Just a few hours ago, we mentioned a mysterious post from HTC on their Facebook page, a simple phone with the number 5 in it, with the caption “this Sunday you’ll see something fast.” We were quite puzzled, until now. NVIDIA just released a blog post, that might just clear up our confusion. The Tegra 3 processor, which is quad-core, apparently has something that was previously referred to as vsmp (variable symmetric multiprocessing), and is now being called the “fifth core.” In a nutshell, it’s separate from the other four, and acts as a battery-saving core. NVIDIA is marketing this as the 4-PLUS-1 quad-core architecture. The four main GPUs handle large tasks and applications, while the fifth core carries out less strenuous processes. This leads to less that the four main cores are doing, which helps cut down on battery drain.

Something tells us that HTC’s Facebook post has is related to NVIDIA’s latest announcement. Michael Rayfield, who posted the blog entry, warned that we should expect this architecture at MWC next week. All the pieces of the puzzle are starting to come together: HTC, Mobile World Congress, Tegra 3, fifth core… something about this says “awesome” to us, but we’ll leave such judgments to you.

So with all that being said, who else is ready for MWC? Does the fifth core concept make you less critical of quad-core processors? Sound off in the comments!