NVIDIA’s Betting Big on Tegra

For most enthusiasts, hearing the name “NVIDIA” invokes thoughts of graphics cards, GPUS, more graphics cards and even more GPUs. But according to the company’s CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang, a few years down the road, the company is going to be known for a lot more than that. Not that this isn’t the case right now, but such technologies as Tegra, ION and others are becoming increasingly popular, at a stark rate.

Tegra in particular is in Jensen’s sights as having the most potential, and he even goes on to state that in a few years, their ARM-based processor is expected to account for half of NVIDIA’s total business. Half! If that’s not a huge shift, I’m not sure what is! That prediction does further prove just how much more important mobile computing is becoming, and its growth sure isn’t going to slow down soon.

Huang also went on to say that we’re soon going to be at a time where CPU-GPU co-processing is going to be fact, and he used Apple as an example for the claim. It’s a good one, since Apple are the originators of OpenCL and offer support for it in their upcoming OS X “Snow Leopard” release, not to mention equip NVIDIA GPUs in their entire line-up of computers.

Let’s just hope that NVIDIA keeps high-end graphics in their sights, rather than push them to the side!

“Apple is an early indicator,” Huang said during his opening remarks that were streamed over the Web, referring to the importance that Apple is placing on the graphics processor. “The MacBook Pro to the MacBook Air has a GPU,” he said. And he waxed eloquent about how the performance and power efficiency of the updated version of the Air has benefited by having co-processors: an Intel CPU and Nvidia GPU.