Qualcomm Airs Coming Smartphone GPU That's as Powerful as PS3

From DailyTech: Imagine a dual-core-powered phone with enough graphics processing might to power a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360. That's precisely what some of the smartphone industry's biggest hardware players are promising.

Next year, NVIDIA will air its Tegra 2 system-on-a-chip which comes complete with a dual-core ARM9 and super-powered mobile GPU. Not to be outdone, Qualcomm just announced its own plans for mobile hardware domination and they're shaping up to be equally impressive.

First up will be the pair of previously announced dual CPU core 45 nm system-on-a-chips. These chips will launch in phones early next year. Dubbed the MSM8260 and 8660, these system-on-a-chips are powered by the Adreno 205 GPU and two Scorpion cores clocked at 1.2 GHz. The key difference between the two chip models is in mobile broadcast standards support. The 8260 only supports HSPA+, while the 8660 supports HSPA+, CDMA2000 and 1xEV-DO Rev. B. These chips have already been completed and sampled to hardware partners, so phones should be soon coming to market.

This week Qualcomm also disclosed that it would be moving to the 28 nm process node. The first SoC to be produced at the new node will be the MSM8960. The new SoC won't just be a die shrink; it will also feature a new core design. While the company refuses to hint at clock speeds, it will say the new chip will be 5 times as powerful as the original (single Scorpion core) SnapDragon, meaning that each core will be roughly 2.5 times as powerful as its predecessor.

The company also claims it can achieve all of that while operating at 75% of the current generation's power (though it was less specific about what kind of power measure and which core -- 45 nm or 65 nm -- it was comparing to). This claim has been met with a bit of confusion and skepticism, but if it's as good as it sounds, Qualcomm should be good shape.

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