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Feb. 19, 2013, 10:12 a.m.
Jeff Orr Sr. Practice Director

NVIDIA today announced its first integrated applications processor with LTE modem.  Dubbed the Tegra 4i, the Silicon on Chip (SoC) solution is targeted for smartphones expected to debut late this year.

Based on a 28nm high-performance for mobile applications (HPM) process, the Tegra 4i measures half the size of Qualcomm’s recently announced Snapdragon 800-class processor.  The SoC relies on four ARM Cortex A9 processor cores running at 2.3 GHz instead of four ARM Cortex A15 cores.  As a result, NVIDIA believes it has a power advantage on the CPU compared to Qualcomm’s Krait 800 due to smaller core and die size, along with the benefits of its batter save core.

Comparing the new Tegra 4i to the previously announced Tegra 4, the most obvious difference is the total number of cores – 60 versus 72.  NVIDIA makes no excuses for the difference stating that the company sees two different markets with separate requirements.  Tegra 4 remains focused on the “superphone” and tablet opportunities while Tegra 4i is optimized for smartphone applications.

An integrated LTE CAT3 modem rounds off the Tegra 4i capabilities.  The new Tegra chip is sampling now and general smartphone availability from NVIDIA partners is expected late in 2013 and into the first calendar quarter of 2014.