Qualcomm details new Snapdragon chipset for Smartbooks

By: Raghav Kapoor

The new chipset offers improved performance and extended battery life

Snapdragon powered smartbooks from Asus, Wistron, and Inventec

Qualcomm is a leader in developing and delivering innovative digital wireless communications <input name="IL_MARKER" type="hidden">products and services based on CDMA and other advanced technologies. The company recently showcased a new chipset called the QSD8650A which is an extension to the existing Snapdragon platform which originally included the 1 GHz QSD8x50(TM) chipset and the 45 nm QSD8672 chipset with dual CPUs capable of up to 1.5 GHz for even faster response and processing.

With more than 15 manufacturers developing more than 30 Snapdragon based products, this platform is getting popular amongst smartphone and smartbook makers. This chipset is based on the 45 nanometer (nm) process technology so as to provide faster processing along with significant battery life improvements. The company claims that the 1.3GHz CPU offers a 30% increase in performance than the earlier 1GHz version and a battery life improvement of up to 30%, with a standby battery consumption of less than 10 milliwatts.

Moreover, in terms of multimedia capabilities this chipset features a power-efficient 2D graphics accelerator and an enhanced 3D graphics core, which also offer better performance of Adobe Flash software. Other important features include:

·         Integrated GPS

·         High-definition video recording and playback

·         For connectivity a multi-mode UMTS and CDMA 3G mobile broadband, Bluetooth v2.1, support for Wi-Fi

·         High-resolution WXGA displays

·         Mobile TV technologies such as MediaFLO, DVB-H and ISDB-T

Luis Pineda, senior vice president of marketing and product management at Qualcomm CDMA Technologies said that "This latest addition to the growing family of Snapdragon chipsets will help our customers to develop faster, more power-efficient smartphones and smartbooks”. This makes it quite clear that the company has plans to promote this platform for the smartphone and smartbook segment, though commercially, it will not appear before this year end.

Another thing which hints at the popularity of this platform in days to come is that Asus has recently showcased an Eee PC running on the 1GHz Snapdragon platform and Android operating system. This Eee PC is said to be fan less and thus more energy efficient and less costly (as it runs on Android). Moreover, it can play videos at 720p which is good enough for a processor of this size. It is believed that future netbooks with the latest 1.3GHz QSD8672 chipset will be able to play 1080p videos.

Besides the Asus Eee PC, manufacturers like Wistron and Inventec also showcased their versions of Snapdragon powered smartbooks in Computex.