You’ll find NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 at the heart of quad-core devices like the ASUS Transformer Prime and HTC’s One X, but you’re not going to find it paired-up with LTE. Qualcomm’s been driving the market for LTE components so far, and its strained relationship with NVIDIA has led to an absence of LTE for the current generation of Tegra-based gear. Even without Qualcomm’s help, NVIDIA has been working to introduce LTE using tech sourced elsewhere. We heard earlier this year from the company about some of its plans for upcoming processors, and that included mention of one with an integrated LTE radio later this year. NVIDIA recently returned to discussing the issue, revealing when we’ll likely see the first-such LTE-supporting Tegra chips arrive.
For now, NVIDIA is calling the next step in its chip evolution the Tegra 3+, but that won’t be its final name. The company’s general manager describes the T3+ as “high performance” and “a pretty significant bump” compared to today’s SoCs. Beyond just bringing more speed to the platform, we’re going to start seeing these new chips paired-up with LTE modems.
We’ll likely see the first devices with these new Tegra 3+ components and LTE start hitting retail sometime during the third quarter of this year. By then, though, the quad-core market is going to be a bit more crowded, so NVIDIA can’t dawdle for too long if it wants to stay competitive.
