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Nvidia shows off Tegra netbook prototype
Author: Ben HardwidgePublished: 3rd April 2009
Nvidia has shown off a prototype of a Tegra-based netbook running Windows CE at the CTIA Wireless 2009 show (photo courtesy of Engadget).
To prove its point, Nvidia gutted an HP Mini 1000, which is usually based on Intel’s Atom CPU, and replaced its innards with a Tegra board and a basic version of Windows CE. The netbook prototype was shown off at the CTIA Wireless 2009 http://www.ctiawireless.com/ show in Las Vegas, and Engadget took some shots of it, as well as a photo of an entire Tegra computer that’s around the same size as your average SODIMM.
So are we ever likely to see Tegra-based netbooks going into production? We asked Nvidia’s senior corporate communications manager, Bea Longworth, who replied with a definite “absolutely,” adding that Nvidia hopes to “announce OEMs at Computex.” However, Longworth wouldn’t reveal whether HP itself was interested in making a Tegra-based netbook, saying that Nvidia “can't comment on our partners' plans."
In the meantime, though, this prototype shows the potential for using Tegra in a netbook. At first, it might seem like a bit of a redundant idea, seeing as full versions of Windows such as XP and Vista require an x86 processor, and you won’t be able to run them on an ARM CPU.
However, Windows CE is still capable of running everyday computing tasks and more. As Tegra is basically a smartphone platform, and there’s space for a much larger battery in a netbook. Nvidia says that the Tegra 600’s integrated media processor results in up to ten hours of HD video playback, or 100 hours of audio playback, on a standard smartphone battery, so there’s a lot of potential for a Tegra-based netbook with battery life that extends into days rather than hours.
Plus, Tegra 600 already has features such as 1080p video playback, HDMI output, wi-fi support and basic 3D acceleration. The lack of a fully-fledged Atom CPU and Microsoft OS could also help to bring down the cost of such devices. At the Mobile World Congress show in February, Nvidia first announced its new platform that enabled Tegra 600 to be used in MIDs. The company said that such devices could cost as little as $99 US, and could be switched on for days at a time.
Would you be interested in a cheap Tegra-based netbook with long battery life, or would you rather have an Intel Atom and a full version of Windows? Let us know your thoughts in the forums.
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i dont think windows belongs on a netbook.
I'm fed up with the current netbooks, all of which share the same specs. Some change would be welcomed! Show me a 10" netbook that's performance- and battery life-wise a real upgrade from IBM X31 and I'll get it..
Works just fine on my original Eee PC 4g.
it still dont belong on a netbook, its like Vista on a mac instead of OSX.
Yeah the big screen will draw quite a bit of power, so not quite mobile timescales, but enough to dwarf the wintel netbooks.
See that dosen't sound that mad now, 10 years ago you would have been laughed at all day.
what would be awesome is a netbook about the size of an A5 notebook, thin as a Mac Airbook, running a decent sized SSD and a decent bank of li-ion battieres. 20 cell or something.
Of course all aluminium and by this point i am starting to think this is what apple is going to end up releasing....
Sooner than you'd think... I've just come back from Shenzhen, China after working with a company who are developing ARM architecture appliances for enterprise and consumer markets, and imo it's the future.
Highly impressed with the performance when compared with a general x86 processor.
I would be interested in this if it had some good open source support for Linux, something Nvidia is not well known for (but Intel is).
Get out from your rock.
And Saivert is absolutely right: Win Mobile is the direct successor to CE.
I'm really looking forward to the day HTC decides to release an android phone on non-horrible hardware so i can dump windows mobile for good
But why?
It does more than the cell phone-like OS that came with the thing. Why doesn't XP belong on netbooks?
Now that alone would sell it to me.
While a 20-cell battery would give it the lifetime of a year or something, wouldn't it add considerable weight?
I think a 6-cell or 9-cell tops would do the job. If they can fit one ARM computer on a circuit board the size of a SoDIMM, what's to stop two, three or even four being put in, running in parallel? A Quad-Core ARM cpu?
1280x768 (iirc) on a normal HP Mini 1000 is nearly unreadable. Very sharp, but very small text (in XP, particulary the clock on the taskbar). A perfect match for the Tegra hardware though, with it being capable of 720p. Using an operating system on it could be a headache with associated eye strain.