NVIDIA Quad-Core Tegra 3 Chip introduced and it has 3 times the graphics perfomance and less than half the power usage as Tegra 2

NVIDIA today ushered in the era of quad-core mobile computing with the introduction of the NVIDIA® Tegra® 3 processor, bringing PC-class performance levels, better battery life and improved mobile experiences to tablets and phones. The world’s first quad-core tablet with the Tegra 3 processor is the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime.

Known previously by the codename “Project Kal-El,” the Tegra 3 processor provides up to 3x the graphics performance of Tegra 2, and up to 61 percent lower power consumption. This translates into an industry-leading 12 hours of battery life for HD video playback

The Asus is a google android tablet with a keyboard

* Up to 18 hours of battery life when docked and charged
* Mobile Dock with full QWERTY keyboard and touchpad for productivity and mobile flexibility
* Expansion with USB and SD card ports
* 8MP rear auto-focus camera with flash and 1.2MP front camera
* 10.1″ LED backlit screen with Super IPS+ (1280 x 800) 10 finger multi-touch, Corning® Gorilla® Glass
* Android™ 3.2 Honeycomb upgradable to Android™ 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
* 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
* 12 hour battery life, 18 hours when docked
* 32 GB version will cost $499, $149 for the keyboard dock
* It is a bit thinner than the iPad (8.3 mm versus 8.6 mm)
* Input lag is only 50 milliseconds
* Need to see more hands on reviews but the ASUS tablet with keyboard dock could finally be the tablet that performs like a notebook instead of a poor imitation
* It will come with Supernote and Polaris Office software
* It could finally be the perfect tablet for mobile blogging

The Tegra 3 processor implements a new, patent-pending technology known as Variable Symmetric Multiprocessing (vSMP). vSMP includes a fifth CPU “companion,” specifically designed for work requiring little power. The four main cores are specifically designed for work requiring high performance, and generally consume less power than dual-core processors.

During tasks that require less power consumption — like listening to music, playing back video or updating background data — the Tegra 3 processor completely shuts down its four performance-tuned cores and, instead, uses its companion core. For high-performance tasks — like web browsing, multitasking and gaming — the Tegra 3 processor disables the companion.

“NVIDIA’s fifth core is ingenious,” said Nathan Brookwood, Research Fellow at Insight 64. “Tegra 3’s vSMP technology extends the battery life of next-generation mobile devices by using less power when they’re handling undemanding tasks and then ratcheting up performance when it’s really needed.”

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