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We knew NVIDIA and their “Kal-El” line of processor wouldn’t be the only cowpokes in the quad-core rodeo, but with other chip manufacturers playing catchup in the dual-core department we weren’t sure when to expect the likes of Qualcomm to reveal plans for their next generation of CPUs. The manufacturer of the Snapdragon platform that has become almost synonymous with high-end Android smartphones announced that their 2.5GHz quad-core chips could be making it to mobile handsets during the early parts of 2012.
The new Snapdragon chips will be coupled with Adreno graphics and support 3D, full 1080p, and LTE at a bare minimum. With that sort of power, next year’s smartphones and tablets could start to take on the laptop market in terms of mobile computing power. It’s kind of scary, actually, to think how far we have come since the days of the 1GHz single-core Snapdragon.
[via PocketLint]
What the hell I’m assuming phones will be 350 with contract
More like 500 w/ contract, the cost of ignoring us complain and installing bloatware is getting more expensive. that extra 100 bucks to full retail is a lot you know…
I’m excited to see how fast phones are advancing. All we need is the patent wars to stop, and innovation will probably double in a year or two.
Hopefully the next nexus will come with this ! (after the nexus prime…. speaking of which, more rumors please!)
Wow, that’s impressive. Samsung, TI aren’t standing back either with 2Ghz quad core Exynos, OMAP5 next year. Next year smartphone chip war will be exciting to watch.
Damn, who could’ve guessed that we’d go from 528mhz to 2.5Ghz in 4 years! :O
Moore?
It’s the law!
For ARM chips, it’s about twice as fast as Moore’s Law. WE had ARM11 at 600 Mhz, then Cortex A8 at 1 Ghz a year later, but Cortex A8 can do double the instructions of ARM11 per Mhz, so a 1 Ghz Cortex A8 is more like a 2 Ghz ARM11.
Then from 1 Ghz Cortex A8, we jumped to dual core 1 Ghz Cortex A9, with Cortex A9 also being 25% faster than Cortex A8, so it’s a 2.5x theoretical improvement in a year.
Now we’re going to quad core 1.5 Ghz a year later. Basically it’s about a 2.5x improvement every 12 months, or a ~4x improvement every 18 months. That’s twice as fast as Moore’s Law. That’s why Intel can’t catch-up in the energy department, and ARM chips will outperform Intel’s best Atom chips soon, and they start attacking Core i3’s and such.
Mhmm, I was always under the impression that things were going so fast in the mobile world because we already had the basework for dual/quadcore which have been out for a while now in other devices, and that things would start to slow down in the mobile market in a few years or so.
So what the F**K comes after 2.5Ghz Quad-Core?!? LOL I can’t see needing or wanting 3Ghz Octa-Core!
Yeah probably an 8-core chip, but still at 2.5 Ghz, but also with improved performance per core. It will be interesting to see how Qualcomm’s quad core chip will compete against the quad core Cortex A15 chips. My guess is not favorably, but those will probably arrive a few months later, most likely with Nvidia Wayne first.
If they develop battery technology and power management at the same pace I’ll welcome it with open arms. But I don’t want a phone that’s dead within the hour.
In order to make these chips faster without making them bigger they have to make them more efficient. The only reason you see phones lasting less time is that no one is spending this much effort making the radios more efficient.
Good to read an Android user who is actually smart. Keep posting!
What made you think it will be dead in an hour? Do you think they increased the TDP of the chips? Because I don’t.
“cowpokes”??
It’s kind of scary to think that I have been refreshing Phandroid pages for going on two years now in search of a phone like the rumored Nexus Prime.
Please, make it stop.
omg, my new phone (nexus prime) will be obsolete in what? 6 months? lol yeah as if :P Anyway, nice to see the quick advancements!
It’s all in how you use it. I’m still rocking the Incredible (running MIUI). Some friends and coworkers have “more advanced” models but have no idea what they can really do with them.
Was going to hop on board the upcoming hTC Vigor (TBolt 2?). Might wait for a quad…
I don’t think if you buy a latest high-end phone it will be made obsolete in less than 2 years. You’ll still be able to use any app or game that will come out in the next 2 years. Stop worrying about another phone coming into market with 100 more Mhz a month later. That’s meaningless.
It’s pretty amazing that with the same access to the same talent, nVidia seems to have a 6 month lead on all competition.
Quality comes into play here. Nvidia goes with two out of the three factors in the impossible triangle–fast and cheap. The other factor would be good/quality. Tegra 2 costs 60% less than the A5 and they use the same architecture. Let Nvidia be the first–just like all the goofs that post first on these forums–I can wait for a better quality product.
Umm… so the A5 costing more automatically = better product
btw, the dual core snapdragons pale in comparison to tegra 2.
