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Nvidia has revealed the Tegra 4i, a smartphone processor designed for mid-range devices. The single-chip CPU, which is based on the ARM A9 core, will be the first from Nvidia with integrated 4G LTE support, as well as 1080p resolution compatibility and always-on HDR photography.
Tegra 4i will use four ARM “R4” A9 cores, along with a fifth battery saver core, running at a massive 2.3GHz. Nvidia redesigned the ARM core, rather than use the newer A15 design that will be seen in the larger Tegra 4 chipset, in order to reduce its power consumption and physical footprint for smaller smartphones, rather than the 5in plus “superphones” we’re beginning to see from the likes of Sony, Huawei and ZTE. At 60mm2, it’s roughly half the size of competing chips, and it promises to be less power hungry than the full-fat Tegra 4 – which itself uses less power than Tegra 3.
We’ll have a long wait to see how Tegra 4i stacks up to the competition – Nvidia expects the very first phones to go on sale at the end of the year, with most releases not happening until Q1 2013. We’ll get a closer look at Tegra 4i at Mobile World Congress in a week’s time, but with such a long time to wait we’ll have to see how well it compares to Qualcomm and ARM in a year’s time.
