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The 10.1-inch device runs Android's 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, Engadget reports, adding it includes a "special fusion-skin body" along with a rear camera and fingerprint scanner that doubles as an optical joystick.

But the tablet's defining feature is its 1.6-gigahertz NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor, making it faster than any other tablet on the market with 2-megabits per second of 1,600-megahertz DDR3 RAM.

Lenovo has not commented on the report, nor given any data on pricing or a release date. It likely will announce the tablet at the Mobile World Congress in February.

Should Lenovo release such a device, it would join Acer, HTC, Asus and others reportedly developing speedier and stronger tablets.

HTC's CEO Peter Chou announced his company plans to unveil a quad-core tablet in February, following rumors that HTC is engineering a similarly fast smartphone called the Edge.

The Edge reportedly features a 1.5-gigahertz NVIDIA quad core processor, along with a 4.7-inch HD S-LCD 2 display and two cameras. The thinner tablet is also said to include NFC technology, Beats Audio headphones and 32-gigabytes of storage.

HTC's next-generation phones and tablets are set to take on the iPhone 4S and iPad. Apple's newest products have only dual core processors and do not include NFC capabilities, putting the Edge and its rumored tablet cousin ahead in the game.

But Apple may increase competition by including speedy chips in its iPhone 6. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company's Xcode developer tool reveals support for Marvell's quad-core ARM-based Armada XP processor, so as not to be left behind in the race to build better smartphones and tablets.

Neither Apple or HTC has announced details on quad core products, suggesting production is still far off. But as chip technology improves, designers and manufacturers will likely jump to compete over whose smartphones and tablets are the fastest on the market.