Life Of Navin

Nvidia, today launched two new super-efficient laptop GPU's, announcing its entry into the growing band of hardware makers producing low-power, portable laptops.

Known worldwide known for graphics cards and GPU's, Nvidia today launched two Tegra processors ( The Tegra 600 and 650) designed for tiny laptops.

It said devices fitted with the chips would be able to browse the web, show high-definition video and be able to handle graphically-heavy games. They plan to tie up with OLPC to provide $100 laptops which are HD capable.... Or atleast thats what initial rumours suggest!!

The move pits Nvidia against chip giant Intel which is releasing a similar line of chips for such small devices.Nvidia said it would release more details of the Tegra 600 and 650 processors at the Computex show in Taiwan which runs from 3-7 June.

The chip maker said the processors were aimed at light, portable gadgets that are fitted with a screen up to 12 inches (30cm) across, a keyboard, high-speed wireless connection and a port for a game controller.

Nvidia has dubbed such devices Mobile Internet Devices or "Mids". Others, such as Dell and Intel have started calling them "netbooks". OLPC's XO and XO2 fall in this category.

On-board the Tegra processors are an Arm 11 chip, graphics unit, media handler, system memory and peripheral controllers. When such devices go on sale they should retail for about $200-$250.

With countries like Coloumbia joining hands with the OLPC it seems like the project is finally taking off after its initial jitters.Also the launch of the $75 laptop by the Negroponte project seems to be generating a lot of positive response from governments of developing countries

Meanwhile, Intel, which has launched the Atom chip specifically for low-cost, portable notebooks has also planned out to showcase devices using the new processor at Computex.

However here's my question. Do you really need GPU's for such low-cost machines?? Do students whose families barely manage to feed themselves twice a day need laptops which can process high definition video?? Can you really see some labourer's kid in China, asking his dad for a $200 processor in addition to the $75 he'd have to shell out ( which is really big money in China where labourer's work for as low as a dollar a day!!). Whatever are Nvidia thinking?? Lets just wait and see how they manage to pull this off..... if possible!!

The systems now look more like dehydrated notebook computers-- Mike Rayfield, general manager of Nvidia-mobile business