Yesterday at CES, NVIDIA finally revealed their Tegra 4 chip, which they claim is the world’s fastest mobile processor. As expected from the various leaks, the Tegra 4 is the first mobile chip that offers the first quad-core ARM Cortex A15 CPUs. This quad-core design gives up to twice the performance of dual-core A15 CPUs such as Samsung’s Exynos 5 chip according the NVIDIA.
Some highlights of NVIDIA Tegra 4 include:
- 72 custom NVIDIA GeForce GPU cores – six times the GPU horsepower of Tegra 3 – for more realistic gaming experiences and higher resolution displays.
- Quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 CPU- for 2.6 times faster web browsing and app performance harnessing ARM’s most advanced CPU designs, as well as including a second generation “battery saver core” to extend battery life when you aren’t in need of the extra power such as when phones and tablets are on stand-by, listening to music, or watching movies. You can watch up to 14 hours of HD video on a single battery charge using this battery saver core. Each of the four A15 cores can be used independently to more efficiently handle the workload as well.
- Worldwide 4G LTE voice and data support through an optional chipset- the NVIDIA Icera i500 modem processor.
- Improved imaging – combining the CPU, GPU, and ISP offers the possibility of an “always-on” HDR camera with features like live HDR preview, instant HDR photos, HDR video, HDR burst, and HDR Flash.
Describing the new System on a Chip (SoC, Phil Carmack, senior vice president of the Tegra business at NVIDIA, said:
“Tegra 4 provides enormous processing power and efficiency to power smartphones and tablets, gaming devices, auto systems and PCs. Its new capabilities, particularly in the area of computational photography, will help improve a whole range of existing products and lead to the creation of exciting new ones.”
