nVidia’s Tegra 4 Specs Spotted

Here is an interesting leak, just what the doctor ordered to spice up a rather slow news cycle. Chiphell has posted a slide containing a few Tegra 4 specs, but we still don’t know the clocks or a few other interesting details. Of course, the leak should be taken with a grain of salt, but the specs are more or less in line with what we were expecting all along.

Tegra 4, codenamed Wayne, is a 28nm part with revamped graphics and new ARM cores. Although the slide does not directly point to the type of ARM cores used in the design, the new chip is based on ARM’s latest A15 core. Like the Tegra 3, the new chip will also feature an additional companion core to improve energy efficiency. No surprises here really.

In terms of GPU performance, Nvidia promises to deliver a six-fold improvement over the Tegra 3 and a 20x improvement over Tegra 2 chips. Oddly enough, in spite of Nvidia’s graphics prowess, Tegra chips never featured world-beating graphics. This time around they could, thanks to the new 72-core GPU. The GPU will be able to cope with 2560×1600 screens at 120Hz, but it could also take on 4K resolutions, although details are still sketchy. At this point 4K support could only be relevant for next-generation smart TVs, with a huge price tag.

As far as other features go, Tegra 4 brings support for USB 3.0 and DDR3L dual-channel memory. The leak does not mention LTE support.

Tegra 4 will have to take on the likes of Samsung’s upcoming Exynos 5440, which should also debut in early 2013. Nvidia was first to market with a quad-core A9 chip, but this time around it will have to face off against the new Exynos and A15 quad-cores from other vendors.

Nvidia is expected to showcase the new chip at CES and we’ll be there to check it out.

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Most Tegra 2 Tablets Will Get ICS

Sources have confirmed that most Tegra 2 tablets you know will get Ice Cream Sandwich. We are still sniffing around to find out if the ICS is going to end up as Android 4.0 but it will bring phones and tablets much closer and should ship in October or November.

Many Asus, Samsung, Toshiba, Lenovo, Sony and any other Android 3.x compatible tablets on market will have a chance to get the new one. The upgrade will come as manufacturers get it ready and customized for its tablets but most tablets will ship with Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, probably early next year at the latest.

This is good news for many who were brave to buy the first generation of tablets not based on Apple’s architecture and it will help Google to gather even more momentum for 2012. 2012 looks like a year when Google will be ready for real war against Apple, but at the same time, Android supporters fear that Windows 8 will get a lot of attention when it ships in late 2012.

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nVidia’s Tegra 3 Coming To Smartphones

It appears as though Nvidia’s next generation quad-core Kal-El (Tegra 3) quad core SoC will also show up on smartphones too. Originally, it was believed that the SoC would only support the ever growing tablet space.

Inside sources have confirmed that projects are already underway and that Tegra 3 aka Kal-El smartphones will be make a debut as well.

Nvidia had hoped to get a lot of play out of Tegra 2, unfortunately the chip was not as embraced as Nvidia had wanted. Even though the Tegra 2 SoC did manage to get a few design wins.

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Tegra 3 Smartphones Being Developed By Motorola

Many sources around the Internet are a buzz with news that Motorola is apparently developing a couple of smartphones using Nvidia’s Tegra 3 SoC processor.

One of the smart is being called the Bullet which features a 4.3-inch touchscreen, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage with a 12MP camera. The other phone is code named the Jet and is basically rhe same as the Bullet with a 4-inch screen and keyboard.  The pair of phones are expected to debut in early 2012.

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Nvidia Stockholders Mad As Heck

Reports are coming out that stockholders of Nvidia are losing patience with executives as they do not believe the company does not have a sizable share of the smartphone and tablet space.

Analysts were giving warning signs about Nvidia’s share ability to compete against the Apple iPad and iPhone and what appears to be an overall weakness in the PC market. Incidentally, analyst have always speculated that the success of tablets cannibalize PC sales. That said, Nvidia stocks fell around 3.8 percent. Keep in mind there are some who do not want to kick Nvidia to the curb this early in the game.

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Japan’s Earthquake Will Not Impact PC Supply

According to Scott Lin, President  of Acer Taiwan has said the PC supply chain still has at least three months worth of stock.  That said, Lin stated that the Japan earthquake should not have an immediate will on impact on the PC market.

With PC manufacturers, brick and mortar each having at least one month’s worth of inventory, the supply should be fine for up to three months. Nevertheless, Lin did caution that Japan’s power infrastructure is an important factor and taking it online sooner rather than later will be crucial to whether the shortages become more serious. Read More…..

Intel’s Atom More Expensive Than Cortex A9

In you use nVidia’s Tegra 2 processor as a reference point or any Cortex A9 dual core chip; the price is in the same ballpark.   However, Intel’s Atom Z670  which just launched will cost a whopping $75.

Unfortunately, this is the most expensive Atom processor thus.  However this processor is strictly for tablets and has 5W TDP.  Furthermore, the chip needs an SM35 chipset and it will run Windows 7.  However support for MeeGo v1.2 and Honeycomb Android 3.0 is expected at a later date. Read More…

nVidia Goes Quad-Core With Tegra

Nvidia finally debuted its first quad-core Tegra processor, codenamed Kal-El, and the new chip will probably lead to much more powerful tablets and high-end smartphones.

“You’ll have full photo editing, video editing, writing of documents, browsing the Web, all sorts of stuff,” Phil Carmak announced. Read more….