieglitz, head of game designer Trendy Entertainment, to talk about the porting of its console video game “Dungeon Defenders.”. They show a demo of two players on XBox and Playstation 3 playing the original version, and a person playing it on the Optimus 2. Looks pretty smooth on the Optimus, as smooth as on the consoles.
Next up is Karsten Wysk, CEO of Mobile Bits, which developed “Angry Birds.” he says his developers are happy again because with Tegra 2, developers can have the full resources — polygons, etc. — that they are used to on the desktop.
Kyle Malady, VP of network and technology for Verizon Communications. Malady says CES is Verizon’s coming out party for 4G wireless services. “I’ve been getting continuously over 20 megabits per second” on LTE traveling around the country, says Malady.
4G is going to really make possible gaming on broadband mobile devices, and video, says Malady.
Next, Skype. Huang wants to introduce Manrique Brenes, VP of product development at Skype. He asks him to come onstage, because the plan for a video conferencing session live is being humbled by the lack of bandwidth in the room.
Huang says it will now be possible to do HD video conferencing on an Android-based tablet computer. But the demo will have go wait.
Now Huang is stumping for ARM-based processors. If you’re a developer and not developing for ARM, you’ve got your head in the sand. Take a look at projected annual shipments of ARM versus X-86: over the next several years, there will be more ARM chips shipped than all the X-86 chips ever shipped.
Huang throws up a slide, “Microsoft said to be unveiling Windows for ARM chips.” I found this on the Web, he says, to much laughter. “I wonder if they’ll be talking about this,”.
Huang says Nvidia has been working for some time on Project Denver. What is it? A full custom processor in partnership with ARM. “This is Nvidia’s first CPU project. The first ARM processor focused on high-performance computing.
Idea is to take ARM chips beyond mobile to super computers, cloud computing, etc
“I think this is a game changer,” says Huang.
“With Apple, Google, Microsoft, now supporting ARM, we want to extend ARM into every aspect of computing.” |
发表于 2011-1-5 18:30
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发表于 2011-1-5 21:16
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