LG selects NVIDIA Tegra 2 for upcoming smartphone, tablets

LG has just announced that it will use NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 in its upcoming Optimus smartphones, and tablets. This is huge for NVIDIA as the graphics chip company has had troubles to win contracts with major handset makers in the past. LG makes it clear that it has chosen NVIDIA because of its edge in graphics and performance: “LG is committed to making its Optimus Series smart devices the de facto standard in speed and graphics performance,” said Chang Ma, Vice President of Marketing Strategy.

If you’re not familiar with Tegra 2, it is an advanced mobile application processor that has not only a dual-core ARM Cortex A9 processor, but also a host of co-processors to accelerate 2D, 3D and video encoding/decoding. In the past, NVIDIA has been heavily biased towards Windows Mobile, but it looks like the switch to Android has paid off.