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NVIDIA officially brands Tegra 3's five-core quad-core architecture as 4-PLUS-1
NVIDIA's cooked up a few ways to describe the Tegra 3's quad-core-with-a-spare architecture, usually by giving the extra Cortex A9 a cute nickname like "ninja," or "companion." Until now, the proper description was "Variable Symmetrical Multiprocessing," or, vSMP for short. Despite how much fun (and technically accurate) some of these descriptions may have been, however, they just aren't marketable. "Our customers wanted a name for it that's unique and descriptive," writes mobile business unit general manager Michael Rayfield, "A name they could put on a box or a store sign that immediately represents its value." That official name is the 4-PLUS-1 quad-core architecture, he says, and you'll probably see it pop up a few times in Barcelona next week if LG's latest offering is any indication. It lacks something in pizzaz, to be sure, but we'll admit that it is at least descriptive of the Tegra 3's technical chops. In related news, NVIDIA promises the Tegra will be less fickle about its new moniker than the symbol formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince.
LG Optimus 4X HD unveiled: Quad-core Tegra 3, Ice Cream Sandwich, 4.7-inch display
If LG failed to impress so far with the Android 2.3 phones it's shown off in the run up to MWC 2012, perhaps the Optimus 4X HD can turn things around. This 4.7-inch beast will hit Europe in the second quarter and is its first to feature a 1.5GHz quad-core Tegra 3 as its benchmark destroying CPU, a 4.7-inch True HD IPS LCD (1280x720) plus what appears to be a lightly customized version of Ice Cream Sandwich. Perhaps the only logical followup to its Optimus 2X that kicked off all the dual-core madness, it also includes a 2,150mAh battery, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. Despite that huge screen, at a depth of 8.9mm it's only slightly thicker than the superwide 4x3 Optimus Vu. Just like the Fujitsu prototype we spent some time with at CES, the Tegra 3 features a 4+1 "Companion Core" design, with a fifth low power unit available to take care of more mundane tasks without draining the battery. This is all pretty close to the leaked "X3" specs we'd heard, however there's no mention of NFC or HSPA+ just yet, only DLNA and MHL. Check out the full press release after the break for a few more specs.
NVIDIA says Tegra 3 is a 'PC-class CPU,' has screenshots to prove it
Asus can't be absorbing all those limelight photons today. Not when its freshly detailed Transformer Prime depends so heavily on NVIDIA's special sauce. Admittedly, we already know a lot about Tegra 3 from its Kal-El days, but we haven't seen much in the way of real-world performance claims. Until now, that is. Below you'll see newly released screenshots of Android games that have been souped-up to capitalize on the imminent Asus Eee Pad as well as other Tegra 3-powered devices -- including smartphones -- that are expected early next year. NVIDIA has also put out slides containing in-house benchmarks and head-to-head comparisons with the Tegra 2, which you'll find right after the break. %Gallery-138769%
NVIDIA releases Kal-El white papers, announces a fifth 'Companion' core for less demanding tasks
We've known about Kal-El -- the quad-core mobile processor from NVIDIA -- for a fair amount of time, but a lot of the finer details have remained a secret as we've anxiously awaited its debut in tablets and smartphones. Fortunately, we have some reading material to bide our time as the company published white papers discussing benefits of the new CPU, and for the most part it's what you'd expect: NVIDIA touts higher performance, better battery life and improved physics-based gaming when more cores are involved and working together. What came as a surprise to us was the fact that this quad-core CPU actually utilizes five cores: in addition to the standard four main Cortex A9 high-performance cores, Kal-El throws in a fifth Cortex A9 "companion" core specifically designed to handle less demanding tasks in effort to minimize power consumption caused by active standby processes. How is it done? The Companion core's max operating frequency gets capped at 500MHz, offering higher performance and greater efficiency per watt when running menial tasks such as push email, Twitter / Facebook sync, widgets, background apps and live wallpapers. This leaves the four main cores free to take care of the stuff it does best -- games, web browsing, transcoding / editing audio and video, 3D, physics simulations and image processing, to name a few -- allowing performance bumps of up to 50 percent when compared to Tegra 2. We can tell that quad-core devices are going to make us very, very happy. If charts and geeky stats brighten up your day like it does ours, head to the source to read the papers in their entirety. %Gallery-134330%
