Tegra chip could save Zune brand

Bring on the killer apps
By Stewart Meagher, 13 August 2009

IT'S IMPOSSBLE TO DENY THAT Microsoft's range of Zune portable media players (PMP) have lived in a perpetual shadow cast by the ever-present Ipod and its manifold siblings, but an announcement from Nvidia could shine a light for fans of Microsoft's also-ran pocketable music and video jukeboxes. Graphics chip giant Nvidia has announced that the next iteration of the Vole's player, the Zune HD, will be armed with a dual-core Tegra processor. Based on blueprints from Brit chip shop ARM, one of the two processor cores will take care of the operating system, and graphics duties will be taken over by an Nvidia Geforce GPU. And ARM has applied its usual skill at squeezing a hell of a lot of processing punch out of a tiny amount of electrickery, with the whole Tegra chipset drawing less than half a Watt of power, not least because clever software will shut down parts of the chips not being used. So, if you're listening to music, the graphics side of the hardware will sit idle until needed.

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