Qualcomm has been known for making the high-powered Snapdragon processors for smartphones, and today the company is unveiling to the world their latest family of Snapdragon chipsets built using the new 28nm “Krait” micro architecture – the mobile industry’s first encounter with the 28nm process. The new family of Snapdragon will be capable of running clock speeds at up to 2.5 GHz (per core) and should deliver 150% higher performance than comparable ARM-based CPUs today. The new Krait-based Snapdragon chips will also draw 65% less power than currently available silicon, making the new generation of Snapdragon not only fast, but more power-friendly as well.
The new Snapdragon chipsets will come in single-core (MSM8930), dual-core (MSM8960), and the newly-announced quad-core (APQ8064) flavors. Each chipset will come packed with all the trimmings, too. Qualcomm’s new quad-core Adreno 320 GPU, which packs four 3D graphics cores, accompanies all the Krait-based Snapdragon silicon. All chipsets will also include an integrated multi-mode LTE modem for high-speed, 4G data service. Of course, the chipsets will also support WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, FM radio, support for near field communication (NFC), stereoscopic 3D (S3D) video and photo capture and playback. That means these new chips will have what it takes to play in the burgeoning 3D video recording and 3D display technologies that seem to be the hot-button trend in mobile this year.
“Just as the original Snapdragon revolutionized smartphones with the first 1GHz processor, these new generations of Snapdragon will revolutionize the next wave of mobile entertainment and computing,” said Steve Mollenkopf, executive vice president and group president for Qualcomm. “We believe we have an incredible lineup of chips and software, representing a single platform that OEMs can utilize to create new devices ranging from mass market smartphones with integrated LTE, to tablets, to next generation computing and entertainment devices.”
And, when it comes to gaming prowess, the new Adreno 320 GPU will deliver gaming performance on par with today’s gaming consoles. That’s crazy, considering the Adreno 320 is optimized for low power draw and is miniaturized for mobile applications. The GPU will support stereo cameras for recording video in 3D, will be capable of displaying 3D video larger smartphone screens, and can output full 1080p HD video over HDMI.
From the looks of it, Qualcomm and NVIDIA are going at it tooth and nail to make waves in the mobile space. NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 will showdown with the Qualcomm quad-core Snapdragon in the near future. This should be interesting….
You can find the press release after the break.