From DailyTech: Yesterday, Intel Corp. (INTC) created a stir when it rolled out its long-awaited 22 nanometer smartphone processor. Aside from the OEMs, no one knows quite for sure whether those chips will actually make it into the smartphones the majority of us will use.
But yesterday we also saw another company quietly release a series of chips that are virtually assured to wind up in many of the premium smartphones we will soon come to know and love.
Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM) announced a pair of new high-end 64-bit octacore designs at a 2014 Mobile World Congress (MWC) keynote early Monday. The new chips are branded the Snapdragon 610 and 615, joining the 64-bit mid-tier Snapdragon 410 which Qualcomm unveiled in mid-December.
ARM Holdings plc (LON:ARM), which exercises some control over the architecture designs of ARM chipmakers via its instruction-set standards, has pushed a number of improvements into its 64-bit chips in order to incentivize chipmakers to switch. This will allow a library of 64-bit ARM software to be built up, further ARM's ambitions for capturing market share in the server market.
While many of these improvements could easily be baked into 32-bit processors, by making them 64-bit exclusive ARM pushes chipmakers to go 64-bit, even if the benefits (having a server compatible-app library) are not immediately clear to consumers or to chipmakers.
Qualcomm itself grappled with the uncertain payoff. After Apple, Inc. (AAPL) became the first major ARM chipmaker to air a 64-bit ARM system-on-a-chip (SoC) for the mobile market, a senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Qualcomm issued a controversial attack on Apple over the merits of 64-bit. That SVP -- Anand Chandrasekher -- was quickly demoted after Qualcomm's top decision makers realized they would need to go 64-bit too in order to gain access to the latest and greatest ARM architectural improvements.
At the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Qualcomm disappointed by announcing automotive and media variants of the Snapdragon 2/4/6/8xx series, but failing to fill in the newly minted 64-bit lineup.
This week it delivered, unveiling part of its upper tier of 64-bit chips. The Snapdragon 615 was a bit of a nice surprise, making up for the fact that the Snapdragon 810 was absent. Last year Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 600 and 800 chips simultaneously, which led to some confusion when only the Snapdragon 600 was available early in the year, with no Snapdragon 800 stock until H2 2013.
Qualcomm seemingly learned from that experience and is adopting a more patient approach this year. The Snapdragon 610/5 isn't quite ready for the mass market. It will begin shipping in Q3 2014, and will reach customers in devices in Q4 2014.
We can expect Qualcomm to announce a 64-bit Snapdragon 810/5 in H2 2014 or Q1 2015, closer to the actual availability date.
The new chips pack an Adreno 405 GPU, only the second officially announced Adreno 400 series GPU. It's unclear what improvements that new graphics chip will bring, but we can expect good things given the division's pedigree and track record (Adreno is an anagram of Radeon, it was originally the mobile division of Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s (AMD) Radeon subsidiary, prior to its acquisition by Qualcomm in 2008). One improvement we do know about is the addition of DirectX 11.2 support. The new chips also get a new coprocessor which allows for decode of H.265 -- the widely used codec for "4K" (ultra-HD) video.
Alongside the Snapdragon 610 and 615, Qualcomm also announced a new high-end 32-bit chip to hold buyers over until it rolls out the Snapdragon 810. The new Snapdragon 801, actually should be available very soon, where as the previously announced Snapdragon 805 is still making its way to the market.
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