Nvidia is reportedly eyeing a speed boost for its mobile Tegra 3 processor, which could act as a placeholder of sorts until the launch of the company’s next-gen Wayne SoC.
A faster Tegra 3 is likely to help Nvidia remain competitive in the frenetic mobile market as it staves off challenges from industry heavyweights such as Qualcomm and TI.
According to VR-Zone, the first handset implementation of Wayne (Tegra 4) will be dubbed AP40.
In the meantime, Nvidia is apparently prepping the AP37 – a faster version of the AP33 currently found in high-end Tegra 3 handsets.
As VR-Zone’s LG Nilsson notes, clock speeds are set to be increased, with Nvidia targeting 1.7GHz (perhaps only single core clock speed?) for the high-end parts with the possibility of some slower 1.5GHz parts.
GPU performance will also be boosted by approximately 25% in an effort to drive higher resolution displays as the market shifts towards full HD and beyond for high-end tablets and smartphones.
Wayne – aka Tegra 4 – is based on ARM’s Cortex A15 architecture. Nvidia’s partners will likely receive sample silicon a month or two after Computex, with devices powered by the next-gen SoC hitting the streets and virtual store shelves by the end of 2012 or the beginning of 2013.
Additional Wayne specs include:
- Quad ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore + low power companion core.
- Improved 24 (for the quad-core) and 32 to 64 (for the octa-core) GPU cores with support for DirectX 11+, OpenGL 4.X, and PhysX.
- 28 nm HPL.
- Approximately 10x faster than Tegra 2.
