Nvidia's quad-core Tegra tablet chip due in September

The next version of Nvidia's successful tablet and phone processor, the Tegra, will be available in September, the processor and chipset maker has said.

The company was at the Computex trade show in Taipei making some announcements about its handheld and desktop gaming products, including a preview of the next-generation Tegra 3.

The company's presentation included a demonstration of how well it says the next generation of tablet computers will be able to perform as games machines.

Current products that use the existing Tegra 2 chipset include Motorola's Xoom tablet computer (click here to read our review).

Code-named Kal-El, the new chipset will have vastly increased processing power, something Nvidia's senior vice president Daniel Vivoli demonstrated using Glowball, a scary-clown-based pinball game that will be available on devices that use Kal-El, which has four processor cores rather than the two of Tegra 2.

The demonstration, part of which you can watch in our video above, shows how Kal-El appears to perform complex calculations to 'ray-trace' light paths as the playing ball moves around the screen. It also responds to movement of the tablet by moving curtain objects at the side of the playing area, another mathematically complex, processor-intensive task.

Mr Vivoli initially said Glowball would be free, then backtracked and joked "for all of you, free", before saying that Kal-El devices would start to come out around September.

The company also announced that its new Nvidia 3D Vision kit would be a cheaper, wired version of its existing product (click here to read our review of the original 3D Vision kit), which offers PC gamers with a suitable 3D TV or projector the opportunity to play games and watch films in 3D at home. The new wired kit will cost $99, and British pricing has not yet been announced.

It recently announced a partnership with Youtube to let Nvidia users watch Youtube 3D videos through Nvidia polarised glasses. Until now, Youtube 3D videos were only viewable through coloured glasses, not polarised ones. 

To read more of our coverage from Computex Taipei 2011, click here