Not the one to let Nvidia get all the glory, Qualcomm introduced a number of new mobile chips set to debut later in the year.
At the top of the heap is the Snapdragon 800 processor, a potent combination of the company’s new Krait 400 CPU, a faster Adreno 330 GPU and new DSPs for better audio and video. Then there is the Snapdragon 600, which is a slightly higher-clocked version of the existing Snapdragon S4 Pro — it goes up to 1.9Ghz.
But the real story here is the new Krait 400 CPU inside the Snapdragon 800: not only does it support four cores at up to 2.3Ghz each, but it utilizes a new 28nm High-K/Metal Gate manufacturing process that ensures the lowest power consumption at high performance numbers. Qualcomm promises much lower latency than previous Snapdragon S4 chips, and improved L2 cache performance.
Snapdragon 800 incorporates the company’s new Cat4 LTE chip, which sees speeds of 150Mbps downstream. It also supports new 802.11ac WiFi standard, which promises insane throughputs of over 1Gbps. Because the baseband is integrated on the SoC, the Snapdragon 800 will be more power-friendly despite its 2.3Ghz speeds.
The new chip also 4K Ultra High Definition encoding and decoding, and can project resolutions of up to 2560×2048, as well as stream video wirelessly at 1080p to a Miracast-compatible television or dongle.
The Snapdragon 600 should see play in some devices in the first half of the year, but users looking for the latest and greatest in smartphone and tablet chips will have to wait until the second half of 2013 for the Snapdragon 800.
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