Items tagged with (NASDAQ:QCOM)
As much as we are interested in flagship hardware, there is an enormous market for mid-range and entry-level hardware, where affordability and practicality converge. To ensure those markets are being served, Qualcomm today expanded its Snapdragon family with four new mobile platforms—Snapdragon 778G Plus 5G, 695, 480 Plus 5G, and 680 4G—to deliver more performance and capabilities across its entire family of Snapdragon SoCs. None of these are intended to challenge the Snapdragon 888 Plus, Qualcomm's top mobile chip with copious AI processing muscle (as demonstrated in the latest round of MLPerf testing). But they each play an important role in Qualcomm's Snapdragon hierarchy, in part...
Read more...
There's quite a bit of moving and shaking in the chip industry right now—Apple just unveiled its M1 Max and M1 Pro chips, Google provided more details on its upcoming Tensor SoC, and of course Intel's Alder Lake launch looms right around the corner. But as it applies to the mobile space, Qualcomm has a message for the competition—Snapdragon is still a formidable architecture. To highlight the point, Qualcomm today is pointing to an updated set of MLPer results. "There’s only one way to say it: the Snapdragon 888+ 5G Mobile Platform blew away the competition in the latest MLPerf Mobile Inference v1.1 benchmark submissions," Qualcomm begins its blog post on the results. "In one...
Read more...
Forces are at play to vastly reduce latency while gaming over Wi-Fi, and quite frankly, that is something that is long overdue. The secret sauce to make this possible is comprised of two main ingredients—Qualcomm's FastConnect hardware and the Wi-Fi Dual Station technology that is baked into Windows 11, developed in partnership with Microsoft. When mixed together, gaming over Wi-Fi can be akin to playing over an Ethernet connection. A wired-like gaming experience over a wireless connection may sound like a pipe dream, but this is something that has the backing of some major players, including Qualcomm, Microsoft, and Valve. What this essentially entails is harnessing multiple Wi-Fi bands...
Read more...
The next major stop on Qualcomm’s SoC train is likely to be the flagship Snapdragon 898, which is the rumored successor to the highly popular Snapdragon 888/888+. However, that’s not all that the chip firm has in its bag of tricks. According to a new report, Qualcomm is also working on fresh mid-range chips that could land in affordable phones in 2022. WinFuture claims that Qualcomm is working on the SM6375 and the SM6225. The SM6375 reportedly is an octa-core SoC with four “Gold” performance cores and four “Silver” efficiency cores. In addition, as with most new Qualcomm SoCs introduced during the past year and a half, SM6375 will have an integrated 5G modem....
Read more...
Audiophiles are a discerning bunch. PC enthusiasts often have a reputation for being extremely particular about what tech makes it into their rigs, but audiophiles can often take that same type of particularity and crank it up to 11. Disagree? Then explain this $60,000 10-foot of speaker wire. Extreme audiophiles actually buy that kind of stuff because sound quality is of the utmost importance to them, regardless of cost. Mainstream consumers may not be quite as particular, of course, but sound quality is still an important consideration for many folks, especially as it relates to Bluetooth devices, like earbuds or headphones. For those people, Qualcomm’s new aptX Lossless Audio technology...
Read more...
Although a number of leaks hinted at is existence, it wasn’t until early last month that ASUS and Qualcomm made the Smartphone For Snapdragon Insiders official. According to Qualcomm’s website, its Snapdragon Insiders program is already 1.5M+ members strong. The program, which is meant to directly engage with Snapdragon enthusiasts, consists of regular email newsletters and exclusive invitations to contests, influencer events and AMAs with product experts. The Smartphone For Snapdragon insiders is a device developed with these users in mind. Built by ASUS in collaboration with Qualcomm, the Smartphone For Snapdragon Insiders exploits the many inherent benefits of Qualcomm’s...
Read more...
It's barely been a month since Qualcomm came out with its Snapdragon 888+ system-on-chip (SoC), essentially a goosed version of the regular Snapdragon 888 that was introduced last December. The Snapdragon 888+ is not a next-gen chipset, though. That distinction belongs to the rumored Snapdragon 898 (or 895), which could deliver a sizable bump in performance. Nothing has been announced, so as with any leak or rumor, a dash of salt goes well when ingesting the unconfirmed information. That applies even to the SoC's name—Qualcomm's next Snapdragon part might be labeled 898 or 895, or even something else. Regardless of what it ends up being called, some supposed details about Qualcomm's next...
Read more...
