Marvell Technology (Nasdaq: MRVL) announced a new processor last week. The technical specifications left me drooling and dreaming about a whole new class of superphones. The only problem? Marvell's heavy-duty processors are a rare sight in the wild, and even the Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM) BlackBerry phones that feature Marvell chips tend to contain older, slower, and less impressive versions.
Then I came across an article by Ars Technica chip guru Jon Stokes that showed me an alternative: What if the high-end Marvell Armada chip isn't meant for smartphones at all, but rather destined for next-generation gaming tablets and maybe even video game consoles?
It sounds backward at first but makes more sense the more you think about it. The dual-and-then-some nature of the chip is dimensioned for some heavy lifting in parallel processor threads, meaning that half of the chip can handle game physics while the other focuses on logic and user controls, for example.
More importantly, the graphics component is nearly as powerful as what you'll find in the Sony (NYSE: SNE) PlayStation 3 or Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Xbox 360. While 4-year-old hardware typically is no great shakes, these consoles were overdesigned for their times, quite on purpose -- both were meant to give their designers a serious media center product for many years ahead. This is why you should expect a complete redesign of the Nintendo (OTC: NTDOY.PK) Wii long before the PS3 or Xbox 360, because the Wii was never meant to stick around for a decade or more.
It's also why that level of graphics performance is still very impressive when it shows up in a mobile, low-power, or small-package form factor. That's exactly the kind of product categories that could use a fresh engine, and for which the Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM) Snapdragon or Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) OMAP 3 processors don't quite cut the mustard.
So forget about smartphones with the new Marvell processor inside, and raise your eyes to the consumer electronics and tablet computer horizons instead. A few consumer-level product announcements should confirm this prediction over the next couple of months. That's the kind of success that will justify The Fool's recent Marvell buy.
Keep track of Marvell and its product wins by adding the stock to My Watchlist. It really doesn't get any easier.
