Nvidia Kal-El: Quad Core Tegra SoC, coming to tablets in August

[sciwizam]

Damn!

Engadget: NVIDIA announces quad-core Kal-El SOC, promises it in tablets by August (video)

A 2560 x 1440 stream was being decoded on a developmental device, scaled down to that slate's native 1366 x 768 resolution, and additionally displayed on a connected 30-inch, 2560 x 1600 monitor. That entire voluminous workload was being handled in real time by Kal-El and we saw no signs of it struggling.

By NVIDIA's own estimation, the quad-core newbie provides roughly double the processing power of Tegra 2 and triple the graphics-crunching prowess. In the second demonstration of the evening, we saw an instance of Great Battles Medieval -- ran at 720p with 650 enemy soldiers on the field -- on both a Tegra 2 and a Kal-El platform, which showed the baby superhero handily dusting its still very new brethren. This was in large part down to the full dozen GPU cores contained within Kal-El, though before you freak out about battery-draining insanity, NVIDIA claims things are much, much more efficient as well -- up to 12 hours of HD video playback are promised under the right circumstances.

It's a big fat wedge of awesome boasts we've heard from the GeForce maker today, however the company's given us a schedule to hold it to as well. The "August timeframe" is when the quad-core Kal-El is expected to land in tablets, while smartphones will have to wait until the holiday season to benefit from what's likely to be a slightly downgraded variant.

 

[zerocool84]

Well it might be available to tablets in August but just like any technology we won't see any we can use until next year.

 

[Bateluer]

Naturally, Wayne, Logan, and Stark are all more powerful than Superman.

 

[lothar]

What's after Stark?
Banner? Parker?

 

[Bateluer]

What's after Stark?
Banner? Parker?

Wally or Kato?

 

[Genx87]

Figured this is what they would do. This is just like the video card market. Push push push the technology until your competitors give up or fold. So tempting to wait for a tablet based on one of these instead of a Tegra 2.

 

[Jagercola]

Tegra 2 cant handle 1080P h.264 4.1 High Profile so hopefully this can...

 

[akugami]

Kind of a repost thread but the last time it was brought up, it was more along the lines of a rumor.

I'll repeat what was said (by myself among others), while the chip may be "available" in August, we likely won't see shipping products until 2012. Look at Tegra 2 which was announced quite a while ago. We're only now just starting to see shipping products.

 

[trmiv]

The article says this is already sampling to manufacturers though, so maybe it will be out quicker than next year. We'll see. Either way it doesn't exactly make me want to run out and drop $800-$1000 now on a Tegra 2 based tablet.

 

[KDOG]

Wow. Now I'm thinking I should wait on the whole tablet thing, even with the Playbook. This is just crazy.

 

[Rayb]

Well, the Hardware will be there but the software needs to match the performance, it's the one thing that will keep things from moving along at this fast rate. At this point a GPU accelerated UI in android is sorely missed.

 

[Evadman]

So tempting to wait for a tablet based on one of these instead of a Tegra 2.

Either way it doesn't exactly make me want to run out and drop $800-$1000 now on a Tegra 2 based tablet.

Wow. Now I'm thinking I should wait on the whole tablet thing, even with the Playbook. This is just crazy.

NVIDIA = Osborne?

 

[WelshBloke]

Figured this is what they would do. This is just like the video card market. Push push push the technology until your competitors give up or fold. So tempting to wait for a tablet based on one of these instead of a Tegra 2.

Thats the thing though, no ones buying their products, we are all waiting for the next thing they promise.

 

[dsm]

Yay Nvidia is the shit.

 

[Genx87]

Thats the thing though, no ones buying their products, we are all waiting for the next thing they promise.

Their products havent really shown up yet. But this isnt much different from video cards. There is always something better around the corner.

 

[WelshBloke]

Their products havent really shown up yet. But this isn't much different from video cards. There is always something better around the corner.

Thats kinda my point.

Impress me with what you have out now before to try to sell stuff that you haven't released (and may never appear).

 

[Genx87]

Thats kinda my point.

Impress me with what you have out now before to try to sell stuff that you haven't released (and may never appear).

It will be here over the next couple of qtrs.

 

[s44]

Nvidia claims Kal-El will consume less power than Tegra2, despite being quad-core.

Awesome.