Qualcomm is now officially inviting you to "level up your smartphone game" with its special edition Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders, a technical showpiece that was "dreamed up just for you." Designed in collaboration with and sold by ASUS, the high-end handset is now available to preorder, and will ship out to customers on August 27, 2021. In case you missed our previous coverage, the Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders is not a cheap handset. Preorder pricing is set at $1,499, putting this squarely in the upper echelon of smartphones, in terms of cost. For those who are willing to splurge, what you get in return is a full-loaded handset built around Qualcomm's Snadragon 888 system-on-chip...
Read more...
Intel has already lined up some pretty big customers for its cutting edge 20A process technology, which will introduce new transistor architecture and interconnect technologies when it arrives in the first half of 2024. One of those customers is Qualcomm—it plans to leverage Intel's 20A technology for future Snapdragon system-on-chip (SoC) designs. In case you missed it, Intel outlined a number of new and interesting details about the company's IDM 2.0 strategy, during yesterday's Intel Accelerated webcast. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger and Dr. Ann Kelleher, SVP and general manager of technology development, laid it all out on the line, talking about Intel's new node naming scheme and future...
Read more...
It is finally here, the first Snapdragon-branded smartphone, designed by ASUS with premium features from head to toe. Called the Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders, the handset falls decidedly into flagship territory, with a price to match (more on that in a moment). Interestingly, however, it rocks Qualcomm's regular Snapdragon 888 system-on-chip (SoC), rather than the recently announced Snapdragon 888+. In all reality, the upgraded Snapdragon 888+ is not all that drastically faster than the base model—it increases the clock speed from 2.84GHz to 2.99GHz, for a little over a 5 percent boost in raw speed. Qualcomm also goosed its 6th generation AI engine (Hexagon 780) from 26 TOPS to 32...
Read more...
Windows 11 is finally out in the wild, and though there are some early caveats, it appears to be a nice update to the Windows ecosystem. However, now that Microsoft has made it publicly available, it also means people get to tinker with it to the extreme. Some developers have done just that as well, with reports of Windows 11 now running on Android phones with just a little software help. Xilin Wu is a developer behind the GitHub project “Renegade,” where “people try to port edk2 to different phones.” EDK2 is an open-source UEFI implementation that would allow ARM-based operating systems to be loaded on phones once ported. In this case, the goal was to get Windows 11 working...
Read more...
Late last year, newly formed NUVIA Inc. aimed to take on Intel and AMD in the data center with a massive $240 million funding round. Now, the company recently acquired by Qualcomm, is retargeting its sights on the mobile space and could take a shot at Apple in hopes of gaining better penetration in the laptop market as soon as next year. As it stands, Apple’s M1 chip is an incredibly power-efficient and performant mobile processor architecture that is tough to beat. However, on Thursday, Qualcomm Inc’s newly appointed CEO, Cristiano Amon spoke with Reuters explaining that, with the acquisition of Nuvia and the expertise acquired therein, Qualcomm could end up with the...
Read more...
We all knew it was coming, and Qualcomm today announced the more powerful version of its Snapdragon 888, aptly named the Snapdragon 888+. Like the Snapdragon 865+ and Snapdragon 855+ that came before it, the Snapdragon 888+ has the same basic blueprint as its namesake, with higher clocks for increased performance. This time around, the prime Kryo CPU core is clocked at up to 3GHz (2.995GHz to be exact), compared to 2.84GHz (just over a 5 percent boost). This should be enough to eke slightly better overall performance than the standard-issue Snapdragon 888. The other performance increase comes from Qualcomm's 6th generation AI Engine (Hexagon 780), which gets a 20 percent performance boost from...
Read more...
NVIDIA announced its intention to purchase Arm last year for a record $40 billion. With Arm under its helm, the company would play a pivotal role in shaping the future of the chip architecture that powers billions of devices (and growing) around the globe. Given the many players that leverage Arm chip designs – including heavy hitters like Qualcomm, Apple, Samsung, MediaTek, and countless others – the deal has faced heavy regulatory scrutiny. With this in mind, incoming Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon is offering an alternative to an NVIDIA-only agreement. Incoming Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon Amon suggested to The Telegraph that Qualcomm could join a consortium of key industry players...
Read more...
In due time, Qualcomm is expected to release a Snapdragon 888 Plus system-on-chip, just as there were Plus versions of the Snapdragon 865 and Snapdragon 855 SoCs. What comes after that, however, is shaping up to be a pretty big upgrade according to the latest leak, which claims Qualcomm's next premium SoC will be built on a 4-nanometer manufacturing process. That makes sense, given that the Snapdragon 888 is built on a 5nm node. Let's quickly recap that part before moving onto the latest rumor. Qualcomm's existing flagship mobile chip features around 10 billion transistors, an eight-core CPU (four Kryo 680 Silver cores clocked at up to 1.8GHz, three Kryo 680 Gold cores clocked at up to 2.42GHz,...
