We're all still wrapping our heads around dual-core processors. So it only makes sense that Nvidia decided to drop the next next generation mobile processor on us at Mobile World Congress. Codenamed Kal-El (yeah, like Super Man), we're now ushering in the era (on the technical side, anyway) of quad-core mobile processors.
What you'll see in the demo after the break is not Tegra 3 -- it's a hot-off-the-press processor that's more powerful than anything you've held in your hand and that Nvidia says gets a 5x performance boost over Tegra 2. On top of that, it's got a 12-core graphics processor built in, with support for stereo 3D.
And on top of that is the capability to output video at a mind-blowing 2560x1600 resolution -- basically hotter than the sun, or something like that.
Effect on battery life -- it's really better to call it "power consumption" at this early stage -- well, Nvidia constantly stresses it's one of its main concerns. And, again, you have to remember that multiple cores doesn't mean an exponential increase in power consumption. And besides, we'll worry about that once it's in consumer facing devices.
So when will we see these quad-core chips in something we can buy? Nvidia tells us tablets around August, and phones by the end of the year. Yes, that soon.
Check out our demo after the break. You might want to sit down first.
Looks like the dual core processor phones that are coming out will be short lived... hope that means they'll get cheap fast...
And I hope Intel succeeds in their quest for finishing MeeGo OS for tablets. There just aren't any normal OSs that you can run on tablets nowadays, it's either a tablet with a restricted OS or a full Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC). MeeGo should bridge the gap there, however. In the mean while you can still use the handset/netbook UX of MeeGo on tablets, but it's not as optimised.