NVIDIA give Nintendo 1080P support in the palm of your hand.
NVIDIA's Tegra is a miniature processor that has been a long time in the making; aimed squarely at the handheld mobile sector, it's got some pretty phenomenal capabilities for such a small chip, as well as coming in at a relatively affordable price.
Built around a dual ARM9 processor, the second-gen Tegra chip seems headed for Nintendo's next handheld console - it's paired with GeForce 9-series graphics tech, manufactured in a 40nm process, can handle video output up to 1080P (as well as 720P encoding) and comes in at a power consumption within a <1 watt tolerance.
Not only does this mean that the chip is more than powerful to run Nintendo's current two-LCD low-resolution DSi console, but it's plenty of sheer processing grunt to run two larger screens with full 3D content on them - perhaps a sign that Nintendo's next console is going to be damn powerful.
The Bright Side of News muses one possibility:
...we see no reason why you could not have 4x Anti-Aliasing and 8x Anisotropic filtering on a dual-screen system.
Making the leap to Tegra makes perfect sense for Nintendo's console; the ARM architecture will allow perfect backwards compatibility with the entire current DS range, and it packs every feature needed into a single SoC (System-on-Chip) design that reduces complexity (and ultimately cost).
Speculatively this might also possibly include support for NVIDIA's 3D Vision technology at some point down the track as an accessory, an interesting avenue for Nintendo to explore and definitely something that NVIDIA would be keen to help with.
This contract is covered in a little more detail over at the Bright Side of News, but with the Microsoft Zune HD (USA only) packing a first-gen Tegra into their MP3 player there will be a cavalcade of other followers keen to get some punchy graphics on the go.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012