Read more...
Back in September 2020, Qualcomm debuted the flagship Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 5G Compute Platform for Windows 10 on Arm devices. This was a slight refresh of its predecessor, with the major update being the addition of a standalone Snapdragon X55 5G modem. Today, however, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 to steps into the limelight, and it features new optimizations compared to its low power predecessor as well. The Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 has been tweaked for increased performance and efficiency over the first-generation chip, although the differences are more subtle. While Kryo 468 CPU in the original Snapdragon 7c is clocked at up to 2.4GHz, the Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 boosts the maximum clock to 2.55GHz....
Read more...
Qualcomm is putting the pedal to the metal when it comes to 5G SoCs for mobile devices. The company struck it big last year with dozens of design wins for the Snapdragon 765G, a mid-range SoC with an integrated 5G modem. The company looked to expand upon that success earlier this year with the launch of the Snapdragon 780G, and today we're witnessing the arrival of the Snapdragon 778G. Whereas Snapdragon 780G availability is limited to a few OEMs, the Snapdragon 778G is available to a broader base of Qualcomm customers. Qualcomm says that it currently has Motorola, Honor, OPPO, Realme, and Xiaomi signed on to release the chip in "high tier" smartphones. Like the Snapdragon 780G, the Snapdragon...
Read more...
While Qualcomm and Apple buried the [legal] hatchet in 2019 concerning lawsuits regarding licensing and copyright infringement over 4G LTE modems, the latter is still far along with the development of its own next-generation hardware. In years past, Apple used a mixture of Intel and Qualcomm modems (its current iPhones and iPads exclusively use Qualcomm hardware). But we all know that Apple is quickly bringing major component design in-house, and the modem is a pricey piece of the smartphone puzzle. According to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple's first in-house 5G modems will debut in 2023 iPhones. That means that Qualcomm will have just two more years of exclusivity before Apple charts its...
Read more...
Our smartphones, over the years, have from a tool used primarily by tech enthusiasts to something that almost everyone walks around with today. As such, our smartphones are used for everything from making phone calls, to texting, to gaming, to taking photos, to banking. And when it comes to smartphones, Android devices have the most market share, and the majority of them are using Qualcomm Snapdragon SoCs. Besides featuring a powerful CPU and GPU, modern Snapdragon SoCs also feature an integrated modem that gives you 4G LTE and 5G connectivity. Unfortunately, the folks from Check Point Research have discovered a vulnerability in Qualcomm's Mobile Station Modems (MSM). Google's Android operating...
Read more...
Last year, Qualcomm launched several 700G series mid-range SoCs with integrated 5G connectivity for the mid-range and “premium” mid-range smartphone markets. One of its most popular SKUs was the Snapdragon 765G which landed in everything from the Google Pixel 5 to the LG Wing. Today, Qualcomm is following up with Snapdragon 780G 5G Mobile Platform. Whereas the Snapdragon 765G was built on Samsung’s 7nm process node, the Snapdragon 780G uses Samsung’s bleeding-edge 5nm process node. This should hopefully lead to further power efficiency gains for the incoming wave of mid-range smartphones. The Snapdragon 765G used two Cortex-A76 high-performance cores in conjunction with...
Read more...
There is little doubt that Qualcomm will launch an updated version of its Snapdragon 8cx system-on-chip (SoC) for laptops, and when it arrives, the spunky piece of hardware figures to deliver a big leap in performance over the current version. That's what a leaked benchmark run over at Geekbench seemingly indicates. The listing shows a benchmark run obtained from a Qualcomm Reference Design (QRD) chip, identified as a Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 part. Assuming the listing is accurate, what we are looking at is basically an engineering sample for Qualcomm's next-gen Snapdragon 8cx. As currently configured, it is an 8-core/16-thread processor with a 2.7GHz clock speed. Here's the benchmark listing......
Read more...
There are no two ways about it, the Nintendo Switch is a smashing success—Switch sales soared last year, with more units sold to date than the 3DS. Can the success of the Switch be replicated on other platforms? Hardware makers aim to find out. That includes Qualcomm, which is developing a handheld console that is similar in appearance to the Switch. It won't run Nintendo Switch games, though, at least not natively. Not the least bit surprising, Qualcomm is building its custom console around Android, and apparently even has ambitions of offering its own app storefront. In other words, Qualcomm is really going for it, on both the hardware and software side of the equation. The folks at Android...
Read more...
