All snapped up

Thursday, 28 January 2010 15:27 Written by Theo Boshoff

It would seem that Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform is becoming a firm favourite for PC makers as the driver for Smartphones, netbooks and other devices - bridging the divide between Smartphones and full-on notebooks.

Qualcomm’s VP for Business Development – Sub-Sahara Africa, James Munn, says, “The Sanpdragon platform not only supports devices running the Android operating system but also works with devices running Windows Mobile as well as various Linux-based operating systems.”

This chipset is giving AMD and Intel a run for their money in the space of ultra-mobile PC devices, with a whole list of manufacturers already signed up and in the process of developing Snapdragon-based devices.

These include: Acer, ASUS, HTC, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Toshiba, Lenovo, HP and Dell.

It is described by many as the ultimate in mobility due to its staggering processing power.

Says Munn: “The reason we developed the Snapdragon platform was due to the rate of usage increase we saw in location-based services and Smartphone use. In one year (2008 – 2009) location-based usage in the US grew from 35% - 70% and Smartphone usage grew 40%. We saw an opportunity to bring a better chipset solution to the market and Sanpdragon is the result.”

The QSD8x50 platform consists of the QSD8250 which supports GSM, GPRS, EDGE, HSPA networks while the QSD8650 supports CDMA2000 1X, 1xEV-DO Rel 0/A/B, GSM, GPRS, EDGE and HSPA networks.

Both these chipsets sport a 1 GHz CPU with 600MHz DSP, integrated 3G mobile broadband, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, GPS support, capable to handle 720p HD video and HD 3D (22M triangles/sec and 133M 3D pixels/sec) graphics, mobile TV and 12-megapixel camera support.

The big daddy chipset, which according to Munn will be available later this year, is the single-chip, dual-CPU QSD8672 with 1.5GHz processing power, which features most of the above capability as well as low-power 45nm processing technology for higher integration and performance, support for higher definition (1080p) video and improved 3D graphics - up to 80M triangles/sec and 500M+ 3D pixels/sec.

Sony Ericson’s Xperia X10, HTC’s HD2, Acer’s neoTouch, the Android-based Acer Liquid series, and Google’s much-hyped Nexus One, all run on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon QSD8x50 platform. HP’s new Slate Tablet PC and Lenovo’s Skylight also run on Snapdragon.

“The benefit to the consumer as a result of Snapdragon is smaller, more lightweight devices with the processing power to service their graving for multimedia on the go with an extended battery life,” Munn concludes.

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