Nvidia: Microsoft’s new Surface RT has a Tegra soc

The successor of Microsoft’s Surface RT is not driven by a chip from Qualcomm, as some expected, but by a soc-up chip designer Nvidia. The company is currently working closely with Microsoft on the new tablet.

Nvidia ceo Jen-Hsun Huang to CNET told that his company is busy with the work for the new tablet. Nvidia also supplied all of the Tegra 3 chip for Microsoft’s first Surface RT. The past few months, reported various sources that Microsoft was switched to competitor Qualcomm, but that turns out not to be so.

Although Huang is not the specific chip names that will be used in the new Surface RT, it’s most likely the Tegra 4-soc. This consists of five Cortex A15 processing cores and is significantly faster than the Tegra 3 chip from the first Surface RT, which is still on the Cortex A9 design was based. Currently, there is only a small number of devices available with a Tegra 4-soc, including Nvidia’s own Shield handheld, HP’s Slatebook X2, and a few tablets from Toshiba.

The Surface RT was Microsoft’s first attempt at its own tablet and turned out to be no great success. A possible reason for why consumers are not enthusiastic is that the RT variant of Windows is not backwards compatible with old applications. Microsoft was forced to take a large depreciation on inventories due to poor sales, and recently the price was significantly reduced.

Also other tablets running Windows RT run do not well: Asus recently announced yet to completely stop the production of RT devices as a result of disappointing sales of its VivoTab RT.

According to Jen-Hsun Huang was the lack of Outlook for the Surface RT a big problem, he sees that as a ‘killer app’. If the new Surface is released, presumably sometime this fall, will Outlook be available, and according to Huang, should that make a big difference.