Nvidia’s dual core ARM processors have always provided good battery life for the devices that use them. It seems that their new quad cores actually use less power than the dual core processors because:

1. While anything but intuitive, quad core processors have less power drain for many of the most common activities they perform
2. Nividia provides the tightest integration between it CPUs and its GPUs

The new Nvidia SoC (System on a Chip) which combines the CPU and The GPU on a single chip also provides better battery life than any of the dual-core systems. And the existing dual core can provide better battery life than any single core machine.

How can that be possible?

When an application is properly multi-threaded and the workload is spread across multiple CPUs, the voltage and frequency of the CPUs are lower on all cores. The same workload on one CPU would max out the voltage and frequency on the CPU. When a CPU gets maxed out, it runs hotter and draws a lot more power. As a result the most common activities such as web browsing, reading email, basic video playback can be easily spread across the CPU cores and that lets them use less power and provide better battery life.

Also, NVIDIA CPUs can tell their graphic chips to power down or power off to conserve power during average use, and over time that adds up to battery life gains. Plus, NVIDIA’s quad core chip will include a GeForce GPU with 12 cores and it can power displays up to 2560×1600.

So, to answer my original question: Yes, a quad core processor can us less power than a dual core processor.