Nvidia's Tegra is the Chip Behind the Microsoft Zune HD
Up until now its processing brains have been cloaked in mystery but PC Perspective had the knowledge all along as they found out that Nvidia’s Tegra system on a chip is what is powering the Zune HD. Here’s a peek at their report:
I actually learned this fact from some NVIDIA staffers over at
Computex in early June but I guess I just didn’t realize how “news
worthy” the information was. No longer do you have to worry about
“rumors” on the subject – Tegra has its first major design win.
As for which Tegra chip they’re using they had the option of the APX and the 600, the guess is that the company’s APX chip is in as it supports the 720p resolution necessary while the Tegra 600 sports up to 1080p HD playback and the company certainly would’ve noted the 1080p as a major feature when it was announced.
The question is which one… the APX is a nice system on a chip but it cant do 3D. There are two kinds of 600 series tegra chips. The 650 can do the 1080p but the 600 can only do 720p, however both can do the same advanced 3d graphics processing. My guess… since the 600 and the APX cost roughly the same Microsoft will go for the 600 to compete directly with iTouch. This will also give them a leading edge on 3d games for the Zune HD since this processor has far more computing power than the GPU on the iTouch.
That’s funny… Youtube is full of videos with the Tegra APX doing 3D better than anything else on the market.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsYFXGKUIpE