Asus' Transformer Prime gets undressed, reveals Tegra 3

The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) had kindly posted pictures of the guts of Asus’ upcoming Transformer Prime tablet, since if you want to sell a device in the US; it has to pass through the stringent testing of the FCC. As such, we now know not only what Nvidia’s Tegra 3 chip for tablets look like, but also some details about the specifications of the Transformer Prime beyond the processor.

 

 

It looks like Nvidia has managed to shrink the size of the chip quite significantly compared to Tegra 2, despite doubling the core count and then some. It’s unlikely that this same chip will be used in smartphones though, as it’s still bigger than your average ARM SoC. Beyond the Tegra 3 chip, we’re looking at an unknown amount of 32-bit DDR2 or possibly LPDDR2 memory from Elpida, as the specific model number doesn’t appear on Elpida’s website. Storage comes courtesy of an eMMC chip from Hynix, in this case a 32GB chip built on 2Xnm technology that is compliant with the eMMC 4.41 standard that offers a maximum memory bandwidth of 104MB/s.

 

 

Other chips spotted include Wi-Fi from Azurewave, a GPS receiver from Broadcom, audio from Realtek and a touch screen controller from Atmel with support for up to 16 simultaneous touch inputs. The tablet also appears to have a micro SD card slot, a built in camera with what appears to be an LED flash, an audio jack and a USB port. There’s also a custom dock connector for the keyboard dock, but it’s a bit hard to see in the pictures. The battery pack seems to take up most of the space inside the tablet and it’s rated at 25Wh or 3,380mAh whichever you prefer. That said, we shouldn’t have to wait too long for the Transformer Prime to launch and we should know more then. Check out the source for more pictures of the internals of the Transformer Prime.