The NVIDIA Tegra3 processor is easily one of the biggest stars of this upcoming Honeycomb tablet, but Asus is throwing in a few extra goodies to make sure you want it too. For starters, they’ve reworked the design so that it has more of a metallic finish, not unlike the gorgeous Asus Zenbook UX21. They’ve also slimmed down the package to just 8.3mm and 586 grams; compare that to the the 12.9mm and 690 grams of the original.

The rest of the specs are right in line with our previous expectations, including the 10.1-inch IPS display, 12-core GeForce GPU, memory expansion, 8MP rear camera, 1.2MP front camera, GPS, WiFi, USB 2.0, microHDMI, and 12 hours of battery life. Curiously, they’re only putting a single gig of RAM in there. I hope that’s enough to give us the true Kal-El experience.

The 32GB and 64GB models should both become available next month for $499 and $599, respectively. It looks like they’ve killed off the 16GB option, but pricing has remained steady for the upper two capacities. The keyboard dock is $149.

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Set for release later this month, the Meizu MX would effectively be beating the NVIDIA Tegra3 (Kal-El) processor to the punch. There are two variants being prepared and, based on the teaser picture, they both look a fair bit like an Apple iPhone. This almost makes sense, since Meizu was one of the first (and biggest) to sell iPhone clones.

The cheaper of the two Meizu MX variants will have only a dual core processor and 16GB of storage. That’ll be CNY3,999 ($626). The bigger attraction, of course, is the quad core unit with 32GB of storage. That’s being pegged at CNY4,999 ($780). Both processors are A9-based. The rest of the specs include 4.0-inch touchscreens (960×640), 10mm profile, dual cameras, HSPA+ support, and a microUSB port.

How the battery life holds up to a quad core remains to be seen and I’d be hesitant to spend that much money on a Meizu product, but there you have it.

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The Tegra 2 processor from NVIDIA has found itself in a huge assortment of smartphones and tablets, quickly becoming one of the most preferred dual core chips for that segment. Even though Tegra 2 is still relatively new, Tegra 3 is just around the corner and it looks like Asus could be getting first dibs at Kal-El.

As you may recall, Kal-El (inspired by Superman) is the codename for Tegra3 and it’s part of a longer roadmap with more superhero-inspired codenames. What we’re hearing now is that the first device to launch with Tegra 3 will be the next-generation Asus Eee Pad Transformer Android tablet. The current (first) gen Eee Pad Transformer has been a huge hit, partly because it undercut similar devices like the Xoom and Galaxy Tab 10.1 by $100 or more right at launch. Now, the others have had to follow it down to the $399 start point.

I’d imagine that Asus will be very happy to follow up that success with an even faster tablet powered by the quad-core 40nm Tegra 3 chip. What’s interesting is that the quad-core chip is actually more efficient than its dual-core Tegra 2 cousin, consuming less power and thus extending battery life. Considering that I can easily get three days out of the Eee Pad Transformer I’ve been using (when attached to the keyboard dock), the second-gen model with Kal-El is sounding even more appealing.

Look for the Eee Pad Transformer 2 and its other Tegra 3-based compatriots to start hitting retailers in the first quarter of next year.

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Nvidia’s newest SoC, dubbed Kal-El is a stunning combination between a quad-core CPU and a 12-core GPU able to offer amazing dynamic lightning and movement performances.  Kal-El is part the Tegra 3 architecture bringing four 1.5 GHz ARM Cortex-A9 cores on a single processor and a 12-core Nvidia GPU able to render 3D stereo, all crammed on the same chip.  As surprising as it might seem, this killer combination has been particularly designed for smartphones and tablets, not your big ole desktop computer.

Nvidia announced the Kal-El project at MWC in Barcelona in February, but the first Kal-El tablets will be delivered in August. Smartphone consumers will have to wait a bit longer since Kal-El smartphones will only ship nearer to the end of 2011. Motorola might be the first company to produce Tegra 3-powered tablets, rumors suggest the Xoom 2 may be a likely candidate.

Kal-El has shown its capabilities in the “Glowball” game where it generated great dynamic light effects and realistic physics in real time. The way light rays sway on the floor and the drapes wave as the ball touches them is just mind-blowing.  Clearly, graphics generated by a quad-core processor is much better than that provided by regular dual-core CPUs. As for the iPad 2, it is highly unlikely that Apple’s A 5 processor equals Kal-El’s graphics quality.

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It feels like only yesterday that we were all drooling over the performance capabilities of NVIDIA Tegra 2 and how its dual-coreness blows single-cores out of the water. Well, get ready to be blown away again, this time by NVIDIA’s Project Kal-El. Superman fans probably get the reference.

Realistically thought of as the Tegra 2 successor, Kal-El will be the world’s first mobile quad-core CPU. NVIDIA is already sending out samples and they expect Android devices will start getting released with Kal-El under the hood this August. That’s crazy acceleration, don’t you think? Remember that both Qualcomm and TI OMAP5 aren’t going to show up on devices until 2012.

With Project Kal-El, we can expect five times the performance of Tegra 2, support for “extreme HD” (2560×1600), and silky smooth 60fps gaming on the go (compared to just 20fps on Tegra 2). In a CoreMark benchmark, Kal-El actually outperformed a true Intel Core2Duo T7200 processor by a score of 11,354 vs. 10,136.

But wait. There’s more. NVIDIA revealed its roadmap for the next few years, following up Kal-El by Wayne in 2012, Logan in 2013, and Stark in 2014. Project Stark is expected to deliver 100x the performance of Tegra 2 and that’s just three years from now. It’s a good time for mobile enthusiasts and it’ll be really interesting to see how Qualcomm and TI respond to NVIDIA’s bold moves.

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