Nvidia confirms launch of Eee Pad Transformer Prime

Nvidia used its press conference at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas today to confirm the launch of a combined tablet and netbook from Asus.

The Eee Pad Transformer Prime is 10in netbook with  detachable display that runs its own operating system - Android Ice Cream Sandwich.

The Transformer Prime uses Nvidia's Tegra 3 graphics chip and co-founder Jen Hsun Huang was keen to show off some of the performance gains the new chip would provide both to tablet builders and app developers.

Huang demonstrated how a tablet can be used to remotely access a PC using an app called Splashtop, which rendered the display of the target PC in high clarity. Both video in HD and live gameplay from Skyrim were impressive in Huang's demo.

Huang was joined on stage by Asus CEO Jerry Shen, who confirmed the launch of the Eee Pad Transformer Prime and gave a brief glimpse of a new tablet based on Tegra 3 that he said would retail in the US for $249 - although details of the name or the time of launch were not revealed.

Nvidia also showed how its Direct Touch technology would improve the user experience of tablets by increasing the number of samples per second by a factor of three.