Nvidia’s 2012 Wayne SoC Could Pack Kepler GPU Cores Says Report

The next-generation of Nvidia Tegra system-on-a-chip (SoC) device, code named Wayne, could integrate a graphics core based on the company’s upcoming Kepler GPU architecture according to a recent report that has just hit the Web.

The report, which was published by Hardcore Hardware, cites the company’s commitment for bringing CUDA to the mobile space and the architecture’s support for the upcoming DirectX 11.1 API as the main reasons behind this decision.

Other info was not provided, but we do know that DirectX 11.1 is an important feature of Windows 8, so there may be some truth behind these claims.

According to some previous reports, the Wayne SoC will arrive in two different versions in order to address the needs of a wide range of devices including smartphones, tablets, netbooks and notebooks.

The first version is a quad-core design, based on a yet-undisclosed ARM architecture (most probably Cortex-A15) which will include at least a 24-core GPU that resembles the contemporary graphics architectures.

For the four ARM cores, Nvidia is targeting the 1.5GHz clock speed, which should deliver triple-digit GFLOPS performance, while also keeping the per-core power consumption of the recently unveiled Tegra 3, also known under the code name of Kal-El.

The second Wayne silicon is much more powerful than the first version, as it packs no less than eight ARM processing cores and 32 to 64 GPU cores that are DirectX 11+ (DX 11.1 if the Kepler rumors turn out to be true) compliant and also support OpenGL 4.x and OpenCL 1.x as well as PhysX.

This chip is designed to go head to head with both ARM-based and x86 processors and should be used in tablets, netbook and ultra-low-power notebooks up to 13.3-inch in screen size.

No release date was made official, but presumably Nvidia is targeting the fourth quarter of 2012 so that Wayne would arrive at just about the same time as Windows 8.

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