NVIDIA Tegra 4 won’t ship until July, pegs Project Shield with likely September launch
Update: NVIDIA has issued a statement clarifying the release date for both Tegra 4 and Project Shield. Both can be expected in Q2 of calendar year 2013, which spans from spring to early summer. The initial report erroneously based dates on the layout of the fiscal year, confusing CEO Jen-Hsun Huang’s remarks.
According to NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, the company’s next-gen Tegra 4 platform will not ship to manufacturers until July. The news was announced during yesterday’s conference call with financial analysts after NVIDIA reported one of the best years in their history.
With the silicon not arriving until early summer, expect devices based around the ARM Cortex-15-based chipset with 72 GPU cores to reach consumers by fall. This includes the highly-anticipated Project SHIELD gaming handheld, which looks likely for a September launch given this timeline.
Tegra 4 offers manufacturers plenty of reasons to go with NVIDIA for future smartphone and tablet designs, but it faces some stuff competition. Recently, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 has become the standard for most high-end releases, while Samsung will challenge with their Exynos 5 Octa chipset to debut later this year. Any delays in getting Tegra 4 to consumers could hurt NVIDIA’s chances of gaining a bigger stake in the mobile industry.
[via Electronista]