Credit where credit is due, NVIDIA was the first company to release a quad core chip. Are four ARM Cortex A9 processors faster than a dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4? In some benchmarks yes, in others no. One thing that’s disappointing about the Tegra 3 is that it’s built using 40 nanometer transistors, whereas Qualcomm uses 28 nanometer transistors. Why is smaller better? Less power draw, less heat, higher clock speeds, and lower costs since you can get more 28 nm chips out of a silicon wafer than 40 nm chips. To put things into some perspective, the Apple A5X inside the new iPad uses 45 nanometer transistors, so it’s using “ancient” technology. Anyway, 2013 is going to be different. According to a leaked NVIDIA roadmap that was discovered by VR-Zone China, the Tegra 4 will come out in Q1 2013. It’ll be a quad core ARM Cortex A15 chip, which is important, because the A15 is supposed to be faster than the Qualcomm designed Krait core inside the S4. How much faster? We don’t know yet.
The roadmap also details three additional processors. One is a faster version of the Tegra 4. Something tells us that this will be built using smaller transistors, though we can’t be certain. Another is a slower version of the Tegra 4 that’s slated for “mainstream” (read: midrange) devices. And finally there’s a revamped version of the Tegra 3 that also has built-in 4G LTE and 42 Mbps HSPA+. These chips are all supposed to come out in Q3 2013, though we have to warn you guys that roadmaps can always change. The Tegra 3 that’s inside the HTC One X was supposed to be out on the market for the 2012 holiday shopping season. It obviously failed to ship on time.
What’s the key takeaway message from this leak? The Tegra 3 is a good chip, no one is denying that, but it isn’t competitive when compared to the Qualcomm S4. That problem will be solved in 2013, but by then who the hell knows what Qualcomm will have on the market.
[Via: Engadget]