Nvidia Tegra 4 leaks, promises 6x the performance of Tegra 3

Details of the Nvidia Tegra 4 processor have been leaked, and the capabilities of the new processor will surely be causing sleepless nights to Samsung and Qualcomm. If the leaked details are true, it will surely give silicon from Samsung and Qualcomm a serious run for their money. The latest Nvidia’s upcoming Tegra 4 processor has been aptly named Wayne.

The details of the Nvidia Tegra 4 processor have been leaked by the Chinese Techno site Chip Hell. The leak details the 28 nanometer 4 plus 1 quad cores with a dedicated fifth core to save battery power. Nvidia will be adopting the ARM’s latest Cortex-A15 design.

The Graphics Processor Unit is a 72-core GPU which offers 20-times the performance of the Tegra 2 and six-times the current-generation Tegra 3. The chip can enable a screen of 2,560 x 1600 resolution display which is almost equal to that of Nexus 10 tablet.

Apple features the A6X processor which powers the iPad 4th generation and is said to be four times as fast as the Tegra 3. The Tegra 4 will force the Cupertino Techno giant to look for a better processor for its future releases.

The Tegra 4 is also the first chip from Nvidia to support USB 3.0, along with dual-channel DDR3L memory.

If you go out and buy a tablet today with Nvidia’s Tegra system on a chip (SoC) powering it, chances are you’ll be getting a Tegra 3 solution. That’s still a decent solution in terms of performance, offering a 40nm ARMv7 quad-core (plus-1) processor running at between 1.2GHz and 1.6GHz, combined with a 416-520MHz GeForce GPU.

But competition is growing from the likes of Samsung’s Exynos and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon solutions. Nvidia has an answer though, in the form of Tegra 4, and it looks like the spec of the new SoC has just leaked.

Tegra 4, codenamed Wayne, will move to a 28nm process and stick with a quad-core plus-1 design. It’s not mentioned, but it is widely expected Nvidia has chosen a Cortex-A15 MPCore processor. The GPU will include 72 cores, allowing for screen resolutions of up to 2560 x 1600, and even 4K output if desired. Memory support has also been improved to include dual channel DDR3 (it was single channel on Tegra 3). Other features include support for Secure Boot, USB 3.0, and dual display output.

What does all this mean for performance? The leaked slide boasts a 6x improvement when compared to Tegra 3, and 20x improvement over Tegra 2. In other words, if Crysis was released for tablets, Tegra 4 devices would most certainly run it.

If Nvidia can provide such levels of performance while retaining similar power levels to Tegra 3, it could find favor with tablet manufacturers and possibly be at the heart of the next Nexus device. As for when we can expect Tegra 4 to arrive, CES next month seems a likely launch pad for Nvidia.