Somewhere deep in the US Patent and Trademarks Office (USPTO), there is a filing about a nano-computer designed by NVIDIA. From their description, the computer would roughly be as big as a USB key (40-60 x 10-12 x 5-10mm), but yet powerful enough to be the equivalent of a high-end smartphone.The chip itself is capable of handling many types of ports (USB, Firewire, HDMI, LAN etc…), but at this point, it is mainly a matter of form factor: it’s actually hard to fit all these ports on such a small device. As you can see in the description, the computer would connect to a display, and it would be logical to assume that the display powers the computer.
This is a really interesting concept because it is tiny, light and probably very cheap. As for raw processing power, it will evolve like any other computing device: it will become faster over time. I think that it would need some kind of universal port, like a docking port that could convey signals for USB, Firewire, video etc… Now all it takes is to convince the display folks to jump on board. What do you think?
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