LAS VEGAS — Nvidia, the company that makes the mobile processors in many Android devices including the Google Nexus 7 tablet, today officially launched its next mobile chip, the Tegra 4.



The quad-core Tegra 4 is said to have six times the processing power of its predecessor, the Tegra 3. To show just how powerful the chip is, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang demonstrated how a Tegra 4-powered devices could take photos with high dynamic range (HDR) in essentially real time, with no discernible delay between the multiple shots required to assemble the composite pics.



Huang also claimed the Tegra 4 had more processing power than even the iPad 4, which Mashable's own tests showed had an incredibly fast chip.



The Tegra 4 boasts similar energy efficiency as the Tegra 3 since it has the same architecture, with a fifth core that helps regulate energy use. With its power-efficient design, the Tegra 4 is said to enable up to 14 hours of video playback on smartphones.



The new Tegra is based on an ARM Cortex-A15 CPU design, and contains 72 individual Nvidia GeForce graphics cores. Huang demonstrated the chip's graphical powers by having a Tegra 4-powered device push 4K-resolution video to an Ultra HDTV.



One of the first Tegra 4-powered devices will actually be an Nvidia-designed and -made product, a handheld Android gaming controller called Project Shield. Now that the chip is official, expect more announcements from mobile manufacturers in the coming months.