[Rumor] NVIDIA Tegra 4 Rumored to Have Kepler Architecture and up to 64 GPU Cores

[dgstorm]

Well, even though Apple's new A5X chip may hold the reigning crown for GPU performance in the smartphone world, it looks like NVIDIA wants to take that crown away and do so in a huge way. And, when we say huge, we mean reeedonkulous! If this rumor from a trusted source within the industry is to be believed, then NVIDIA's next chipset for smartphones and tablets, the Tegra 4, will share a similar Kepler architecture and 28nm manufacturing process to their current PC graphics line. Although we reported on this possibility previously, some new details regarding this mobile chipset have surfaced and they are astonishing! The new Tegra 4 will supposedly come packing from 32-64 GPU cores for its graphics horsepower engine!

That's not all. Apparently, this new chipset will also feature some of NVIDIA's new and more advanced efficiency enhancements. That coupled with the 28nm chipset size (versus the Tegra 3 using 40nm chips), means that this new chip may be the most battery efficient chipset ever for a smart-device. Keep in mind the time-line of tech advancements. The Tegra 3 is based upon core technology that is several years old (even though the chipset isn't actually that old), whereas the new Kepler architecture is based upon much newer ideas and refinements. Supposedly, we will see products announced with the Tegra 4 sometime later this year, with actual ship dates for those products in the beginning of next year.

Wow! And, we thought computers and console tech moved fast! Mobile tech is going absolutely bonkers!

Source: PhoneArena

 

[wicked]

zoom zoom zoom

 

[BigZig]

Oh Yea just in time for my Bionic's 2 year agreement upgrade....Tegra 4 here i come.dancedroid

 

[Quicksilver7714]

Damn that's a lot of cores.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk 2 Beta-5

 

[Dave12308]

Look at the resolution of the iPad 3 (or whatever they call it) - 2048x1536

My PC video card struggles to push that resolution with full details and effects turned on. With the resolution of some of these new tablets, they are going to need serious GPU horsepower to run full resolution, fully antialiased, with full ansiotropic filtering.

Edit: Hopefully, they back it all up with 1 GB or so of video memory as well.

 

[jroc]

Can I at least try a Tegra 3 phone first......

Can I get my first quad core PC first.....I just thought of something....I have a quad core phone before I have a wquad core PC....wow....

Things sure have changed since the Motorola E815, the Samsung u740. Too bad I never experienced the Star Tac.

 

[Vakharn]

For those who don't keep up with GPU news this is actually a pretty big deal. The GTX 680, the first Nvidia chip to use Kepler architecture is ~40% faster than the GTX 580, the previous flagship card using the 40nm architecture the Tegra 3 uses, and it consumes about 25% less power at max load on a die only 60% of the size.

 

[Eric18]

Tech is advancing really fast but I think the smartphones and tablets are the testing ground for companies because the push out new phones ever 3-6 months. Like the IBM 1 Terabyte Chip Tech isn't going to make its way to smartphones and tablets as fast as NVIDIA's new Tech.

 

[akhenax]

How are they planning on providing adequate cooling for these new CPU/GPU's ???

I can see it now, you can not only play HD videos, but fry eggs on the Dinoglass (TM) display at the same time. Now that's efficiency!

 

[smokiedabong]

The only problem that I see is that Apple launched the king of all mobile GPUs , the A5X chip last year and Tegra 4 is still a project. Even If they manage to release the chip by the end of this year it still takes around 6 months after that for the manufacturers to integrate the chip with the hardware. By that time Apple will have a new chipset for sure.

 

[B-Unit]

At first I was really excited, but as I started digging, I found out this isn't nearly as impressive as I had hoped. Each Kepler core is roughly half as powerful as the former Fermi core, due to a change in how nVidia is doing their hardware this generation. As a result, Kepler desktop parts are carying 4x the number of cores compared to the parts they replace. But when drilling into their laptop lineup, even the lowest of the low end still cary 96 Fermi cores. Even maxxed out at 64 cores, Tegra4 isn't going to have very much punch at all when looking at 'retna' resolutions.


EDIT: As not to be completely defeatist, it should run cool and sip power, so its not all bad.