GeForce G310 Fermi - Nvidia news! 2010

Earlier this month, some rumors from China indicated the arrival of a smartbook based on the Tegra platform and featuring the new Google Chrome OS. The rumor mentioned names as Acer and Lenovo and indicated the end of September as the launch date of those smartbooks.

Three weeks later, nVIDIA mobile’s General Manager, Mike Rayfield, has confirmed the collaboration between the two companies and the mysterious Chrome OS is one of the solutions for the Tegra platform. Basically, besides Windows Mobile, Windows CE and Android, Chrome OS will also be among the Operating Systems that will be used on the next smartbooks. The choice, according to Rayfield, will be entirely up to the manufacturers. He didn’t specify precise dates, but it should be launched by the end of this year.

nVidia has decided to use the Microsoft Windows CE OS for the new Tegra platforms. The analysts maybe expected this move, but the Open Source world perhaps didn’t.

According to nVidia, the Linux and Android solutions are not yet evolved enough to support the technical necessities of the future netbooks based on Tegra. For example, Android doesn’t support the latest generation of graphic units. Ubuntu Netbook Remix and Moblin, instead, seem to still have some hardware compatibilities.

Windows CE will obviously be pushed aside by the netbook edition of Windows 7, but at the moment, it seems to be the only OS that support the ARM multi-core architectures perfectly and allows device manufacturers to optimize their products.

Asus offers, besides nVidia’s technologies that come with the reference board, other technologies such as:

ASUS Splendid: allows users to watch movies on PC with the same quality as a good television;

ASUS Video Security Online: a cheap and flexible security system, that can transform your computer into a security server;

ASUS Game LiveShow: it allows players to share their gaming experiences through Internet;

ASUS Game Replay: records the co-op gaming experiences in MPEG4 in order to allow players to check the strategies and moves with their teammates;

ASUS Game FaceMessenger: real-time audi/video with advanced gaming interaction capability, through the activation of point-to-point video conferences during the online gaming sessions;

ASUS OnScreenDisplay: it allows users to instantly set the many display options even during a game session, without the need of going back to the PC’s operational system.