At its annual investor meeting, Nvidia unveiled a new platform, known as Kai, which the company hopes will allow for the production of quad-core Android 4.0 tablets that are priced comparably to Amazon's Kindle Fire. The Kai project is both a reference tablet design, which could be turned into a consumer product, and a roadmap for the development of similar low-priced but powerful tablets.
Nvidia representatives participating in the meeting pointed out the Kindle Fire in particular, noting that the device had achieved a low price point, but at the cost of processing power and overall device efficiency. Nvidia aims to leverage the Kai platform to bring $199 tablet computers to market without sacrificing processing power. While the Kai presentation was targeted largely at Android 4.0 tablets, representatives did note that Windows on ARM represented a considerable opportunity for the company and its platform as well.
Speaking with The Verge, Nvidia executives had little to add aside from a promise that Kai-powered devices were forthcoming. Nvidia believes that the new platform could result in Kai-based Tegra 3 tablets later this year. Nvidia has previously expressed its confidence in the mobile sector as a significant area of growth, and has dedicated company resources to developing high-power processing components for mobile devices.
