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There’s a rumor going around today that NIVIDA’s next-generation Tegra chipset has been delayed and won’t be available until late August — which would mean that we wouldn’t see any of the new tablets and smartbooks based on the chipset until August or September at the earliest. That would include the Mobinnova Beam, Notion Ink Adam, and a number of other devices we’ve seen introduced since January.

I checked in with my contacts at NVIDIA, and they the rumor’s not true and that everything is still on track.

I’m still waiting to find out what exactly things are on track for… will we start to see Tegra-based products this summer? Sooner? With the Apple iPad eating up a scary portion of the world’s annual hype allotment, the longer it takes for Tegra-based tablets to get to market, the less likely they are to make an impression.

Update: NVIDIA says next-gen Tegra products are already being shipped to companies who will release them when they’re ready. I’m told we should expect announcements in “the next few months.”

NVIDIA’s Tegra chipset combines a low power ARM-based processor with NVIDIA graphics. The result is that most of the Tegra-based systems I’ve seen so far can boast battery life of 10 hours or more while handling HD video playback and 3D graphics — you know, a lot like the A4 chip Apple is using in the iPad.

You can check out a hands-on video of the ICD Ultra tablet with Tegra graphics from CES after the break.