Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said on Thursday during the company's quarterly earnings call that tablets using the company's new Tegra 4 quad-core SoC are currently in development, and other devices will be announced this quarter. More Tegra 4-based products will hit the market throughout the second half of the year.
"Outside of phones, where we see these new computing devices becoming like entry-level PCs, performance matters," Huang said.
We already know the company's handheld gaming console, Project Shield, features the new chip. Other devices in the works using the new SoC include the HP SlateBook 10 x2 10-inch tablet, the HP Slate 21 AIO, a "super phone" from ZTE and the Toshiba AT10LE-A. Project Shield will likely be the first to arrive although various reports claim the initial device will be Toshiba's AT10LE-A instead.
Nvidia revealed the new quad-core chip back in January during CES 2013, featuring four Cortex-A15 CPU cores clocked at 1.9 GHz, a fifth battery saver core for processing low performance applications, and 72 custom GPU cores that support a 3200 x 2000 LED displays and Ultra HD video via HDMI. The chip succeeds the Tegra 3 which is based on a Cortex-A9 design.
As for the more mainstream Tegra 4i, devices based on this chip will be available as soon as the second half of 2013, pending carrier certification. This SoC features four Cortex-A9 r4 CPU cores, a fifth battery saver core and 60 custom GPU cores supporting a 1920 x 1200 LCD screen and 1080P video via HDMI. However unlike the Tegra 4, this chip has an integrated software-defined i500 LTE modem.
For the quarter ending April 28, Nvidia posted revenue of $954.7 million and net profit of $77.9 million, up 3.2-percent and 29-percent respectively from the year before. That growth is attributed to increased sales of the company's graphics cards, as Tegra sales declined 22.2-percent while ODMs migrated from Tegra 3 to the newer chips.
