.
While Texas Instruments and Qualcomm were busy paper launching dual and quad core processors at this year’s MWC, NVIDIA seemed a step ahead, demoing what looked to be a working model of its upcoming Tegra 3 quad-core mobile processor.
Currently codenamed Kal-El , NVIDIA had its quad-cored wonder running high powered video games on a white labeled Android tablet at its booth.
The firm was showing off a number of different computing applications running on Kal-El, including rather zippy Internet browsing, gaming, and video streaming.
We were even told that the video we were watching on Kal-El was 1440p running on a display sporting 2560 x 1600 resolution. Impressive indeed. Even more impressive was the fact NVIDIA is claiming its mobile processor is more powerful than Intel’s Core 2 Duo PC processor.
NVIDIA said the processor contains a new 12 core GeForce GPU and is garnering rather a lot of attention, especially as the firm has released a full SDK to selected developers and is already shipping samples to partners.
The company is not being shy about the new product’s release date, either, firmly announcing that the world would meet Kal-El in the flesh come August of this year, a terrifying prospect for NVIDIA’s rivals, who aren’t thought to have comparable chips before early 2012.
“Once the NVIDIA machine gets going, there’s really no stopping it,” one analyst confided in RCR. “NVIDIA is used to the shorter design cycle mandated by PC graphics updates, while firms like Qualcomm and TI are more accustomed to the longer timeframes associated with phone design,” he continued, adding that if NVIDIA could keep to its promise of updated processors every 12-18 months, it would likely crush its competition.
Others, however, felt Qualcomm still held the advantage owing to the firm’s integration of baseband on the chip, though a source close to NVIDIA told RCR it was not inconceivable the firm could make a strategic acquisition of a mobile chip firm like ICERA or Sequans within the year, thus closing that particular gap.
NVIDIA certainly seemed confident enough at MWC, showing off its roadmap for mobile processors at a steady 12 month cadence. Indeed, next in line after Kal-El we can expect to see Wayne, Logan, and Stark. The other chip firms better start ramping it up – and fast.
