According to Softpedia, Nvidia will likely planning a next-month roll out of its next-generation Tegra 3 chip that is essentially aimed at smartphones and tablets. The chip, which is yet to be officially announced by Nvidia, will reportedly be notably faster than the company's present processor - the dual-core Tegra 2.

As per Softpedia, the new Nvidia Tegra 3 chip - which Nvidia is likely to roll out at the Mobile World Congress to be held in Barcelona on February 14 - will probably have four cores inside, which will considerably accelerate browsing and gaming on smartphones and tablets.

Furthermore, multiple cores are capable of running at half speed to accomplish the same tasks which a single core would need to run at full speed; and will thereby not only improve battery efficiency but also generate less heat.

Almost confirming the impending launch of Tegra 3, Mike Rayfield - Nvidia's general manager of Tegra - said during the course of an interview with Hexus: "I'm going to come pretty close to my cadence of a launch every year. It will be in production around the same time as my competitors' first dual-cores will."

Meanwhile, noting that multicore smartphones zare in the offing, Ovum analyst Nick Dillon remarked that just like 1GHz was the standard for top-rung handsets in 2010, a dual-core processor will feature in every top-end service this year. Dillon further added: "We may even see the first quad-core chipsets emerging in handsets by the end of the year."