The 2013 International CES is starting with a bang as NVIDIA kicked things off with a press conference featuring two big announcements. As expected, the processing company finally took the lid off theTegra 4, which it dubbed "the world's fastest mobile processor." It then went above and beyond the call of duty by surprising everyone with a video game console.
Titled "Project Shield," the dedicated handheld system is essentially a controller with a high-definition screen attached. Powered by the Tegra 4, the system will be well-equipped to play games of all kinds, including those whose quality is generally reserved for home consoles and PCs. In fact, Project Shield can even stream video games from the home PC and Steam service so long as the computer runs on a GeForce GTX 650 graphics card or better. All games available for Android and NVIDIA's own TegraZone will be playable on Shield as well.
"We were inspired by a vision that the rise of mobile and cloud technologies will free us from our boxes, letting us game anywhere, on any screen," said Jen-Hsun Huang, co-founder and chief executive officer at NVIDIA. We imagined a device that would do for games what the iPod and Kindle have done for music and books, letting us play in a cool new way. We hope other gamers love SHIELD as much as we do."
Project Shield is capable of supporting and streaming to a 4K Ultra HD resolution television, that is, as long as one can actually afford purchasing the display. Battery life is expected to range from 5-10 hours for gaming, while watching videos in HD will tax the system for about 24 hours. The system will run on the latest version of the Android operating system when it launches, which is now slated for the second quarter of 2013. No price point was mentioned.
As for the Tegra 4 itself, the chip boasts six times the processing power of its Tegra 3 predecessor. It is the first quad-core processor featuring Cortex-A15 cores, which in English means that web sites will load nearly three times faster than before. On the energy-saving front, Tegra 4 will use 45 percent less power than the Tegra 3 while enabling 14 hours of continuous HD playback on smartphones.
"Tegra 4 provides enormous processing power and efficiency to power smartphones and tablets, gaming devices, auto systems and PCs," said Phil Carmack, senior vice president of the Tegra business at NVIDIA. "Its new capabilities, particularly in the area of computational photography, will help improve a whole range of existing products and lead to the creation of exciting new ones."
