Nvidia Corp.'s Tegra system-on-chip (SoC) is beginning to gain ground among manufacturers of mobile devices. To date, the second-generation Tegra SoC has ten confirmed design wins. Moreover, even less advanced first-gen Tegra has products shipping.

According to Bruce Chan, a spokesperson for Nvidia's Tegra team, tablets with Tegra 2 that have been announced include the Toshiba Folio 100, Malata SMB-A1011, E-Noa Interpad, Hannspree Hanns Mart, Viewsonic G Tablet, Mouse Computer LuvPad AD100, Notion Ink Adam and KNO tablet. Besides, LG Electronics has also announced that Tegra 2 will power its smartphones.

Tegra-powered devices currently shipping include the Microsoft Zune HD and Samsung M1 portable media players and the Toshiba AC100 smart companion MID (powered by Tegra 2).

It has taken Nvidia several years to gain ground with Tegra SoC, partly because the company is not known on that market. But although Tegra has a serious drawback, it does not include baseband processor functionality so to integrate more performance-related logic, it seems to be getting popular among makers of highly-integrated mobile devices.

In a recent interview Nvidia's chief executive officer Jen-Hsun Huang said that the following generation of ARM-based SoCs would enable so-called über-smartphones that feature large screens (4" or higher) as well as very advanced capabilities. Since Tegra 2 powers mostly tablets, it is logical to expect über-smartphones on its base as well.

But Nvidia is not alone with its highly-integrated SoCs for advanced devices. Many current players, including Marvell, Samsung, Qualcomm and so on are already offering system-on-chip products with extreme performance for smartphones or tablets, as a result, Nvidia Tegra is a very competitive environment.

Tags: Nvidia, Tegra