According to rumors, Nvidia could announce and show off its Tegra 4 processor at CES in January 2013, codenamed Wayne (a homage to Batman), continuing the trend of using names of comic book superheroes as codenames started with the Tegra 3 (Kal-El, a homeage to Superman).

Wayne, carrying the model number Tegra T40 and running at 1.8GHz, will be based on the ARM Cortex-A15 architecture and built on a 28nm processor for improved performance and power efficiency, similar to Qualcomm‘s Snapdragon S4 Pro or Samsung‘s Exynos 5250 chipsets, and will mainly be used for powering tablets and maybe netbooks. The T40 will be followed by T43 in Q3 2012, which will be able to provide clock speeds of up to 2.0 GHz.

Nvidia will also launch two mainstream Tegra SoCs in Q3 – the Tegra 4 AP40 as well as a 100mbps LTE-enabled Tegra 3 variant having the model number SP3X. The Cortex-A15 AP40 will support frequencies from 1.2GHz to 1.8GHz and supposedly replace the T40 for 10-inch tablets. The SP3X will be based on the current ARM Cortex-A9 architecture, provide speeds of 1.2-2.0 GHz, and power entry-level devices with up to 7-inch displays.

Each of the four upcoming processors will carry a power-saving 5th companion core, just like the currently used Tegra 3 processors do. Which of the four chipsets Nvidia will launch for smartphones remains to be seen, but with other chip-makers like Qualcomm and Samsung all ready with their latest processors for smartphones, Nvidia needs to hurry up, as “Tegra-exclusive” games can only take them so far.