Nvidia Corp. said on Friday it had teamed up with GCT Semiconductor and Renesas Mobile to offer high-end smartphones based on Tegra 3 system-on-chip with 4G/LTE modems. The move clearly shows Nvidia's intention to become a viable player on the market of next-gen smartphones.

Nvidia claims that the partnership will help it to "push the envelope on the overall mobile experience". In reality, the partnership will help it to ensure its presence on the market of 4G/LTE smartphones with its advanced Tegra 3 system-on-chip. Nvidia Tegra 3-powered smartphones  promise to offer " award-winning performance capabilities, next-gen games, and lightning fast apps".

"This helps push the envelope on the overall mobile experience. Through fast data access offered by LTE, users get even better multiplayer gaming options, lightning fast web browsing, supercharged app download and the list goes on and on," said Phil Carmack, an Nvidia spokesman, in a blog post.

Nvidia Tegra 3 "Kal-El" system-on-chip (SoC) is based on four high-performance Cortex-A9 general-purpose cores with Neon accelerators (1.4GHz single-core or 1.30GHz quad-core mode) and one power-optimized Cortex-A9 core (up to 500MHz), features a GeForce graphics processing unit with twelve stream processors and will have a new display and video engines capable of supporting Blu-ray disc video playback and stereo-3D graphics output. The new device integrates single-channel DDR3L-1500/LPDDR2-1066 memory controller, e.MMC 4.41, SD 3.0, SATA II, 7.1-channel audio controller, faster image signal processor and so on. According to Nvidia's own performance benchmarks, Tegra 3 is 50% - 200%+ faster than Tegra 2 in various applications.

Nvidia and its partners intend to show off their Tegra 3-powered devices with 4G/LTE connectivity at Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona, Spain, this month.

Tags: Nvidia, Kal-El, Tegra, 40nm, ARM, Cortex, Renesas