14 DAY TRIAL // Santa Clara, California-based NVIDIA has been actively promoting its Tegra chip for a while now, but, despite the chip maker's efforts, Tegra-powered devices have, so far, been hard to find. However, according to a recent rumor that has surfaced on the Internet, the chip maker might have landed a couple of important design wins from two of the world's leading PC vendors, namely Acer and Lenovo. Both companies are known for having collaborated with NVIDIA on some of their latest computer systems, the Aspire Revo and the IdeaPad S12, respectively.
According to a recent report on Shanzhai.com, citing a 'reliable' source, both Lenovo and Acer have been recently planning the launch of new netbooks that will be based on NVIDIA's Tegra platform. Even better, it appears that the said devices could be rolled out with the much-hyped Google Chrome operating system as early as this month. Unfortunately, there are no specific details regarding the specifications of the said devices, other than the aforementioned processing platform and the operating system.
It's still early to say if the rumors are going to be trusted, but, if so, this will represent a significant break for NVIDIA, which has been trying to expand its product portfolio from the traditional market for high-performance graphics cards. Tegra is a platform that combines a low-power ARM processor with an NVIDIA graphics chip, enabling PC vendors to develop HD, video-ready, low-power devices. What is even more interesting is the rumor about the Google Chrome OS, which isn't expected to be featured on devices until sometime next year, according to the Mountain View, California-based search giant.
It will be interesting to see if the two PC makers will actually be rolling out the said Tegra devices, in which case NVIDIA will be dealing with a new market segment that will likely compete with the netbook segment and the large series of Wintel netbooks.