NVIDIA is set to release a massive upgrade to its tablet and smartphone-powering Tegra chip in the new generation as early as late this year.
Codenamed ‘Project Kal-El,’ the upcoming successor to the Tegra 2 which powers tablets from the likes of Samsung and Toshiba will run at five times the speed of the Tegra 2 (making it a step ahead of a Core 2 Duo).

The new chipset will be a quad-core CPU – the first mobile CPU of its kind – with a 12-core graphics card attached for enhanced gaming and graphics performance. This would push the graphics performance to around three times that of the Tegra 2. NVIDIA’s upcoming chip is also able to run 2560×1440 video resolution, or 1440p.

The upgrades are shaping up to make gaming and media-rich content on-the-go a reality in the growing tablet market. The push is paralleled by other companies like Razor which recently revealed its plans for a high-end gaming netbook powered by the latest Intel Sandy Bridge processor technology.

Companies like LG pushing to deliver mobile 3D content like in the Optimus 3D are requiring more power on smaller chips from hardware producers like AMD, NVIDIA and Intel. NVIDIA has already released its game plan for mobile CPU releases up to 2014, looking to have a chip with 100 times the performance of the current Tegra 2 by 2014.

Media delivery is getting smaller and faster, and the hardware producers are shaping what can and can’t be done on tablets and smartphones.