NVIDIA Tegra 4i

It’ll utilize NVIDIA’s own-built i500 modem for the task, a chip that will support 100mbps LTE out of the box but can be software-upgraded to support 150mbps LTE when and if necessary. Tegra 4i is a 28nm quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 R4 chipset (with a fifth low-power companion core) that will be coupled with a 60-core NVIDIA GPU.

The chipset can reach speeds of up to 2.3GHz, and NVIDIA says the chip will be nearly half as big as Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800, so it should be quite friendly for OEMs to work with when designing the innards of tomorrow’s hardware. NVIDIA is calling it the fastest single-chip configuration out, and that’s true, though we doubt that matters much to the typical user in the grand scheme of things.

Tegra 4 “Wayne” is still NVIDIA’s big powerhouse chipset with its 1.9GHz 4+1 quad-core chipset based on ARM Cortex-A15. Its GPU is 72 core, and has been designated as the perfect SoC for the unofficial “superphone” category, as well as for high-end tablets.

To showcase Tegra 4i, NVIDIA is also announcing Phoenix, a reference platform for OEMs who want to design Tegra 4i smartphones and get them to market quicker. Phoenix isn’t something us mere mortals will appreciate in-hand, but we will eventually appreciate it in the consumer space as it will help OEMs deliver great smartphones sooner than we can toss our wallets at our displays.

Phoenix will house a 5-inch 1080p display and all the typical bells and whistles you typically find in today’s smartphones. The company will be in Barcelona for Mobile World Congress showing its new toys off, and you can bet we’ll be making a stop by its booth to see for ourselves.