Now, this happened last year too.    NVIDIA announced a better than anybody else's chipset called Tegra 4 and they built a gaming rig around it for CES for show and tell and then had it out later for real production

 ..... a little bit later than they first thought they would.

And it was VERY expensive.    And the chipset yields on Tegra 4 were low, so much so that the cost of the chipset's productgs went UP after they started shipping it in quantity, not down.

And Snapdragon 600 and 800 were out by then and were better chipsets .....

So Tegra 4 was a landmark chipset that flopped after introduction.
NVIDIA sold some them some more old die shrunk Tegra 3 chipsets and some small quantity of the Tegra 4 chipsets in this past year,  but they weren't numerically the powerhouse chip supplier they were previously.

http://liliputing.com/2014/01/nvidia-introduces-tegra-k1-192-core-chip.html



So here comes NVIDIA again,  getting ready to launch its first processor based upon the same Kepler architecture as its PC gaming graphics hardware.

Up until now we’ve been calling that next-gen chip the Tegra 5, but NVIDIA says it’s such an evolutionary leap from earlier Tegra chips that it deserves as new name.

NOTE PLEASE:  This is NOT an ARM designed chipset, it is NVIDIA's own PC architecture die shrunk to the newest lithography levels.   It will have a single ARM A-15 core tucked in there somewhere, for doing basic Android tasks.   Later versions will  have 1-4 each A57 cores tucked away in the chipset's minor guts  for "better performance".   (?????   this sounds strange, don't it?)

Expect it to cost more than a monkey's uncle, need a larger battery  and require all sorts of  proprietary custom drivers out the ass.

"Built to flop" in other words .....   powerful yes, but energy efficient or low cost --- nope.

But it does give us another non-ARM alternative that isn't Intel either.    

AMD must be laughing into their sleeves as NVIDIA's graphics cards currently cost like 3 times more than their new AMD offerings do and now here is NVIDIA's egotism is taking them down that exact same path in the mobile world.


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Will NVIDIA release their custom drivers for Kepler into the public domain?   Will they turn it over to the Linaro supermarket so they can sell this chip into the Android tablet world?

This might be a good thing if it actually happens .....