Nvidia's Tegra mobile processors have cost the company $2 billion (£1.25 billion) over the past five years, according to Jen-Hsun Huang, the company's CEO.

Speaking at the Asia D conference in Hong Kong, Huang confirmed that Tegra had cost the epic amount due to research and development, and that the figure is likely to increase.

Huang also mentioned Kal-El, the company's upcoming quad-core processor.

"Getting performance is the easy part," said Huang. "The challenging part is delivering that performance with low power, and better and better efficiency. The low-power core with Kal-El is 20 times "less hungry" for energy."


Part of this energy-saving comes from an image processing technique that "cheats" on similar colours and lighting.

"The human eye can't tell," said Huang.

Huang commented on Apple's decision to design its own chips, saying that its a costly but beneficial form of development.

In response to a question on tablets, Huang also said that Windows 8's ARM compatibility could push technology to new levels.

"Now we're clear that ARM is going to be a large ecosystem," Huang said. "It's possible for us to extend that beyond phones to tablets and clamshells. Most likely Windows on ARM."

via Tom's Hardware