Earlier this month, some rumors had surfaced that NVIDIA’s Tegra-powered netbooks will be running Google’ s Chrome OS in development. But now, it has been confirmed by NVIDIA’s GM of mobile business Mike Rayfield to jkOnTheRun that the company expects to see Tegra-based smartphones using Windows Mobile and Android and Smartbooks or netbooks would use Chrome OS or Windows CE.
The Tegra platform is different to ION in that it pairs an ARM-based processor with an Nvidia GeForce GPU (ION pairs an Intel Atom CPU with the Nvidia 9400M graphics). The benefits of Tegra includes the ability to handle 1080p video, HD Flash, GPS, Wi-Fi, 3G and a huge battery life. All of this while being very energy efficient.
These OSes, Rayfield believes, would make the most of Tegra’s frugal power requirements. The chipset may play back video content with power draw of 1W or less, while an Atom CPU, as claimed, would require several times that. Nonetheless, Tegra is capable of high-definition playback, and NVIDIA believe that in combination with the surge in internet-based apps, consumers will happily give up “dehydrated laptops” running traditional Windows desktop OSes and instead choose longer runtimes, broader connectivity and increased HD performance from Tegra Smartbooks.
