LG Electronics and Nvidia Corp. have announced that the former would release a line of smartphones based on Nvidia Tegra 2 system-on-chip (SoC). The first products based on the Nvidia technology will be available late this year and will use Google Android operating system.

"LG selected NVIDIA Tegra because it enables a new mobile experience and content capabilities. Tegra 2 features a number of mobile “firsts”: the first mobile dual-core CPU, the only ultra low-power NVIDIA GeForce? GPU and the first 1080p HD mobile video processor," a statement by LG reads.

LG will integrate Tegra 2 into its Optimus-series smartphones, which is a new line of innovative mobile products that are due in Q4 2010. No details about the new cell phones are officially known at the moment. Nonetheless, it is logical to expect large screens, numerous connectivity technologies and orientation mostly on those, who demand high performance and rich feature-set.

LG is the first company to adopt Nvidia Tegra 2 for a mass product. Earlier a number of companies demonstrated prototypes of devices based on Tegra SoCs, but those products have never reached mass production. What is rather noteworthy is that LG earlier this year demonstrated a high-end smartphone powered by Intel Corp.'s Moorestown mobile SoC, but later decided not to release it commercially.

Nvidia Tegra 2 SoCs features dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 central processing unit, GeForce graphics core with programmable pixel shader and programmable vertex shader support (OpenGL ES 2.0 compatible), build-in low-power DDR2 memory controller, NAND flash memory controller, audio processor, high-definition video processor that supports MPEG 4, H.264, VC-1/WMV9 decoding, H.264 and MPEG4 encoding and features some other capabilities. At present Nvidia does not reveal a lot of technical details about the Tegra 2, but claims that it has about 4 times performance advantage compared to the first-generation Tegra SoC.

"LG is committed to making its Optimus Series smart devices the de facto standard in speed and graphics performance,” said Chang Ma, vice president of marketing strategy team at LG Mobile Communications Company.

Tags: LG, LG Electronics, Nvidia, Tegra