With smartphones and tablets continuing to encroach on dedicated consoles, chipset specialist Nvidia has suggested that next-generation handsets will be more powerful than the Xbox 360 or PS3.
A testament to the rise in portable technologies, Nvidia has predicted that future smartphones and tablets will rival current consoles in terms of graphical output, a move that will see the likes of the iPhone 6 and Samsung Galaxy S5 just one step behind Sony’s upcoming move to the PS4.
“The PS3 and Xbox 360 are barely more powerful than mobile devices,” Tony Tamasi, the Senior Vice President of Content and Technology at Nvidia said speaking with Bit-tech. “The next click of mobile phones will outperform [them].”
Hinting at a potential doubling of speeds from the current Nvidia Tegra 4 graphics chip to the presumably in-the-works, Tegra 5 GPU, the current smartphone chip is capable of running at 80GFLOPS compared with the 200GFLOPS achieved by the PS3 and Xbox 360. Whilst this jump might seem insurmountable in a single iteration upgrade, the last generation Tegra 3 chip hit just the 12GFLOPS mark.
With dedicated consoles facing increasing competition from portable devices, mobile chips, such as the Tegra 4 offering have also helped birth a new market in wallet-friendly Android based consoles. With the likes of Ouya having brought the market to notoriety, even the likes of Nvidia have jumped in on the scene, recently unveiling the Nvidia Project Shield prototype.
Speaking out on the rise of portable, smartphone technologies and subsequent chipsets, Nvidia’s Director of Corporate Communications, Luciano Alibrandi, recent told TrustedReviews that eight-core smartphones will soon not be enough, with the rapidly evolving market continuing to push more traditional PCs and consoles.
“The more you provide, the more it is developed, the more people expect and want,” Alibrandi said. “The smartphone is your most personal computer. You used to have a desktop, then a laptop now you are carrying a smartphone, or maybe more than one.
“What is important to think is that this is becoming the new computing world in terms of where you need more power to do stuff as you will use it every time, every second and so you want to emulate everything you have done on your PC and try to do it here.”
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.