PC-class performance levels, better battery life and improved mobile experiences will apparently be on offer to users of mobiles and tablets equipped with the new Nvidia Quad-Core Tegra 3 chip sets. The Variable Symmetric Multiprocessing (vSMP) technology of this chip comprises a fifth CPU ‘companion,’ that has been crafted for work requiring little power.
To provide support for mobile games, the Tegra 3 has been equipped with a 12-core Nvidia GeForce GPU, thus helping it to deliver physical effects and high resolution environments along with support for 3D stereo. This chip also puts forward full game-controller support, allowing users to play games on their tablets, mobiles or even their HDTVs through an HDMI connection. Moreover, Nvidia’s 3D Vision technology also offers compatibility with 3DTVs.
“Nvidia’s fifth core is ingenious. Tegra 3’s vSMP technology extends the battery life of next-generation mobile devices by using less power when they’re handling undemanding tasks and then ratcheting up performance when it’s really needed,” explained, Nathan Brookwood, Research Fellow at Insight 64.
Tegra 3’s four main cores have been designed for high performance functions and are said to eat up lesser power than dual-core processors. Speaking in numbers, the processor consumes 61 percent less power, while offering 3 times the graphics performance of its predecessor, the Tegra 2. This supposedly takes the total battery life of this chip to 12 hours for HD video playback.
While performing tasks that require less power consumption the Nvidia Quad-Core Tegra 3 chip sets shut down their four performance-tuned cores to make use of the ‘companion’ core. On the other hand, for high-performance tasks the chips disable this ‘companion’ to use their main cores. Forty games are expected to be available for Tegra 3 based devices till the end of 2011. Furthermore, 15 titles are also under development for the Nvidia Tegra Zone.
The Nvidia Quad-Core Tegra 3 chip sets have currently made their way only to the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime tablet. No word is out yet, as to when the processor or the tablet will be launched.