Difference Between Quad core Nvidia Kal-El (Tegra 3) and Nvidia Tegra 2

Quad core Nvidia Kal-El (Tegra 3) vs Nvidia Tegra 2 | Tegra 2 vs Tegra 3 Speed, Performance and Multitasking

Tegra™ 2 is a System-on-Chip (SoC), which is developed by Nvidia for mobile devices such as smart phones, personal digital assistants, and mobile Internet devices. Nvidia claims that Tegra 2 is the first mobile dual-core CPU and therefore it has extreme multitasking capabilities. Nvidia Kal-El (Tegra 3) is the first quad-core SoC. Nvidia announced about this in February, 2011 at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona and it is intended to be released in the second half of 2011.

Nvidia Tegra 2

As mentioned above, Tegra 2 is a SoC, developed by Nvidia for mobile devices such as smart phones, personal digital assistants, and mobile Internet devices. According to Nvidia, Tegra 2 is the 1st mobile dual-core CPU that has tremendous multitasking capabilities. Due to this, they claim that it can deliver 2x faster browsing, H/W accelerated Flash and highest quality gaming (on par with console-quality) with the NVIDIA® GeForce® GPU. Key features of Tegra 2 are Dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 CPU that is the 1st mobile CPU with out-of-order execution. This yields faster web browsing, very fast response time and overall better performance. Another key feature is the Ultra-low power (ULP) GeForce GPU, which delivers exceptional mobile 3D game playability along with a visually appealing 3D user interface which yields high-speed response and very low power consumption. Tegra 2 also allows watching 1080p HD movies stored on a mobile device on a HDTV with very low power consumption through its 1080p Video Playback Processor.

Quad core Nvidia Kal-El (Tegra 3)

As mentioned earlier, Kal-El (Tegra 3) is the newest quad-core SoC developed by Nvidia, which is expected to be released in the second half of 2011. Tegra 3 T30 is targeted for tablets, while Tegra 3 AP30 is targeted for phones. Nvidia claims that, Tegra 3 T30 contains four 1.5GHz ARM Cortex A9 cores and provides support for Blu-ray video. They also claim that it is capable of driving a 1920 x 1200 panel with three times faster graphics and with a Ultra Low Power (ULP) mode, where a typical Tegra 3 tablet will be able to manage 12 hours of HD video playback. Tegra 3 AP30, which is targeting phones, is capable of driving 1366 x 768 resolution displays. As mentioned by Engadget, Nvidia has demonstrated a device containing the Tegra 3 SoC scaling down a 2560 x 1440 video stream to its 1366 x 768 native resolution, while outputting the same stream at 2560 x 1600 on a 30 inch monitor simultaneously.

What is the difference between Quad core Nvidia Kal-El (Tegra 3) and Nvidia Tegra 2?

The main difference between Tegra 2 and Tegra 3 is the number of cores they contain. While Tegra 2 is a dual-core SoC, Tegra 3 is a quad-core SoC. Nvidia claims that, Tegra 3 outperforms Tegra 2 by doubling the processing power and tripling the graphics processing power. Furthermore, Nvidia has demonstrated an instance of Great Battles Medieval, running at 720p with 650 enemies in both Tegra 3 and Tegra 2. While Tegra 2 stuttered during this demonstration, Tegra 3 performed very well. Also, in a benchmark test using the Coremark 1.0 benchmark, Tegra 3 scored more than twice as high as the Tegra 2.

Related Link:

NVIDIA Tegra 2 Dual Core vs Tegra 3 Quad Core (Kal-El) Mobile Processors (Performance test videos included)