Qualcomm announced on Monday the Snapdragon 810 and 808 processors for flagship smartphones and tablets. Both are designed with 20 nm process technology and feature Cat 6 LTE, advanced multimedia features and 64-bit capability. The processors are Qualcomm's highest performing platform to date, completing the company's lineup of 64-bit enabled, LTE-equipped chipsets.
"These products underscore Qualcomm Technologies focus on 64-bit leadership, accelerating its availability across all product tiers while maintaining a long-term commitment to the continued development of its own next-generation custom 64-bit CPU microarchitecture, with more details expected to be shared later this year," states the PR.
The new Snapdragon 810 processor supports native 4K Ultra HD interface and audio. The chip also supports an upgraded camera suite using gyro-stabilization and 3D noise reduction for producing high quality 4K video at 30 frames per second and 1080p video at 120 frames per second. 14-bit dual Image Signal Processors (ISPs) can support 1.2 GP/s throughput and image sensors up to 55 MP.
The new 64-bit Snapdragon 810 features four ARM Cortex-A57 CPU cores and four Cortex-A53 cores in a big LITTLE setup, along with the new Adreno 430 GPU, which provides support for 4K displays and OpenGL ES 3.1. This GPU is designed to deliver up to 30 percent faster graphics performance and 100 percent faster GPGPU computer performance than the previous GPU, while also reducing power consumption by up to 20 percent.
In addition to those features, the Snapdragon 810 also introduces high speed LPDDR4 memory, provides frame buffer compression and external 4K display support via HDMI 1.4, and is the first mobile platform to implement Qualcomm VIVE 2-stream 802.11ac with multi-user MIMO. There's also support for Bluetooth 4.1, USB 3.0, NFC and the latest Qualcomm IZat location core.
As for the Snapdragon 808 processor, it integrates the same LTE-Advanced, RF360 and Wi-Fi connectivity as the Snapdragon 810 processor. However, this chip includes support for 2K displays, and like the more powerful snapdragon 810, this chip is fully software compatible with the 64-bit ARM8-A instruction set.
A list of features show that the Snapdragon 808 is designed for 2560 x 1600 (WQXGA) displays. The chip also includes two ARM Cortex-A57 cores paired with a quad Cortex-A53 CPU in a big LITTLE setup, 12-bit dual Image Signal Processors, support for LPDDR3 memory, frame buffer compression and external 4K display support via HDMI 1.4. The chip's Adreno 418 GPU provides support for OpenGL ES 3.1 plus hardware tessellation, geometry shaders, programmable blending.
"The announcement of the Snapdragon 810 and 808 processors underscore Qualcomm Technologies' continued commitment to technology leadership and a time-to-market advantage for our customers for premium tier 64-bit LTE-enabled smartphones and tablets," said Murthy Renduchintala, executive vice president, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., and co-president, QCT.
The Snapdragon 810 and 808 processors are expected to begin sampling in the second half of 2014 and made available in commercial devices by the first half of 2015.
