NVIDIA is currently hosting an event called the “GPU Technology Conference”. It’s a silly name when you think about it, because there are plenty of other graphics players, but I digress. At this conference, the company talked about the two chips that are going to come after the Tegra 4. While they didn’t exactly say “Tegra 5” and “Tegra 6” as I implied in my headline, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that that’s what the final products will end up being named.
With that in mind, here’s what NVIDIA said: Logan (Tegra 5) will sample in 2013 and should start shipping in early 2014. It’s key feature will be a graphics processor that supports OpenGL 4.3. If you’re wondering about the CPU, don’t bother asking, because NVIDIA isn’t talking. Parker (Tegra 6) is where things get interesting. It’s going to be NVIDIA’s first 64 bit part. Why is 64 bit important? Because that’s the only way we’re ever going to shove 4 GB of RAM into a smartphone or tablet. When Parker ships, hopefully in 2015, NVIDIA says it’ll be 100x faster than the Tegra 2. Here’s hoping, because the Tegra 2 was a horrible product that I’m surprised they even bothered reminding people about. When will I actually start taking NVIDIA seriously? When they end powering a flagship product that ships in the tens of millions of units. There’s a reason Samsung uses their own chips, nearly everyone else uses Qualcomm’s chips, and the small local players in India and China use MediaTek. Until NVIDIA announces a huge win, they’re just a small player making a lot of noise to me.
