Qualcomm dual Snapdragon can do 1080p video

Qualcomm raised the ante in smartphone processors this morning in shipping samples of the first dual-core Snapdragon chips. The 1.2GHz MSM8260 (for HSPA+ 3G) and MSM8660 (for EVDO Rev B) are already faster for normal tasks but thrive with a multithreaded OS and apps. They should be some of the first to let smartphones dedicate a processor to a background task and could make multitasking near seamless with Android and other platforms.

Either design has Qualcomm's latest graphics core, and combined with the second CPU core is fast enough to both encode and decode 1080p video. They can render a 24-bit color, 1280x800 display and support modern OpenGL ES 2.0 and OpenVG 1.1 visual effects.

A schedule hasn't been set for mass production, but with most processors usually follows within several weeks of early samples. Qualcomm teased that it still plans a 1.5GHz dual-core processor.

The rollout gives Qualcomm what may be the fastest ARM-based processor in the industry and could give a special edge to Android. Almost all of HTC's smartphones this year, as well as some from Acer, Sony Ericsson and others, use some version of a Snapdragon chip and should claim a performance edge. Tablets and smartbooks will get their own lift as the dual-core hardware should be fast enough to drive high-resolution displays and encourage the use of multiple demanding apps. Samsung and relative ARM newcomer Apple are so far still using single-core processors that, while capable of HD, face limits when running multiple apps or in potentially multi-core tasks like video encoding.

By Electronista Staff