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Qualcomm Ships Dual-Core Snapdragon Chipsets
rrossman2 writes "Qualcomm has issued a press release revealing it has started shipping new dual-core Snapdragon chipsets. These chipsets run each core at up to 1.2GHz, include a GPU that supports 2D/3D acceleration engines for Open GLES 2.0 and Open VG 1.1, 1080p video encode/decode, dedicated low-power audio engine, integrated low-power GPS, and support for 24-bit WXGA 1280x800 resolution displays. These chipsets come in two variants, the MSM8260 for HSPA+ and the MSM8660 for multi-mode HSPA+/CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Rev B. The press release also lists QSD8672 as a third-gen chipset like the two mentioned, but doesn't go into any detail of what its role is. With this announcement of shipping chipsets, how long until HTC makes a super smartphone?"
With this, should be able get a 10 hour 12 inch ultralight netbook, that can do 8 hours playing video or gaming. Also they can put a non-windows on it and say android, and sell it really cheap.
All this is directly good - further pressure in Intel and windows margins, and more people expecting instant 'on'. The question is, how soon before Windows 7 on ARM comes along?
Since the whole "smartbook revolution" seems to be a puff of hot air, the thing to hope for would be that some sort of "assembly kit" possibilities for computer-building hobbyists interested in RISC/ARM architecture could be available. This seems to be a market entirely owned by x86, with tons of pieces that can be stuck together like lego. I for one would love to have a full-size passively cooled laptop with low-energy processor and screen.
Great timing to reveal this just ahead of Steve Jobs iPhone 4/HD A4-processor equipped phone. I almost feel badly for Mr. Jobs getting beaten up like this. Even Dan Lyons (aka Fake Steve Jobs) is getting an HTC Incredible.
I said almost.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Some power-draw information for H.264 decode, full tilt GPU utilisation, 25/50/100% CPU utilisation of one/both cores would be welcome.
Mobile usages are limited by available battery technology at least as much as processing power; and the former moves forward much slower. Process lead of Intel doesn't quite work the same as before in this case...
Sure, there's one future, unreleased, next year Intel product; as you can see from the article, basically "smartphones only", no Win for you or generic Linux distro (not a big deal so far). But now it gets interesting..."southbridge" has "system controller/32 bit risc" - would be surprising if that's not some ARM (plus at least another one in radio interface; that's already probably more ARM cores than x86 ones, to keep power consumption at merely acceptable levels; Intel just couldn't do it without ARM). Less efficient and more expensive multichip solution (and of course other manufacturers are expected to make this effort, for miniscule portion of the market...while Intel doesn't risk anything; but anyway, there are no announcements - while phones would need to get certs quite some time before release; Android players have no incentive to switch; Apple has none, either, considering their inhouse ARM team; Samsung goes its own way, their own SoCs; Nokia devices with MeeGo are an uberniche product - they will certainly ride on Symbian for a long time)
Plus Intel doesn't even tell everything - they show those nice power usage numbers only in scenarios...when x86 core is idling; when the "supporting" hardware (with a great help of ARM cores :D ) does the real work. Power usage when x86 is doing something intensive (using its "impressive" speed) is strangely absent...
It will be still probably around an order of magnitude difference. Plus ARM won't stand still, look at the progress in the past decade from, say, ARM7TDMI to latest Cortex.
Again - a progress constrained by battery technology; Intel offering doesn't help that, quite the contrary - their greatest strength, process shrinking, no longer works quite the way as before.
BTW, how is the i960 or Itanium going?
One that hath name thou can not otter
Me too. Further, I would probably pay what Apple is charging. Your feature set is also my feature set, but I also demand GPS and a back-mounted camera of at least 3MP. Bluetooth and GPS are uneasy partners and I don't want a dongle dragging on the ground; a camera is mandatory for reality overlay.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"