The tablet on the left is the Tegra based nVidia device
Microsoft is in the middle of showing off it"s biggest bet yet -- Windows 8 -- and today showed off the OS publicly in depth for the first time, and gave out tablets to attendees of the BUILD conference in Anaheim, California.
Much fanfare was given to the OS, but what about the hardware on stage? One of the quietly shown off things was a nVidia tablet PC with a Tegra chip under the hood. In a press release today, nVidia talks about their "quad-core Tegra-powered tablet" which is "embracing the future."
According to the company, they "supported Microsoft in their ARM ecosystem efforts by providing the world’s first quad-core ARM development platform, tools and deep engineering support."
The Tegra chipset is one of the first ARM processors, which are now officially supported under Windows 8. nVidia doesn"t go into details about specifications, but goes on to point out that all "Windows 8 applications will feature hardware accelerated graphics. He said that developers will not need to do additional work to support hardware acceleration – they can just write the applications, and they will automatically take advantage of graphics on both ARM and x86 platforms."
nVidia says that by the end of next year, it should be expected to see "lightweight and affordable Windows 8 notebooks and tablets" that will offer days of battery life and stunning HD graphics, thanks to the Tegra processor.