Nvidia Has "Tons of Exciting Opportunities" with Tegra - Company

From X-bit Labs: With the recent merge of the system-on-chip and core-logic development teams, Nvidia Corp. hopes to finally establish itself as one of the leading players on the market of chips for various handheld and ultra-portable devices.

Nvidia road to handheld platforms has been long and not exactly successful for a long time. Back in 2003 the company acquired MediaQ company, which supplied graphics processors for various handheld devices. Nvidia re-branded MediaQ’s products into GoForce products and even launched one or two new chips, however, eventually GoForce line fell into oblivion. The second attempt to successfully enter the market of handhelds took place in early 2007, when Nvidia acquired PortalPlayer, the supplier of chips for numerous devices, including Apple iPod. Unfortunately, several months later it appeared that Apple no longer wanted PortalPlayer’s chips.

But there is one thing that Nvidia got with the acquisition of MediaQ and PortalPlayer: the Tegra team. In early 2008 Nvidia unveiled its first own system-on-chip (SoC) device and in mid-2008 the company rolled out a family of Tegra-branded SoCs.

The first-generation Tegra for smartphones has won a number of contracts, but there are still not a lot of actual Nvidia Tegra-based products on the market. The second-generation Tegra SoCs are designed mostly for tablet PCs and since the chip was only launched a couple of months ago, it is hard to expect any devices on its base to be available.

According to the company itself, Tegra has already scored over 50 design wins. In the light of this fact, the company recently merged its SoC and core-logic development groups to create an ultimate team, which, according to some information consists of around 650 engineers. The Santa Clara, California-based chip designer, with the new Tegra group, the company has even more opportunities than before.

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