Nvidia is shaking up the smartphone market with its new processor the Tegra 2. The Tegra 2 is a system-on-a-chip (SoC) that enhances the playback for games and video. It is an ARM-based Cortex A9 processor that renders faster web page loading times on a smartphone. The Tegra 2 smartphone processor has a clock speed of 1GHz and is a dual-core processor that will give gaming applications and videos higher playback qualities over the present single-core chips in smartphones.
Graduating over time from single-core smartphone processors to that of dual-core smartphone processors is a logical progression for insightful chipset manufacturers.
More and more people want to take their desktop functionalities that they have come to rely on at home, on the road with them. Smartphone manufacturers and software developers are in a unique position to extend the range of home computing to the mobile marketplace by offering solutions to the consumer that satisfies their appetite for mobility and functionality.
The dual-core, ARM-based Cortex A9 chipset, Tegra 2, fulfills this growing demand for more processing power, brought on by the increasing demands from consumers to run more complicated applications smoothly in a mobile environment. Nvidia is poised to become the company that can do that efficiently at a price point that is acceptable to the enduser. Nvidia, better associated with its GPUs (Graphic Processing Units) has taken the lead in bringing to market a dual-core chipset of influencing promise, that other chipset manufacturers will likely follow to compete in the highly-lucrative, mobile device market.
Contenders in the dual-core smartphone processor sectors are rather limited at the time of this writing, but expected to increase as demand increases.
Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA)
Santa Clara, California-based Nvidia, is a powerhouse in the Graphics Processing arena and it’s the inventor of the GPU.
Texas Instrument, Inc. (NYSE: TXN)
Texas Instrument (TI) has introduced the dual-core, 1.5 GHz OMAP 4440 Chipset that will give mobile devices between a 30-50% overall increase in performance over its 1 GHz OMAP 4430 Chipset.
RIM (NASDAQ: RIMM)
Research In Motion’s Blackberrys will continue to use the Blackberry OS, but its tablet called Playbook, will use its QNS OS. The QNS OS is in wide use by the military, government agencies and hospitals and is well-suited for multi-core chipset devices.
Samsung Electronics (Korean Exchange: 005930)
Samsung is the world’s largest electronics company and manufactures the Orion chipset which is a 1 GHz, dual-core ARM Cortex A9 processor. Samsung manufactures the A4 processor used in the Apple’s iPhone 4.
Motorola (NYSE: MOT)
Motorola’s Android 3.0 dual-core tablet will be using Nvidia’s Tegra 2 dual-core processor.
TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited) (NYSE: TSM)
(TSE: 2330)
TSMC will have a market for its 40 nm, dual-core chipsets as too will Nufront, a Chinese Technology Company (Private) and it’s NuSmart 2815, 40 nm dual-core Arm-based Cortex A9 SoC chipset that is clocked at 2 GHz for laptops, tablets and all-in-one (AIO) computers.
Qualcomm, Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM)
Qualcomm’s 1.2 GHz, dual-core Snapdragon Chipset for the multi-core smartphone processor market. Snapdragon is manufactured by TSMC.
Many chipset manufacturers let other companies design their chipsets, with the exception of say, Intel, and have them produced at their factories, such as the former manufacturing arm of AMD, Inc. (NYSE: AMD), Global Foundries, Inc. (Private), so it is important to note, that there exist investment opportunities in both the dual-core chipset manufacturer and the end-user, such as Motorola, Qualcomm and RIM, to offer a few examples.
Keep in mind that all Dual-core smartphone processors are based on the ARM architecture, so they can be configured to operate in all sorts of mobile devices, such as netbooks, smartbooks, e-book readers, tablet computers and mobile Internet devices. The market for dual-core smartphone processors will only grow as more and more consumers demand the same video experience that they have at home with their mobile devices. Dual-core smartphones is the natural progression in solving the need to multi-task on the go and together with seamless video playback, will usher increased demand for the more efficient GPU processing inherently found within dual-core chipsets.
There are enormous investment opportunities as the competing smartphone chipset manufacturers come on board, thanks to consumer demand for smartphones and other mobile devices. Ultimately, the smartphone chipset manufacturer who prevails among all the others will be the system-on-a-chip (SoC) provider that is associated with the mobile device or devices that have the best overall performance and respectable battery life, while maintaining a wonderfully-intuitive user interface and user experience. The dual-core chipset manufacturer who has achieved that would do exceptionally well in the smartphone and mobile device marketplace.
PS, LG (Private) is introducing the LG Optimus 2x will feature the Tegra 2 chipset and it will be available at T-Mobile stores in the U.S in early spring of 2011. The LG Optimus 2x will be available in Europe and Asia as early as the beginning of 2011.
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