14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that Qualcomm has a free hand to rule the high-performance tablet and smartphone market this year. Nvidia’s own Cortex A15-based design won’t be coming this year after all.
Sure, Samsung might have something to say about Qualcomm’s SnapDragon S4 Pro with the company’s Exynos 5 processors, but the Korean giant seems to be still working on a dual-core Cortex A15.
Qualcomm has already sent its SnapDragon S4 Pro platform to select hardware reviewers, and Samsung’s choice of a quad-core Cortex A9 design for the Galaxy S III phone seems to be proof that they’re not ready with the A15 generation of CPUs.
Nvidia has just announced the LTE certification by AT&T of the company’s first 4G modem and now is getting ready to pair this chip with their upgraded Tegra 3+ processor.
Unfortunately, this is about all we’ll be able to get from the California-based IC designer this year.
Those that were hoping for a late 2012 Tegra 4 launch are in for a disappointment.
Tegra 4 will only come in mid-2013 and all we are able to get before that is the Grey chip.
Nvidia Grey is likely the complete integration of the Icera 410 modem with the impending Tegra 3+.
This chip will likely start shipping early next year, spurring a heap of “long battery life” marketing slogans, as that’s the most important addition it will be able to offer.
Being a single-chip solution, Grey will also help Nvidia offer a cost-competitive solution that, later in the year, will most likely roam the mid-range market.
For the high-end, Nvidia will pair the Icera 500 100 megabit LTE modem with the Cortex A15-based Tegra 4 built on TSMC’s 28 nm manufacturing process.