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If we had to pick just one favorite feature of modern smartphone design, it would probably be the advent of 1GHz processors, like Qualcomm's Snapdragon chip and Samsung's Hummingbird part. Both of these could soon be obsolete, however, as Qualcomm gets ready to ship its dual-core QSD8672 CPU clocked at up to 1.5GHz per core.
We already knew this was in the works, but only had a vague time frame to go on. Now Qualcomm is saying it will start shipping these newer, faster Snapdragon parts in the fourth quarter, which will find their way into smartphones and tablets.
That still doesn't tell us when actual products built around these new CPUs will hit the street, but according to Mark Frankel, vice president of product management for Qualcomm CDMA Technologies, vendors looking to get a leg-up on the competition could launch products "by Christmas."
First run chips will likely come clocked at 1.2GHz, but despite the faster clockspeed, battery life could be improved. Individual voltage scaling, for example, is just one of the architectural improvements being implemented in the new Snapdragon silicon that could lead to lower power consumption over its predecessor.
Comments are closed on this article
Keith E. Whisman
August 18, 2010 at 6:21pm
Perhaps one day we'll have to start water cooling our smart phones just to be able to fully enjoy the top performing parts. Hey, I'm heading over to Fry's electronics to build a new smart phone. Build your own smart phone like an enthusiast pc. Funny thing is that, that is likely to happen and become common long before do-it-yourself laptops catch on.
BeEazy10
August 18, 2010 at 6:59am
it seems like mobile phone CPU is getting faster by the Q's, but what about RAM? were still with the same 256MB or 512MB of RAM and are mobile phone. Im just wondering when can we expect a phone with atleast 1ghz of RAM or atleast to break the 700 barrier?
Caboose
August 18, 2010 at 7:49am
I think desktops and laptops get 1GHz speed RAM. And what is this "700 barrier" you mentioned?
Having a phone with 1GB of RAM would be nice, but honestly, why? 512MB is plenty right now and honestly, it'll be plenty for the next little while. Mobile apps aren't like full-blown desktop apps that require a lot of memory. And with most phone OS' that kill off idle apps automatically and automatically free up memory, having 1GB of RAM in your phone isn't something that most consumers need.
If you're running every app on your phone all the time, then you need a tablet or netbook instead...
