The Tegra Grey SoC will deliver support for Microsoft's mobile OS

Sep 12, 2011 20:51 GMT  ·  By

Nvidia's mobile chips are already packed inside a series of devices running under Google's Android operating system, yet it seems that they will emerge in Windows Phone handsets as well in the foreseeable future.

To be more precise, Nvidia is expected to add support for the Windows Phone platform starting with 2013 (the end of 2012 might be the earliest the feature is expected to arrive), a recent leak shows.

At the moment, Nvidia has its Tegra 2 chip widely spread inside Android devices, and is gearing up for the release of Kal-El for the mobile market (a quad-core application processor).

However, these are only the first chips Nvidia plans for smartphones and tablet PCs, and there will also be SoCs like Wayne and Grey (only codenames for the time being) set to emerge on mobile devices soon.

Of the two, the latter should bring along support for Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system, some of the latest reports on the matter suggest.

Nvidia already went official with plans to bring the said 'Grey' SoC to the market, and even explained that it will include 3G/4G connectivity.

These communication capabilities will be included in the upcoming silicon as result of the acquisition of Icera. The chip was also rumored to be manufactured under the 28mm process.

In addition to these features, the code-named Grey system-on-chip will come with Nvidia's GPU solution, which should enable it deliver great performance levels to all users.

For the time being, Nvidia does not have 2G/3G/4G communication capabilities packed with its chips, but it will soon have these too, which should make it one of the most powerful players on the mobile chips industry.

No info on whether the SoC will be a dual-core or a quad-core has emerged for the time being but, one way or the other, it still means that Windows Phone will soon be loaded on powerful handsets, not to mention that they will also be a little more affordable, since Nvidia will be the one to include the baseband processor inside them as well.