Nvidia: Tegra Puts 8 Processors Inside Zune HD

Nvidia makes it extra official today, plus 50 more Tegra projects in the works.

We've known since June that Nvidia's Tegra chipset will be powering the Microsoft Zune HD, but the graphics chip specialist decided that today would be a good day to make it official with a press release.

Now that Microsoft has loosed almost all the details about the Zune HD, most importantly its quickly-approaching September 15 launch date, Nvidia is divulging more information about the hardware.

Specifically, the Tegra provides the Zune HD with eight independent processors, each designed for a specific class of tasks - among them are an HD video processor, an audio processor, a graphics processor, and two ARM cores. Furthermore, the processors can work together or independently to minimize power consumption.

“Tegra provides the multimedia muscle in Zune HD,” said Michael Rayfield, general manager of NVIDIA’s mobile business. “Users will love the device’s new design, amazing multimedia features and HD video out capability. Zune HD is a must-have for anyone looking for the best portable digital media player on the market.”

With HD-compatible video, HD Radio receiver, full-screen Internet browsing, Wi-Fi and an OLED touch screen, we're certainly looking forward to the Zune HD. Nvidia says that there are 50 active Tegra processor-based design projects currently in the works today.