1.5 Ghz dual core Snapdragons coming by Christmas

August 15, 2010 | By Surur

Faster chips coming to devices very soon. Windows Phone 7 has strict specs for OEMs, but these are minimum specs, meaning, if so inclined, OEMs can opt to differentiate their devices by offering even higher performance hardware.

Its good news then to hear that Qualcomm has announced that it will soon start shipping their fastest Snapdragon chips ever, the 1.5 Ghz dual core QSD8672 chip, suitable for smartphones, tablets and low-cost laptops, according to Mark Frankel, vice president of product management for Qualcomm CDMA Technologies.

The chip is manufactured at 45 nm and features power-saving improvements, such as the ability to scale each processor independently, allowing one core to sleep for example while the other runs at full speed.

The chip will also allow full 1080p video playback and HDMI out.

Frankel said devices with the new chip will hit the market early next year, but aggressive vendors could launch products as early as “by Christmas” this year.

Read more about the chips as Computerworld.com here.

Via TamsPPC

About Surur

Site Admin and Windows Phone enthusiast, he has been using Windows Mobile devices since before they were called PocketPC’s. He is currently sporting a HTC 7 Trophy.

Tagged hardware, qualcomm, snapdragon

KennyB123

*cough* HD3? *cough*
ParsaCalavera

- its actually dual coRe ( in second paragraph ) –

what about GPU ?
EminiSP

Gosh i would kill to have something like that in a WP7 phone this coming launch.
G Yeo

Running the OS on one core, and then activating the second core only when an app needs it, would be good.

I imagine it would require OS support to work optimally. Just guessing, but it sounds like something that would work well in combination with multitasking.

Surur

Windows CE 7.0 features dual core support, so me way have to wait for the next version of Windows Phone to be based on that.

Northerngeek

I can't see this being readily adopted by handset manufacturers for the foreseeable future, at least until MS gets multitasking finished. Releasing a 1.5GHz phone for a platform with pretty well established specs would be like releasing a 4GHz Xbox 360, in all likelihood the software will never take advantage of it.

1GHz for an efficiently built OS and apps seems sufficient for the near future to me, but this will no doubt be good for WP8's minimum specs as by then the price will have come down significantly.

Jake

I believe the latest version of Windows CE is designed to handle dual core processors plus all the latest instruction sets.

Northerngeek

I understand that it's feasible, I just don't see what would use the extra power- developers are going to be using the minimum specs to go by when making their apps in order to get the biggest number of devices. Considering there is no multitasking (yet) I find it unlikely that a manufacturer would pay for a faster chip than is likely to be used.

I believe a manufacturer will increase things such as camera resolution, storage, screen quality and decrease handset size before we see differences in processor.

http://www.facebook.com/Bugblatter Bug Blatter

45nm seems a bit big these days.

The Cortex A9 seems to be the one to watch, although even the A8 seems to be smoking the competition and it's already available.

Now that Sony is moving their portable PlayStation into the smartphone arena, and of course with MS tying WP7 in with XBox Live, we should see our devices becoming REAL gaming devices.

IF they get the controls sorted out! I still don't see why they can't make a credit card-sized BT controller for games. Total lack of effort if you ask me. I've tried some games on Android that look fantastic but are rubbish because of the controls, especially FPS.

Other than games what else needs this kind of power?
Anastasi Toulkeridis

Why was my comment removed?!

Surur

I suspect it looked a bit spammy.

gcianc

wp7 won't require such heavy processing power

android and wm6.5 OTOH scream for it with their poor (non-existant) app management systems.

it seems very unlikely for a v1 launch for phone makers to go "bleeding edge" and get above the $199 (on contract) smartphone cost for WP7 devices.