NVIDIA reveals world’s fastest mobile processor – 4G connectivity and 45pc less power consumption

7 Jan 2013

Just in time for CES, electronics player NVIDIA has unveiled what it claims is the world’s fastest mobile processor – the Tegra 4 – a quad-core A15 chip with built-in 4G LTE capabilities.

NVIDIA said the new chip will enable faster smartphone performance, better battery life and lightning-fast web browsing. As well as better battery processing, the Tegra 4 also includes new camera capabilities through computational photography.

Tegra 4 consumes up to 45pc less power than its predecessor, Tegra 3, in common use cases. And it enables up to 14 hours of HD video playback on phones.

“Tegra 4 provides enormous processing power and efficiency to power smartphones and tablets, gaming devices, auto systems and PCs,” said Phil Carmack, senior vice-president of the Tegra business at NVIDIA.

“Its new capabilities, particularly in the area of computational photography, will help improve a whole range of existing products and lead to the creation of exciting new ones,” Carmack said.

Tegra 4 capabilities

Previously codenamed ‘Wayne’, Tegra 4 features 72 custom NVIDIA GeForce GPU cores – or six times the GPU horsepower of Tegra 3 – which deliver more realistic gaming experiences and higher-resolution displays.

It includes the first quad-core application of ARM’s most advanced CPU core, the Cortex-A15, which delivers 2.6x faster web browsing and breakthrough performance for apps.

Tegra 4 also enables worldwide 4G LTE voice and data support through an optional chipset, the fifth-generation NVIDIA Icera i500 processor. More efficient and 40pc the size of conventional modems, i500 delivers four times the processing capability of its predecessor, NVIDIA said.

Smartphones image via Shutterstock

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com