MOLES IN SANTA CLARA tell SemiAccurate that Nvidia’s latest wonderchip, Tegra 3, has taped out. Expect the PR announcement storm to kick up soon, but don’t look for product this year.

Tegra 3, aka T30, looks to be every bit as successful as the last two, with dozens of design win announcements expected soon. Once the chip is available, currently slated for mid-2011, expect most of those to vanish quicker than an overclocked Kin. Of those ‘wins’ that don’t get sent to the big pile of underperforming chips in the sky we expect one or two to actually be from companies you have heard of. No pay for play there. Mostly.

In the end, we can’t see how Nvidia is going to make a dent in anything other than a few eardrums with this chip. The biggest wins to date for the prior two generations likely haven’t hit the 100K unit sales mark, and that is for a product, the Zune HD, that was won on backroom deals. Even that was a flop, have you ever seen a Zune HD in the wild? How many hours worth of Apple sales is that?

In the mean time, Nvidia management is finding skapegoats while watching Tegra 2 volume pricing going from a mid-$30s asking price to $15 to $10. This price drop hasn’t done the one thing they wanted it to, customers keep canceling ‘design win’ after ‘design win’. Until Nvidia actually delivers on their promises, this slide won’t end. Unfortunately for management, they are promising customers the moon once again.S|A

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Charlie Demerjian

Roving engine of chaos and snide remarks at SemiAccurate

Charlie Demerjian is the founder of Stone Arch Networking Services and SemiAccurate.com. SemiAccurate.com is a technology news site; addressing hardware design, software selection, customization, securing and maintenance, with over one million views per month. He is a technologist and analyst specializing in semiconductors, system and network architecture. As head writer of SemiAccurate.com, he regularly advises writers, analysts, and industry executives on technical matters and long lead industry trends. Charlie is also available through Guidepoint and Mosaic. FullyAccurate

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