Kal-El – Quad-core Tegra processor from NVIDIA

Nowadays, not only x86-compatible processors are developing by increasing the number of core under IHS, but so do ARM-based solutions. Moreover, this tendency is growing faster for ARM architecture as Marvell has already promised to announced a quad-core CPU this year. Same was done by Qualcomm and Texas Instruments with the actual start of shipping set to early 2012. On the other hand, NVIDIA has said to start mass production of quad-core Tegra processor in August 2010.

The last one, codename Kal-El, has been recently demonstrated to public as a part of a tablet PC capable of running был 1440p video on a 2560 х 1600 screen.

Though both Tegra 2 and Kal-El have similar architecture with Cortex-A9 cores inside each, in terms of performance, Kal-El is said to be five timed faster than Tegra 2 and 10% more powerful than Core 2 Duo T7200 according to Coremark 1.0 test results. In addition to quad-core CPU, Kal-El will have a twelve-core GPU of GeForce class supporting stereoscopic 3D video playback.

In addition, NVIDIA has revealed its roadmap with codenames for future generation of Tegra processors that are supposed to appear each following year: Wayne (2012), Logan (2013) и Stark (2014). Performance wise the last one should be almost 75 times faster than current Tegra 2 models.