Ahead of the official start of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, NVIDIA (NVDA 2.71%) over the weekend unveiled its newest Tegra 4 mobile processor. Following a superhero nomenclature, the chip was previously codenamed "Wayne," following the previous generation Tegra 3, which was codenamed "Kal-El." Those monikers are references to Batman and Superman, respectively.
The quad-core Tegra 4 is the first time that ARM Holdings' (ARMH +0.00%) Cortex-A15 cores have been implemented in a quad-core chip. Along with the four processing cores, the chip includes 72 custom GeForce graphics cores for six times the graphics performance compared to the Tegra 3.
The Tegra 4 also brings 4G LTE voice and data support along with a discrete baseband processor from NVIDIA, its fifth-generation Icera i500. The new chip also has dramatically improved power efficiency, consuming up to 45% less power than the previous generation.
