NVIDIA Tegra 4i Technical Specifications

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan Graphics Card, which has only just launched, has been taking up much of our attention, and that of everyone else, but it looks like NVIIDA was sneaky and took advantage of it in a way some might not have foreseen.

Simply put, the company allowed people’s attention to be diverted and, thus, managed to surprise the world by launching the Tegra 4i mobile platform as well. Based on the Wayne Tegra 4 SoC (system-on-chip), it is what used to be known as “Project Grey” and will be the prong of attack on the smartphone market. On that note, Tegra 4i is similar to Tegra 4 in that it relies on a quad-core ARM processor, though the cores themselves are different. While Tegra 4 has four Cortex-A15 and a battery saver core, the Tegra 4i gets R4 Cortex-A9 and a saver core.

The number of GPU cores is also different: 72 versus 60. It goes to show that Tegra 4i is a slimmed-down version of the former. It makes sense. Tegra 4, the so-called Wayne, was made for high-end tablets, but is too powerful for phones. The 4i will provide the lower price needed by smartphones, but still a good performance level (2.4 GHz frequency). As for the LTE capability, it is allowed by the NVIDIA i500 software-defined radio modem. “Tegra 4i is the very latest SoC solution based on the ARM Cortex-A9 processor and demonstrates the ability of ARM and our partners to continue to push the performance of technology and create exciting user experiences,” says Tom Cronk, executive vice president and general manager, processor division, ARM.

“ARM and NVIDIA worked closely to further optimize the Cortex-A9 processor to drive performance and efficiency in areas such as streaming and responsiveness. This is an example of the collaboration and innovation that enables ARM technology-based solutions to be market drivers through multiple generations of SoC solutions.” NVIDIA will have the Tegra 4i on display at the Mobile World Congress (MWC 2013), in Barcelona, Spain, between February 25 and 28.

NVIDIA Tegra 4 and Tegra 4i
Image credits to NVIDIA

Posted in: Hardware, Mobile Phone, Tablet