The new processor, dubbed “Kal-El” (Superman’s Krypton name, by the way), is expected to ship in tablets by August, and in smartphones by Christmas 2011. This announcement came just a day after mobile processing rival Qualcomm announced its own quad-core processor, a refreshed 2.5GHz Snapdragon, will be shipping in early 2012. Boom, Qualcomm…headshot.
Nvidia demonstrated Kal-El in action at MWC, showing how it allows web browsing up to two times faster than dual-core processors.
Nvidia also demonstrated Kal-El running CoreMark. Kal-El received a CoreMark score of 11,352–about twice the performance rating of Nvidia’s Tegra 2, which received a CoreMark score of 5,840.
The new processor also contains the new 12-core GeForce GPU, and Nvidia says the processor is already out in the wild–in a blog post on Tuesday, Michael Rayfield said that customers are “getting samples now, and they’re planning production in August.”
Rayfield also gave us a look at Nvidia’s roadmap for the next few years: consistently faster processors debuting each year until 2014. The processors are currently codenamed “Wayne,” “Logan,” and “Stark,” and Rayfield says “Stark” will feature 75x improvement in performance over the Tegra 2.
“You might ask, What on earth can be done with nearly 75x improvement in performance over Tegra 2 that Stark will provide in 2014?” Raymond notes.
Hopefully allow us to fly around in our iron suits and slash people with our adamantium hand claws?
Apparently it doesn’t matter what can be done, because “our customers and partners have already indicated that they’re confident they can use everything we give them.”
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