ZiiLABS this week unveiled the Jaguar3, the company's third generation of reference designs for Android tablets. Under the hood is the ZMS-20 system on chip (SoC) with a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor running at 1.5GHz backed with 48 StemCell Processing cores. A quad-core ZMS-40 with 96 StemCell Processing cores is also in the works, though the company says it won't arrive until the next quarter.

In a press conference in Singapore that I attended, Sim Wong Hoo, chairman and CEO of Creative Technology, which owns ZiiLABS, explained how the StemCell cores work in tandem to deliver unprecedented 1080p High-Profile H.264 and VP8 video playback. Indeed, internal benchmarks supplied by the company shows the ZMS-20 besting Nvidia's Tegra 2 in OpenGL performance.

In today's fast-paced tablet market, the company hopes that its work releasing complete ready-to-go design kits will enable OEM customers to quickly bring their products to market. Using the Jaguar3, the company says it is possible to make tablets weighing less than 480g in an ultra-thin 8.1mm design, or even achieve a "razor-slim" design of just 7.4mm at a slightly higher mechanical cost.

Moreover, low-end configurations of the Jaguar3 can be priced as low as $100, albeit sacrificing niceties such as a built-in digital compass and going with a plastic chassis. Creative says it has no intention of selling its own tablets. Expect to see a wider variety of Android tablets on the market soon, if the Jaguar3 proves popular with OEMs.

For more:
- check out this press release

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