NVIDIA Adds a 5th Name to its 5th Core VSMP Technology in Tegra 3
It’s a strange name, to be blunt. Yet it captures the real essence of NVIDIA’s newest, most powerful and beastly Tegra 3 processor. You’ve probably heard the rumors already. A quad-core chip that has a 5th extra core or companion core, otherwise dubbed as the Ninja core, moreover, the shadow core.
NVIDIA first introduced its next-generation processor codenamed “Project Kal-El” last September and astounded the world by announcing an additional fifth core that has a variable SMP (variable symmetric multiprocessing) architecture on it and is completely OS transparent. It was phenomenal. We couldn’t find another word for it.
Yesterday, NVIDIA has finally decided to officially term the VSMP technology as 4-PLUS-1, a simpler name that ironically describes its complexity. Interestingly, this is also the 5th name for the 5th core. It was previously known as stealth core, companion core, ninja core and of course, VSMP.
Now that the 4-PLUS-1 name has been trademarked, it’s pretty clear what will happen next. Yeah, that’s right. It’s time for all those 4-PLUS-1 gadgets to start marching in. When? At next week’s Mobile World Congress of course. Via NVDIA’s blog, the proud chipmaker was keen to ensure its fans that the 4-PLUS-1 name is here to stay, although it’s rather weird to cite TAFKAP (the Artist Formerly Known as Prince) as an example. Nevertheless, we love you NVIDIA.