Taking a look at all of the evidence seems to put the decision to launch in the mobile space more into a “beat AMD to the punch” move than anything else. nVidia has already missed the boat on being first to the desktop market with 28nm. They know it and so does the rest of the market. This is not to say that they will not have a good product. In fact is the final shipping product hits even 80% of the paper target it should be good.
No the thing is to move into a much more productive and forgiving space. This is the mobile market. Here nVidia has a good lead on AMD. As we told you in our AMD coverage during CES the first AMD 7 series mobile GPUs are still going to be 40nm. This actually limits the number of designs that these products can go in. Here if nVidia can deliver working 28nm silicon they can score big. The Ultrabook and slim notebook is going to bloom this year and with the additional performance per watt advantage Ivy Bridge this market has never looked more attractive.
Meanwhile AMD will be waiting to push out a 28nm of the mobile 7 series for later in the year. It looks like this delay may cost them. We are working to get additional confirmation on the actual ship dates, but right now it looks like they will indeed be in line with the Ivy Bridge April Launch.
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