Wednesday, June 20, 2012: The company renowned for its Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) the world over, NVIDIA had made some brief announcements about the tablet exclusive KAI platform earlier this year in January. The company already has a sizeable number of OEM partners in the smartphone segment but the swelling tablet market seems to have pulled NVIDIA's attention too. To its credit, smartphones such as HTC One X, LG Optimus X, Motorola Atrix 4G, Samsung Galaxy R and many others are powered by either the Tegra 2 or Tegra 3 platform by Nvidia which deliver dual-core and quad-core processing power respectively. In a similar manner, the company has a large portfolio of tablets comprising the likes of- Acer Iconia Tab series, Asus Eee Pad Transformer series, Sony Tablet S and Tablet P, Motorola Xoom and several others that pack-in a Tegra 2 or a Tegra 3 processor. Among the choice of Tegra 3 tablets, the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime TF201 that is priced for around Rs 49,999 does not come easy on the pocket in any manner. With special mention to the price equation of the Indian tablet market, anything that is expensive than the iPad won't fetch fruitful returns. The situation does not differ much in the international tablet markets as well. This is where Nvidia's KAI platform pitches-in.
Taking view of the challenges faced by tablets manufacturers in building a low cost and satisfying device, Nvidia brought the KAI platform. The company has actually taken forward the Tegra 3 mobile chip to design a tablet platform that renders high performance while keeping costs low.

“KAI is a recipe that tablet makers can reference when they’re designing and building low cost, quad-core Android tablets targeted at the $199 price point,” said Matt Wuebbling, director, product marketing-Tegra, NVIDIA.

The $199 (Rs 11,000 approx) price point can act as a promising factor, especially in markets like India and China. The performance of the $199 KAI tablet will be worth watching, as no other chip manufacturer offers quad-core mobile computing at such an aggressive pricing.

“KAI has some basic ingredients that can be spiced up with some options. Its basics include the Tegra 3 quad-core mobile processor with its unique 4-PLUS-1 architecture and battery-saver core, a unique memory controller (which is compatible with lower cost PC-type memory, DDR3L), system-level innovations like DirectTouch and PRISM, and components integrated from leaders in the tablet ecosystem,” added Matt.

Besides a screen size of 17.74-cm (7-inch), the KAI platform can be configured with a whole range of display sizes and resolutions. A 17.74-cm (7-inch) tablet reference design was unveiled at the Consumer Electronocs Show (CES) earlier this year. Highlighting its availability, a PC World report previously indicated that a number of tablets based on the KAI platform will be announced during the second half of this year. A similar development reported recently by Slashgear notifies a Microsoft tablet powered by Nvidia's Tegra processor. While it is not clear if its the Nvidia KAI or the upcoming Tegra 3+, the odds are rolling in favour of the budget KAI chipset.

Of late, the Indian market has been largely restricted to Nvidia's graphics business. There is no news as to when Nvidia's KAI will hit the Indian shores but given the enormous size and rapid growth of the tablet market in the country, we might surely see some strong initiatives from the company in the near future. For more information on Nvidia's KAI platform, stay tuned!