Nvidia Corp. has started to register software developers who would like to receive a devkit powered by the next-generation Tegra system-on-chip (SoC) device. Even though few details are available regarding Nvidia Tegra 2, the actual announcement of its capabilities may be rather near: at the Consumer Electronics Show in early January ’10, for example.

Few details are known about Tegra 2 at the moment, but at various events Nvidia’s high-ranking executives said that the next-gen Tegra will be at least two times more powerful than the predecessor. In particular, the SoC will feature a dual-core ARM general-purpose processor as well as more powerful graphics technology inside. Perhaps, Tegra 2 will also use faster memory and will have other improvements.

Nvidia has not officially revealed when Tegra 2 is set to become available. However, the company’s chief exec implied recently that at the forthcoming Consumer Electronics Show the company would announce “something”.

“We’ll probably announce something at CES and while other people are still showing their generation catching up with Tegra, we’re gonna leap forward ourselves. Nvidia’s rhythm is once a year and it’s been a year. We want to keep the market moving very fast, so Tegra 2 is coming,” said Jen-Hsun Huang.

Mr. Huang is not exactly right about “one year”. The first Nvidia Tegra APX family was introduced in February 2008, Nvidia Tegra 600- line of SoCs for handsets and mobile Internet devices (MIDs) was announced in early June, 2008. Therefore, the introduction of Nvidia Tegra 2 will happen roughly two years after the announcement of the first-generation Tegra.

Tags: Nvidia, Tegra