[DannyBee]

Maybe they are trying to avoid the fate of the first generation xbox360?

There is no official info on the technical cause (some people say wrong type of solder that would get too hot and develop hairline cracks, some say the graphics chip dissipated more heat than expected, etc) but it was definitely related to heat.

People often put these devices inside mildly enclosed spaces (media cabinets, etc) with poor natural airflow, etc.

This tends to work okay if you have active cooling (since it's not totally enclosed), but gets amazingly hot otherwise.

This is not normally how tablets are used, and maybe after testing it (or thinking about it) they realized the safest bet was active cooling?

[joezydeco]

I'm using an i.MX6 development system that uses a similar processor (Quad CortexA9 w/GPU) and has a aluminum cap/heatsink on it:

http://imgur.com/1bJEqLU

The thermal cutout in the Anatop driver defaults to 100C, which seems to be driven by the ratings of the on-board voltage regulators. Perhaps the Tegra has the same requirements.