Computex 2011: Nvidia CEO expects smart devices to outperform PCs after five years

Commenting on the tablet PC market, Nvidia CEO Huang Jen-hsun, at a company's press conference in Taiwan, pointed out that consumers do not care whether their products use x86- or ARM-based processor and this will also service a great opportunity for Nvidia to step up in the market. Huang also noted that he is pessimistic about Intel turning its focus into tablet PC and smartphone businesses and believes Intel will no long dominate PC market in the future with estimation that the smart devices such as tablet PCs will outperform PC products after five years.

With Tegra 2's strong graphics performance, Nvidia has been receiving orders from tablet PC brand vendors and in addition to its existing clients Asustek Computer, Acer and LG Electronics, Tegra 2 is also chosen to be adopted into Samsung Electronics' upcoming 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab, which will appear on June 8, helping Tegra 2 processor's total shipments to surpass 10 million units in the first half of 2011.

At the end of 2011, Nvidia is set to announce quad-core Tegra processor codenamed KAL-EL, using 40nm process from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and with a performance five folds stronger than the existing Tegra 2. In the next future years, Nvidia believes Tegra processor business's revenue contribution will have chance to surpass its GPU business.

As for the impact bring by the tablet PC, Huang pointed out that PC and tablet PC each has its own unique functionality; therefore, the traditional notebook should not see any danger of being replaced. However, netbook, which does not have a full functionality as a traditional PC, is being impacted deeply by tablet PC.

In the future, since all the applications and operating systems can all be running under ARM architecture, Huang expects that the ARM-based processors will be able to cut into the PC and super computing industry in the next few years, and Nvidia has already planned project Denver to push such migration with expectation that Microsoft's operating system to be running smoothly under ARM structure before 2014.

After quad-core KAL-EL, Nvidia will push 28nm-based Wayne in 2012, 28nm LOGAN in 2013 and 28nm STARK in 2014, Huang added.