Nvidia's Tegra Cost So Far: $2 Billion
Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang discussed his Tegra processors at the AsiaD conference and noted that the development of mobile smartphone and tablet processors is getting quite expensive.
In Nvidia's case, Tegra raked up a cost of more than $2 billion over the past five years, Huang said.
The cost for developing such a chip is likely to go up over time, Huang said, and is driven by an approach to come up with "something magical" and "unexpected" in every product generation. For example, while Kal-El will be moving to four cores, with one additional supporting core, the cores in the succeeding product generation will offer more performance and there will be a feature that catches Nvidia's rivals "off-guard", the executive said.
He also speculated that, as tablet and smartphone markets expand, they may segment and there may be reasons for companies such as Apple to actually buy third-party processors that accommodate the requirements of those segments.
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Douglas Perry was a freelance writer for Tom's Hardware covering semiconductors, storage technology, quantum computing, and processor power delivery. He has authored several books and is currently an editor for The Oregonian/OregonLive.
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pyoverdin Remember everyone, when Nvidia talks about "something magical" and unexpected it means 20% improvements in performance.Reply -
Wish I Was Wealthy All technology costs money, but it depends on their profit margins if it's worth the effort to continue. So as long as they can make a profit, than you'll see them continue with this product line.Reply -
Thunderfox 4 cores on devices that suck for multitasking is probably pointless. They need to concentrate on speed.Reply -
kyuuketsuki Thunderfox4 cores on devices that suck for multitasking is probably pointless. They need to concentrate on speed.Multiple cores are not just for multitasking.Reply