Nvidia Tegra netbook coming

Nvidia Tegra 650 netbook notebook price linux flash windows
HP prototype sighted, based on Mini 1000 netbook.

LaptopMag has gotten their hands on the Nvidia Tegra netbook prototype, which Nvidia claims should be good for 10-15 hours on a single charge. This is the same figures that ARM claims for their 3rd party netbook prototypes with ARM licensed cores.

Nvidia has long been working on the GoForce cores for mobile handhelds, which haven't achieved a big success among smartphone and mobile phone makers - so a low power graphics core is something Nvidia has an expertise in.

The CPU core is based on ARM11 designs and runs from 600 to 750MHz. There are three versions available:

• Tegra APX 2500 with 600MHz CPU core
• Tegra 600 with 650MHz CPU core
• Tegra 650 with 750MHz CPU core
  

The design targeted at netbooks is Tegra 650 which, as the other models, has support for USB, HDMI, S-Video and HD video hardware decoding. Tegra 650 also has support for 200MHz DDR memory while the 600 sticks to 166MHz. There's also an IDE interface for SSD drives, which consumes less power than SATA interfaces - this is a move Intel will also take in the next version of the Atom core.
The chips themselves also have a Flash memory interface, to accomodate small amounts of SSD storage onboard(4-8GiB), which is what we should see in cheaper designs:

Nvidia prototype system board

Nvidia expects to have netbooks available on the $99 to $199 price range, something already possible on some Intel designs but which will only be available on Tegra for the $99 price point(for now) due to very simplefied board and cooling designs, when compared with Atom designs.

As for software, the prototype was running a modified Windows CE version - the only ARM compatible version of Windows - although Linux versions will be available and are expected to be much more capable. Adobe Flash will have it's ARM port complete by around June, both for Windows and Linux.
Canonical is also working on an ARM version of Ubuntu, scheduled to be complete this month.

Below, a prototype of the interface Nvidia expects to have running on Windows CE, which takes advantage of the 3D core inside the chip: