I’m a fan of NVIDIA. I have their graphics cards in my computers at home and one of them has an NVIDIA chipset-based motherboard. I especially like their drivers both for Windows and Linux (yeah, I don’t care if it’s closed, it’s still free). It all leads to a good user experience and a happy customer.

So when they make a big move, I pay attention. And today they announced their Tegra product line. News release is here. And a good analysis from Tom’s Hardware is here.

Now, NVIDIA isn’t creating anything new here. They’re entering a market that’s already dominated by some big players, including Texas Instruments (a CDT contributor), Freescale (another CDT contributor who’s actually a committer), and others. And I’m sure these guys are saying “Big deal”, been there, done that.

But the reason I find it interesting and potentially game changing is the reputation that NVIDIA brings with it as it joins in the fun. NVIDIA is known for cool products that entice excitement, especially with their video card business (just look at the flashy website they have). And I’m sure they’ll bring that with them. Which, at the end of the day, will result in some really cool mobile internet devices, or MIDs as their marketing guys call them, which have some impressive video and gaming applications but with long battery life.

I’m pretty confident the other guys will spruce up their products to match, which in then end means a further invigoration of the mobile computing space. It’s a fun time to be in the embedded software business.