One of the more interesting stories to come out of the Mobile World Conference is the
announcement from NVIDIA on Project Kal-El. Yes, you're reading that right. It's the code name for their next generation Tegra chip. We're talking quad-core CPU goodness with a 12 core GeForce GPU.
NVIDIA demoed the chip in action streaming 1440P video. War Drum Studios has been working on it for 24 hours and got 3X performance out of it over a Tegra 2 setup. That's just playing around with the chip for a day.
So when can you expect products using this chip? NVIDIA's saying August, but we'll see if that truly happens. Samples are in the hands of companies now, so let's see if someone can come out with a tablet to use the chip by the end of this year. Qualcomm did announce their quad-core mobile chip as well, but they're looking into products being released next year. NVIDIA, if they can deliver, would be really ahead of the game.
NVIDIA also outlined their roadmap containing codenames such as Stark, Logan, and Wayne. Yeah, I think I like their codenames better than Google's dessert themed ones. Next year we should see Wayne, followed by Logan the year after, and Stark the year after that.
I'm in the market for some mobile products this year in both tablets and phones so seeing what NVIDIA has in store has me pretty excited. I just hope the tablet hardware comes out this year, but I don't know if I can wait until next year for Project Kal-El to be in a phone.
Exciting times for mobile gadget fans, that's for sure.
