From DailyTech: A Chinese microblogger, panjiutang, posted on the Chinese-language microblogging platform Weibo pictures of what appears to be a leaked Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM) roadmap. If accurate the roadmap, which runs Q2 2014 through Q2 2015, suggests that the top mobile chipmaker's 64-bit Snapdragon chips are hitting mass production shortly and may be ready for launch in devices sometime around the end of the year.
As of Q1 2014 Qualcomm controlled roughly two-thirds of the cellular baseband processor market and roughly half of the mobile applications processor market as of the end of 2013
If there's a clear threat to Qualcomm's hegemony it's the ambitious in-house efforts of Apple, Inc. (AAPL) and Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd. (KRX:005930) (KRX:005935), the world's second and first place smartphone sellers, respectively. Apple beat Qualcomm to the 64-bit punch, launching the first mass market mobile SoC (the iPhone 5S's Apple A7 SoC) late last year. In Oct. 2013 Samsung pledged to have 64-bit chips of its own shortly.
For these reasons ARM Holdings plc (LON:ARM) has pushed Qualcomm and other partners to embrace 64-bit, incentivizing it further by applying it to the new ARMv8 and ARMv8-A instruction sets, which pack new functionality and more registers for faster mobile processing.
Looking ahead to the fresher details, the roadmap suggests that Qualcomm's Snapdragon 6XX series chips -- the octa-core Snapdragon 615 MSM8939 and the quad-core Snapdragon 610 MSM8936. Both of these mid-range powerhouses will be 64-bit.
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