Nvidia dismisses Atom as “generations behind” Tegra

 

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By Darien Graham-Smith in San Jose

Posted on 2 Oct 2009 at 17:51

Intel’s forthcoming Moorestown Atom platform will be “a couple of generations behind” Nvidia’s existing Tegra architecture, according to Michael Rayfield, Nvidia’s general manager for mobile.

Rayfield held up the Microsoft Zune HD as an example of what the Tegra SoC (system on a chip) architecture was capable of today, and contrasted this with the as-yet unreleased Moorestown.

“Intel is two years away from last year’s technology,” he told PC Pro on the last day of Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference in San Jose. “And by the time they get there we will have moved three years on.”

Power consumption

Rayfield believes Moorestown’s Achilles’ heel will be its power consumption.

“I have not seen or heard of any technology coming out of Intel that is even close to being capable of being in a mobile device,” he declared – directly challenging the claims made at IDF last week. “Everything Intel makes still needs to be plugged in, and it will for the foreseeable future.”

“Historically, Intel has done a great job building CPUs; but when they talk about 720p or 1080p on mobile... they will be literally an order of magnitude or two off the ability to do that in a very small form factor and very low power.”

Rayfield expressed particular doubts over Intel’s claims of power saving through greater integration. “They talk about a one-chip or two-chip design,” he smiled, “but in reality it’s a lot more complex. They used to show the visual of the original Atom as three chips and it ended up being about a dozen.”

“We developed Tegra from the ground up to do very low power media,” he explained. “Atom is still a dehydrated PC.”

What next for Tegra?

Rayfield revealed that Nvidia is seeking a four-fold improvement in performance per watt for the next generation of Tegra chips; but would give no other details, preferring to focus on the first wave of devices.

“The Zune HD and a Samsung player are the first two Tegra designs,” he restated. “But there are 70 more in flight, ranging from smartphones to cars to IPTVs to smartbooks. We’ll see those at the end of this year, ramping into next year.”

“And Tegra will have accelerated Flash, so we’ll see devices with interesting online gaming capabilities. In a year’s time there will be an awful lot of devices you can buy and see what Tegra is capable of.”

When pressed on the topic of smartphones, Rayfield was unable to confirm details, but promised that Nvidia’s partnerships would be credible.

“You’ll see us in very common brands on common operators around the world, probably by the start of next year,” he confirmed. “No names for now, but it’ll be carriers you recognise, brands you recognise...”

“And,” he added, suggestively, “operating systems you recognise.”