14 DAY TRIAL // NVIDIA may have lost the chance to have its graphics processors used in Sony's PlayStation 4 console, but the company is showing less consternation regarding AMD getting one over it than one would expect.
Granted, Advanced Micro Devices believes that NVIDIA is only putting up an act, and that it is, secretly, bitter about it.
Nevertheless, something said by an NVIDIA senior vice president near the end of last month suggests another reason for the blasé attitude.
Senior Vice President of Content and Technology Tony Tamasi believes that its mobile platform (Tegra series) will surpass console hardware, so game consoles don't matter that much.
More precisely, while the PS4 will still be better than Tegra, the hardware inside PS3 and Xbox 360 will fall behind when Tegra 5 Logan enters the world.
“The PS3 and Xbox 360 are barely more powerful than mobile devices,” Tamasi told Bit-Tech. “The next click of mobile phones will outperform [them].”
Admittedly, Tamasi is conveying a best-case scenario here. Smartphones aren't likely to use Tegra 5 much, because the chip is just too overpowered for them. Most likely, a Tegra 5i will be released at some point, as a lower power and cheaper alternative.
Tablets will definitely use Tegra 5 though, and it says a lot that slates will have stronger hardware than devices that are supposed to have good enough processing and graphics for the latest games.
Tegra 5 will feature CUDA 5 and a Kepler-class GPU not unlike the GeForce GTX 600 series, with OpenGL 4.3.
Now we just have to wait and see if mobile processors evolve quickly enough to overtake even the latest-generation game console technologies. Since it takes years for console hardware to be upgraded, the odds are very high of PS4 meeting its match and maybe even being left behind by 2016-2017.