nVidia is very good at marketing - both to the public and to developers. So long as their designs are competitive, they have the tools to be a top tier SOC supplier (maybe even the best). Of course, there are always plenty of ways to fail.
Their situation is sort of similiar to Intel's in that when they try and step outside of their core area of expertise they find themselves on the low-end of the learning curve while competing with companies that have years more experience in the business segment.
TI is no slouch in ARM, but TI is surrounded by very adept competitors in the field.
Nvidia showing up is kinda like Cyrix or IDT or Transmeta showing up to the x86 party some 15 yrs after it got started. They hit with a splash, lots of hype, and dissipated nearly as quickly.
Will Nvidia be different? If they are then it will be outside the norm.
I was thinking all this mobile OS morphing into Tablet/Desktop OS competition might force MS to lower prices on Windows 7 Home Premium.
If that happened, MS might try to vertically integrate to compensate for reduced software volume and/or profits. As far as Xbox goes I think you are probably right on that being the area of vertical integration (with ARM). Windows 7 Phone and Big Windows (whether we see Cloud versions or not) have too many partners to make vertical integration worthwhile.
Why would anyone be interested in the Cortex-A5 at this point? The ARM9 it refers to isn't the same as the Cortex-A9. The Cortex-A9 has better performance and is designed to allow up to four cores on one SoC. The ARM9 is an old design that was used in the Nintendo DS. I'm not actually sure if the Cortex-A5 actually shipped in many devices.
I got the idea of an efficient low cost smartphone (not necessarily using Cortex A5) from the "prepaid iPhone"/ "iPhone Nano" rumor. More information here.
I know Cortex A9 is faster, but don't those phones cost a good deal more money to produce while cheaper smartphones phones like the Android LG Optimus V (65nm ARM11) suffer in the battery life department?
P.S. Please take this argument in context of the world mobile market where phones are usually not subsidized. Essentially Apple or MS could use this type of vertically integrated strategy to undercut the Android handset makers (who are forced to rely purely on profits from the devices themselves).
Based on iSupply estimates, the A4 that Apple uses in their products costs about $10. If you're targeting the low end of the market you might not even need something as powerful as that. It's also built on a 45 nm process so you could cut costs with a die shrink as well. You can limit the rest of the costs by not including as much RAM or flash memory as well. Using a cheaper display would go a long way as well.
Apple also likes to maintain a certain amount of margin. They're not going to release a product that's not profitable for them. They may also risk cannibalizing their high-end products as well which is even less desirable for them. Apple may make a play at those markets, but they're purely content to have a small market share as long as it's the most profitable part of the market.
Microsoft on the other hand doesn't make hardware. Their hardware partners are the same people who are currently deploying Android on most of their handsets. Outside of paying for developers to produce customized Android for a manufacturer's device, Android has no cost for the handset manufacturer to use. Microsoft charges a license fee for each copy of Windows Phone 7. Racing towards the bottom is not in their interest as the lower the total price becomes, the larger the license fee for the OS becomes in proportion to the hardware. That makes it even harder for Microsoft to compete against Android. They'd prefer to move devices with a high ASP where the cost of their OS doesn't make as much of an impact.
Motorola was also worried about using an OS like Windows Phone that is not open source. “We would like an opportunity to create unique value and we don’t feel we could with a closed platform,” she said. Going with Windows Phone would create a scenario where the only value Motorola could offer was commoditized hardware, she said.
After seeing results for the new TI OMAP 4430 and Samsung Exynos, Tegra 2 doesn't look particularly amazing.
Maybe Tegra 3 will put them ahead again, but there's going to be a wave of chips with similar or better performance before the next generation Tegra parts come out as I don't believe the Tegra 2 3D improves the graphics over the Tegra 2.
Yes, but haven't "High profit directive" companies like Intel been known to shift gears and go "low profit" when they are worried about being undercut or missing out on long term market share?
Yes, I've heard those chips are cheap. But what about the A4's footprint? How does the extra power draw affect how other components need to be spec'd on the little mainboards? Wouldn't fitting an A4 sized chip/mainboard into a phone that is 3/4 the size of iphone 4 be difficult? (yet still provide the battery life required by folks on the world mobile market).
It's probably going to be the Tegra 3, which was know about over a month ago. Here's Engadget's article covering it. I'm more curious about how they're going to get their order of magnitude performance improvement every two years. We're going to end up with an ARM SoC the size of a GTX 280 before too long.
I'd laugh except that you are probably correct. I don't want thermi 2.0 in my cellphone, sorry. Nvidia does NOT have a history of making IC's that are sensitive to the needs of the low power-consumption market. They are kinda Intel'ish in this sense.
It's probably going to be the Tegra 3, which was know about over a month ago. Here's Engadget's article covering it. I'm more curious about how they're going to get their order of magnitude performance improvement every two years. We're going to end up with an ARM SoC the size of a GTX 280 before too long.
I definitely expect that. Around 2013-2014 or so, or whenever project Denver arrives and integrates Tesla with their custom ARM core.