“Umm… so the A5 costing more automatically = better product”
Costs more to manufacture*. SO… yes.
“btw, the dual core snapdragons pale in comparison to tegra 2.”
Sources? Sounds like a typical fanboy statement. I’ve seen plenty of benchmarks that compare the two.
And yes the A5 kills the Tegra 2 in performance. Neon Extensions, video playback. And no I don’t enjoy Apple kicking Androids butt. Actually, it infuriates me.
The latest Snapdragons are pretty much on par with the Tegra 2. However Exynos and the latest OMAP are leaving it in the dust.
Right now, the Exynos is pretty much the only one on par with the A5 but that will certainly change in the coming months.
Yes, at 1GHz the Tegra 2 is probably faster but the Scorpion design is much more overclockable so you can easily run a MSM8x60 chip at 1.8GHz and blow the Tegra (and Exynos and OMAP) away if that was important to you.
Which means these will make it to Verizon sometime in 2013.
Best network with the worst phones.
Will someone be making cool carrying cases for the car battery I’m going to have to tote around to keep this device running?
with that kind of power, we’ll barely get a 2hrs usage if lucky!
But didn’t they say dual core n up actually can improve battery life?
Yes that’s correct. Not only that, but the chips will be 28NM which draws a significantly lower amount of power compared to the other chips. Quad core or not, its going to sip the juice
Made me laugh harder than I have in a long time:)
By the time these hit the market, nVidia will be releasing Tegra Wayne devices. I wonder how this is all going to play out?
Wayne should be significantly more powerful than this if it’s a quad core Cortex A15 at 2.5 Ghz, but it arrive first for tablets in fall, and then in winter for phones, while this quad core Qualcomm chip should arrive around summer for both tablets and phones, I guess.
So Wayne should be more powerful, but arrive a bit later.
im just wondering what the hell people use their phones for that requires a 2.5ghz quadcore processor!! fricken ell lol. now we’ve hit 1ghz dual cores id like to see them improve the battery life instead of unneccessary horsepower.
most apps will not be optimized for this s***,, man… my laptop has 2.0ghz dual core. :o and i use it every day haha
These are as good as laptops specifications….so come on…let us see some laptops….not only smartphones and tablets…
DIE MICROSOFT!!!!!
Mobile specs aren’t the same as laptops or pcs. Windows 8 just killed it yesturday in the Microsoft Keynote presentations. Microsoft is claiming they have the solution to all the needs of the consumer and enterprise user with one operating system—Windows 8. If this is true, Andy Rubin is going to have the biggest headache of his life. I dream of the day my tablet can have the processing power of a PC for applications like Rhino and Photoshop. Let’s face it iOS and Android are dumbed down operating systems—esspecially iOS. I’m hoping for the best when it comes to the future of Android, but Windows 8 is flexing some pretty impressive stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU_power_dissipation
http://www.techautos.com/2010/03/14/smartphone-processor-guide/
http://forum.notebookreview.com/hardware-components-aftermarket-upgrades/136869-desktop-cpu-vs-mobile-cpu.html
I’m sorry but….1) you are talking about a thread of almost 5 years ago….now Arm technology is a bit different and the recent benchmarks show that Arm power is almost the same as x86 one.
2)Android x86 will be launched in mid 2012, strangely when Windows8 will be. That means we will have an Android market for the unofficial Android x86 project (that actually supports many x86 cpu). Android x86 will start to be installed on a lot of unofficial machines (including mine) and probably the market will understand that Android on x86 will be a great business.
3) Windows 8 is crap and Windows7 on tablet has been launched several mounths ago, without obtaining success. Windows 8 is only a castrated version of Windows7 with a crap interface in my opinion, very similar to Wp7. Probably it will be a flop for Microsoft, once again.
4) Windows8 will come to Arm toooooo late….and probably Microsoft will only try to defend Windows on desktops and laptops due to the possibility to install Android on them.
However, who will live will see.
Sorry for my bad English.
Next year it should get really interesting for Transformer type clamshells with Android ICS and Jelly Bean, powered by these quad core ARM chips.
This should be fun, let the chip wars began.
Sweet! My Thunderbolt should last me until then.
well, I’m getting the SGS2 (Epic Touch) this week… with what is to come next year, I’m really thankful Sprint is still giving me (and other Premier Gold customers) full upgrades every year. I like getting a new phone every summer for 200bucks.
I think we’re definitely seeing the blurring of lines between not only smartphone and tablet, but smartphone, tablet and PC. The Atrix was a good start with the Lapdock and Entertainment Docks, but we’re going to see that refined and improved so that you really do carry your “PC” around with you. The processing power is there now, the battery tech and software just need to catch up.
Samsung’s ORION will own them all.