Published in PC Hardware

Tegra 3 Kal-El has 12 shaders

by on17 February 2011


Much richer graphics
Tegra 3 was demonstrated by Nvidia at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and it proved that games can go much faster on early silicon of Tegra 3.

General manager of Tegra division at Nvidia, Mike Rayfield has also shared with the press that the Kal-El superhero chip has 12 graphics cores. We have to state that Mike is not related to any Raytracing engine that we know of.

Twelve cores (shader units) makes games faster, but you can bet that it will eat much more battery than the current cores. The good thing is that it’s a 28nm chip and that can help keep consumption down. Furthermore they have demonstrated 1440p video, if someone cares about the fact that this chip can output 2560x1600 resolution, something that no tablets will need in the next few years.

Mike did saiy that Kal-El can output this resolution to big screens, but again content is still not there. We still struggle to get enough 1920x1080 HD content let alone anything higher. The most interesting claim is that the production starts in August, but this has to be high risk production with lower yields as TSMC said that its 28nm will be ready only in late 2011 and August sounds quite early to us.

Still we have to see tablets based on the Tegra 3, but with some luck, you might see some for Xmas 2011.

Last modified on 17 February 2011
Rate this item
(12 votes)

Read more about: