Nvidia's upcoming Tegra 3 quad-core mobile processor could debut inside the Asus Eee Transformer 2 tablet, multiple sources have told Fudzilla. The original Tegra 2-based Asus Transformer sold well based on its flexibility as a tablet and makeshift notebook.
Codenamed Kal El after the birth name of Superman, Nvidia's next generation mobile CPU looks very promising. The quad-core processor is based on a 40nm ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore operating at up to 1.5 GHz with 12 graphics cores.
Earlier this year Nvidia shared some benchmark numbers for Kal-El. The chip scored 11,354 in Coremark 1.0, nearly double the Tegra 2's 5,840 points. The new Tegra also outscored Intel's dual-core Core 2 Duo T7200 mobile processor. Despite more cores, the new processor is said to be more efficient than Tegra 2 in just about every scenario.
In May, Nvidia showed off the first tech demo of Kal-El. Dubbed Glowball, the video posted above shows the output from a prototype Honeycomb device, with a ball illuminated from the inside rolling around a dark room as the user tilts the tablet, while shadows and lighting effects are rendered in real time at over 30 frames per second.
Looking to highlight the difference in power between this and existing dual-core chips on the market, Nvidia then switches off a couple of cores and the game becomes unplayable as it starts to lag noticeably. This is still pre-production silicon, Nvidia says the final chip will perform 25-30% faster.
It was initially thought that Nvidia's next-gen chip would launch in August but more recent reports point to a release before the end of the year.