Chipmaker Nvidia eyes tablets and smartphones

Tablet PCs and smartphones are currently the biggest bets for graphics chipmaker Nvidia. At the recently concluded Computex trade show in Taiwan, Nvidia demonstrated a forthcoming quad-core mobile processor that it calls ‘Kal-El,’ which was also Superman’s Kryptonian birth name. Kal-El has been designed in a way that is compatible with a tablet PC.

Though Kal-El will not be shipped until next year, Ugesh Desai, vice president, product marketing of Nvidia claims that the company’s Tegra2 chips for tablet PCs and smartphones is gaining strong momentum. “We have already shipped 10 million Tegra 2 processors thus far. Building of 3G markets in India and China has only helped boost smartphone sales and are therefore important target markets for us.”

Tegra chips are being used on the new Android 3.0 operating system, by OEM partners like Asus, Dell, Acer, Toshiba, Motorola, LG and Sony. “Tegra customers are just starting to order chips in large volumes and we expect to see revenues from mobile devices to run up significantly,” Desai said.

With three R&D centres in Hyderabad, Bangalore and Pune, Indian employees have contributed extensively to the designing of Tegra chips. Vishal Dhupar, managing director (Asia South), Nvidia adds, “We see Tegra as the center stage in the revolution in smartphones that stands at about 5 million units today. With smartphone market expected to touch 30 million in the next couple of years in India, there’s ample opportunity for Nvidia here.” The company has reported $2.95 billion in revenue, up 10 per cent from the same period last year and 9 per cent over the previous quarter.

But Nvidia’s competitors like Intel, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments have done their bit too. While Nvidia has dominated the graphics industry along with AMD, Intel has lion’s share in integrated graphics. And Intel’s Sandy Bridge chip integrates graphics by incorporating GPU (graphics processing unit) within the CPU. This can be a threat to Nvidia’s integrated graphics business.

Qualcomm, on the other hand, has been talking up its dual-core efforts. Its chips can provide the processor along with GPU and connectivity modules such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS gives it an edge.