Nvidia declares that 2010 is the year of the tablet and showcases a number of them running on its latest Tegra platform.

LAS VEGAS Nvidia declared that 2010 is the year of the tablet at its CES2010 press conference, and went on to launch its latest Tegra 2 platform, running on a slew of them.

The company wanted these tablets to have the performance of a PC, but have the energy efficiency of a cell phone. This is where the next generation of Nvidia's Tegra 2 comes in. It features a dual-core Cortex A9 processorpart of its eight independent processors, which also include a Geforce GPU. Nvidia claims Tegra 2 will have 10 times the performance of a smartphone, operating at only 500 milliwatts. So battery life will be far better than products based on Qualcomm's or Intel's , according to Nvidia.

Mike Rayfield, Nvidia's general manager for mobile products, said the company was switching Tegra's focus from clamshell "smartbooks" to slate tablets in 2010. Considering that Tegra devices can't run Microsoft Windows  the OS doesn't run on any ARM-based processor -- Nvidia wants to avoid the confusion that happened with the first Linux-based netbooks. Those machines were returned to stores en masse because baffled consumers expected to be able to run Windows apps.

"People could be getting clamshells and assume they would be getting a Windows 7 PC," Rayfield said. "The tablet doesn't have that kind of confusion."

Tegra tablets will have desktop-level browsers with Flash support and extensive multimedia capabilities, but won't run familiar Windows software. In fact, Nvidia announced that Adobe will port its Air platform to Tegra, enabling Flash for content such as digital magazines.

Five tablets were on display at the conference, including ones from FoxConn, MSI, NotionInk, Compal, and ICD  all working units with capacitive touchscreens (7 to 10 inches), no physical keyboards, some type of Linux interface (the NotionInk and ICD tablets were running Android), and running on the same Tegra platform. Each of these devices touts 140 hours of music playback and 16 hours of HD video.

And that's the main appeal of Tegrathe ability to playback rich video content (in 720p and 1080p) and be used primarily as an entertainment platform, while having all the battery benefits of a smartphone. "If you want to buy a system that has days of battery life, has a great Web experience, but the Microsoft Office enterprise apps aren't necessary, then you buy this," says Rayfield.

"I believe these devices will be significantly less expensive to build than a netbook," he said. "Our partners have talked about these devices retailing between $200-300, and that could get subsidized down to zero," he said.

There weren't any smartbooks displayed at the press conference, but Rayfield added that "I do believe smartbooks will come up as well," just not this year. Mobinnova, however, announced the Beam, a smartbook that runs on the Tegra 2 platform, but said that it was still looking into retail partners.

Connected cars and 3D Vision

Although tablets were the main attraction, Nvidia also announced a partnership with Audi, the German automobile company, to install in every one of its vehicles the Tegra platform in the upcoming years. A vehicle cutout, with a working touch display mounted on the dashboard, was demoed with mapping software, running on Tegra 2.

3D Vision will also a big part of Nvidia's grand scheme, as the company announced that Asus, Clevo, and MSI will have laptops that support Nvidia's 3D technology. Desktop 3D displays from LG, Acer, and Samsung were also announced, each of them 3D Vision ready, with refresh rates of 120Hz. In bigger screens, Nvidia is partnering with the movie industry and announced Blu-ray in 3D.

Please stay tuned for our hands-on piece (with pictures) of the five tablets that were displayed.