NVIDIA Tegra 2 is 2.5 Times Faster than Apple A4 Chip, Rumor Has It

Back when the iPad was first announced, many people wondered why Apple had decided to go for an in-house, Cortex A8-based chip instead of opting for NVIDIA's Tegra or Tegra 2 platforms, and if the latest rumors prove to be true, then Apple might have actually made a mistake, given the fact that Tegra 2 is apparently 2.5 times faster than the A4 chip powering the iPad and the iPhone 4.

So, as Fudzilla reports (quoting some more ore less classified information they've managed to get their hands on), it seems that Tegra 2 has a Peak Triangle Rate of 71 million triangles per second while the Power VR SGX 535 graphics core used in the A4 is capable of delivering 28 million triangles per second.

Notably, the same graphics core is used by Samsung’s Galaxy S i9000 and Google’s Nexus S, which means that, at least in theory, they're also a bit slower than the Tegra 2 machines out there, which, nevertheless, leads us to a topic that should prove to be quite sensitive for NVIDIA, namely in-market availability.

Practically, right now, the number of tablets and smartphones built using the Tegra 2 platform is pretty small, compared to those using other graphics solutions, which means that NVIDIA will have to work a lot more seriously on the future in order to popularize its mobile products.

Of course, it remains to be seen just how NVIDIA will mitigate the current market conditions, and whether it will be able to “woo” applications developers in creating some graphics-intensive killer apps that will popularize its solutions, but this is something only time (and the “green team”) will tell.

Now, given the fact that Fudzilla's not providing any source for their inside information (plus, they're known to favor NVIDIA on a rather frequent basis), we'd strongly advise you to take this bit of information with a grain or two of salt, and wait until more sources corroborating these statements will make an appearance.