tegra

Not seven months after its debut, the Asus Eee Pad Transformer is consistently one of the most popular tablets on CNET. So, it came as a surprise when I heard that Asus was preparing a follow-up tablet so soon after the original.

On Tuesday, Asus officially unveiled the Eee Pad Transformer Prime. Touted as the world's first tablet to house the Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core CPU, the Transformer Prime enters the tablet market slim and trim, with a 0.33-inch depth and 1.29-pound weight, making it thinner and lighter than the iPad 2.

The aluminum chassis comes in … Read more

The Nvidia Tegra 2 was the new hotness earlier this year as Honeycomb tablet after Honeycomb tablet embraced its dual-core architecture. Now, it's garbage.

On Tuesday, Nvidia officially unveiled the Tegra 2's successor, announcing the quad-core Tegra 3 CPU. The CPU will debut inside the Asus Transformer Prime in December and according to Nvidia, it'll offer up to three times the graphics performance of Tegra 2, and up to 61 percent lower power consumption.

Nvidia intends to achieve this lower power draw by implementing a technique called Variable Symmetric Multiprocessing (vSMP). The Tegra 3 is actually built … Read more

Karyne may be up a point on the Rumor board, but I'm winning where it actually counts: on Twitter.

As of this writing, I have 232 followers and Karyne has 223.

OK, you can stop laughing now.

We realize, of course, that those numbers are embarrassingly low. So follow us, guys! (@EmilyDreyfuss, @karynelevy, @RumorShow.) Our new high-stakes side bet is who can get to 500 first. Maybe the lucky 500th follower of the winner will get a prize!

The rumors on today's show are of the spiciest variety: sightings of the first quad-core phone (which some people really don't want); two new iPads in 2012; all-new Apple products next year (huzzah); and Siri may ruin my life by coming to old iOS devices. … Read more

Sony has unveiled the official details of the first touch-screen Android Walkman, with a Japanese release date of December 10 in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB capacities.

The Walkman Z series comes with a 1GHz dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, 512MB of RAM, and Android 2.3, all displayed through an enormous 4.3-inch LCD screen (480x800), according to a Sony Japan Web site (Google Translate.) Black, red, and a special Sony Store limited violet edition will float around various territories.

CNET's Stephen Shankland already provided much of this information during an exclusive reveal of the Android Walkman last month at IFA 2011.

Sony has certainly come a long way from the cassette Walkman of yesteryear.

Hardware features are impressive for a nonphone (such as mini-HDMI, DLNA, WM-Port/Mini-USB), but it is important to note the device only has Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1 wireless capabilities. GPS and a gyroscope is also built-in to make the device relevant with the wide variety of games and location-aware Android apps out there. The Z series can access the full Android market. Continuous battery life is average at 20 hours for music playback and 5 hours video.

As for sound enhancements (and reasons for actually buying this over an iPod), digital noise canceling and a built-in S-Master MX digital amplifier are included. Music codec support is vast, including MP3, WMA, ATRAC, ATRAC Advanced Lossless, Linear PCM, AAC, and HE-AAC. We assume ATRAC compatibility will not happen outside of Japan, as it has been for several years now. FM radio is on board for those commercial filled broadcasts that we can't seem to live without. … Read more

Nvidia, best known for its high-end graphics chips, will generate a vast majority of its revenue from its now burgeoning mobile-processor business, according to outspoken Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang.

Huang, speaking to a roundtable of reporters today, said he expects the mobile-chip business to grow tenfold, to $20 billion by 2015. In comparison, the graphics processor business is expected to grow 75 percent, to $7 billion in the same time frame. He added he expects to maintain a strong share in both businesses.

"We'll be quite a force to contend with," Huang said.

Over the past few … Read more

Apple's iPad will likely have to contend this year with new Android tablets sporting the latest high-speed silicon coming off production lines in Asia.

Nvidia is on the record saying that tablets powered by its quad-core Kal-El chip are arriving this year. "Kal-El-powered tablets are coming this fall, and phones around the CES 2012 timeframe," Nvidia said in a statement to CNET on Friday.

It's safe to presume that Nvidia isn't just blowing smoke. Its processors today power all of the most popular Android Honeycomb tablets, including the Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, … Read more

Nvidia's CEO boasted about the power frugality of an upcoming quad-core chip, as the company reported better-than-expected earnings today.

The graphics chip supplier swung to better-than-expected earnings in the fiscal second quarter ended July 31, buttressed by revenue from laptop graphics processing units used with systems built around Intel's "Sandy Bridge" processors.

Nvidia reported a profit of $151.6 million compared with a loss of $141 million in the year-earlier period. Revenue surged 25 percent to $1.02 billion. And gross margin--a critical profit indicator--jumped to 51.7 percent from 16.6 percent compared to last … Read more

The Samsung Galaxy S II has already taken off in global markets, becoming Samsung's fastest-selling phone with sales of 3 million units in 55 days, according to a Samsung press release issued July 3.

CNET certainly appreciated the dual-core, 4G-capable Android handset enough to give the unlocked version a coveted Editors' Choice Award ahead of its official U.S. launch. Although a U.S. version cleared the FCC in early May, possibly AT&T-bound, there's still been no official word on a timeline or carrier pickup.

We did, however, learn of a few more clues in another recent FCC filing, this time for a handset with a variation on the Galaxy S II's model number, one that outlets like Engadget have speculated means that there's an Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor onboard.… Read more

Dell will launch its highly anticipated 10-inch tablet in the Chinese market first, based on a emerging belief that the U.S. market isn't mature enough for a successful Android launch, Dell executives told CNET today.

Dell's Streak 10 Pro (see specifications below) will launch in China this summer and in the U.S. market probably sometime next year, John Thode, a Dell vice president and manager of Dell's mobility business, told CNET. The U.S. market simply doesn't offer a viable 10-inch tablet strategy for Dell, he said.

"This is not an either-or for … Read more