Early benchmarks of Intel's upcoming 32nm Medfield platform have been leaked online, detailing performance figures set to effectively rival current chip market leaders in the tablet space.

VR-Zone has posted online information about the specifications and performance figures of Intel's Medfield tablet platform, which will sport a 1.6GHz CPU, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, WiFi, Bluetooth, FM radios and a top of the line GPU.

Benchmarks on the Medfield chip using Java-based CaffeineMark 3 purportedly give Intel's upcoming tablet platform a score of 10,500, significantly higher than the 7500 scored by Nvidia's Tegra 2 chip, the 8000 scored by Qualcomm's Snapdragon MSM8260 or the 8500 chalked up by Samsung?s Exynos chip. Nvidia's Tegra 3 score is not appearing in the results.

Sources from Intel seem to agree with the report, adding that Medfield's GPU can also beat the top of the line offering from its partner Imagination Technologies ltd - the PowerVR SGX543MP2. It's a dual core graphic processor, used by Apple in the latest iteration of the iPhone. Imagination is currently offering the most sophisticated graphics core on the market, outpacing both Qualcomm's Adreno and Nvidia 's Tegra offerings.

VR-Zone is also reporting the Medfield tablet platform should have an idle TDP of 2.6-watts, with a peak TDP of 3.6W when playing 720p video.

If these figures are correct, the Medfield chip will place Intel firmly within ARM's comfort zone.

Intel and Google are working on Android Ice Cream Sandwich optimization and the results are expected to appear at the tablet market in 2012.

Prototype phones and tablets based on the Medfield low-power chip and running on Google's Android operating system will be showcased at CES 2012.