Not only did NVIDIA announce its new quad core technology at Mobile World Congress, it showed it working and announced immediate sampling of the chip for its customers with an aim of having the new processor available in tablets in August and phones by Christmas 2011. This was after Qualcomm announced its quad-core processor wouldn’t ship samples until 2012. NVIDIA showed demos from web browsing to games and even a Coremark benchmark test (pictured).
NVIDIA used the MCW event to show its Tegra road map to 2014.
Mike Rayfield, general manager of NVIDIA’s mobile business, has just written about Tegra’s next generation technology and roadmap on the NVIDIA blog.
It reads:
Tegra Roadmap Revealed: Next Chip to be World’s First Quad-Core Mobile Processor
By Mike Rayfield
Twelve days ago, an amazing thing happened.
Project Kal-El came into the building, shepherded by a team of engineers from around the world, who had been working around the clock for months. For the uninitiated, the entrance that I’m referring to was by none other than the next generation of our Tegra super chip.
Today at Mobile World Congress (MWC), we demonstrated this little beauty running in an Android tablet. We not only showed that it was alive. We showed it browsing the Web, running games and streaming amazing video. This wasn’t your average amazing video. It was 1440p video content running on a 2560x1600 panel. That will enable mobile devices to output to the highest resolution monitors or tablets equipped with a 10.1-inch display with 300 DPI.
I should mention, in passing, that this is the first mobile quad-core processor. And that it contains a new 12 core GeForce GPU. And that our customers are getting samples now. And that they’re planning production in August.
While demonstrating Kal-El was exciting, we also gave a glimpse of our roadmap here at MWC. It includes Projects codenamed Wayne, Logan, and Stark, coming out in a steady one-year cadence over the next three years. You might well ask, What on earth can be done with the nearly 100x improvement in performance over Tegra 2 that Stark will provide in 2014? Our customers and partners have already indicated that they’re confident they can use everything we give them.
If you’ve followed NVIDIA, you know the relentless velocity of innovation that we’ve brought to the PC space with our GeForce processors. Prepare for that same intensity to play out in the mobile space.
While we demonstrated this to our customers and press today, you can come by and see it live in our booth at MWC in Barcelona tomorrow.
I left CES thinking this was going to be the most exciting year of my career. Now, I know it will be. I can’t wait to see the next wave of super phones and super tablets.ENDS
