Android tablets to go quad-core this year

Nvidia CEO outlines tablet chip plans and reveals snippets about Windows 8

Nvidia has promised Android tablets will feature quad-core processors this year.

The chip maker's president and chief executive, Jen-Hsun Huang, said such tablets will hit shelves before Christmas, but didn't say whether or not quad-core smartphones would also arrive this year.

"We're trying to get there as fast as possible," Huang told The Wall Street Journal. "Some of it is related to getting the industrial design as wonderful as possible, and some of it's related to tuning and performance. But it's going to be pretty great."

Huang said Nvidia's Tegra chips are already running on half of high-end Android smartphones, but isn't widely used on lower-end handsets. Huang hopes to change that, with the company looking to push into mid-market smartphones next year.

Huang said 70 percent of Android tablets are running Nvidia chips, which use ARM's architecture, and expects Google's mobile OS to grab half of the tablet market in the next four years. He predicted Nvidia's revenue from mobile chips will jump from $2 billion this year to $20bn by 2015, while its GPU business will climb from $4.5bn to $7bn.

Those numbers highlight the importance of mobile chips to the computing industry, Huang said. "If you don't have a mobile strategy, you're in deep turd," Huang told CNet. "If you're not in mobile processors now, you're seven years too late."

Windows 8

The Nvidia CEO also spilled details of Windows 8, which Microsoft is set to unveil in Los Angeles next week. Huang claimed Windows Phone 7 applications will run on Windows 8, the OS Microsoft is developing to enter the tablet market.

"Windows 8 on ARM is going to be delightful," he added. "The future personal computer post-Windows 8 is going to change your mind about Windows altogether."

This article originally appeared at pcpro.co.uk