Qualcomm made three announcements on Wednesday, revealing the new Snapdragon 805 “Ultra HD” chip, the Internet Processor (IPQ) to turn routers and whatnot into “smarthome” platforms, and the fourth-generation 3G/LTE multimode modem and RT transceiver chip. The Snapdragon 805 processor, the biggest Qualcomm news of the day, is sampling now and expected to be available in commercial devices by the first half of 2014.
“Featuring the new Adreno 420 GPU, with up to 40 percent more graphics processing power than its predecessor, the Snapdragon 805 processor is the first mobile processor to offer system-level Ultra HD support, 4K video capture and playback and enhanced dual camera Image Signal Processors (ISPs), for superior performance, multitasking, power efficiency and mobile user experiences,” Qualcomm announced on Wednesday.
The four Krait 450 mobile CPU cores are the first to run at speeds of up to 2.5 GHz per core, the company claims. The chip also supports memory bandwidth up to 25.6 GB/second, and is designed to provide "unprecedented multimedia and web browsing performance". The chip even supports Hollywood Quality Video (HQV) for video post processing, and is the first to introduce hardware 4K HEVC (H.265) decode for mobile for extremely low-power HD video playback.
"Using a smartphone or tablet powered by Snapdragon 805 processor is like having an UltraHD home theater in your pocket, with 4K video, imaging and graphics, all built for mobile," said Murthy Renduchintala, executive vice president, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., and co-president, QCT. "We're delivering the mobile industry's first truly end-to-end Ultra HD solution, and coupled with our industry leading Gobi LTE modems and RF transceivers, streaming and watching content at 4K resolution will finally be possible."
As for the Internet Processor, the chip reportedly enables home network equipment to do more than deliver broadband connections. This “smarthome” platform combines two 1.4 GHz Krait CPU cores with Qualcomm Atheros' new dual-core 730 MHz Packet Processor Engine to offload network traffic, supporting up to 5 Gbps of aggregate capacity across LTE, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, HomePlug powerline, hybrid wired/wireless, and Ethernet.
“The platform offers Qualcomm security, encryption, Trustzone and secure boot to support advanced services, such as home and health monitoring, requiring best-in-class privacy and authentication. The unique pairing of Krait with the Packet Processor Engine gives the IPQ an unprecedented level of processing power, flexibility and agility to enable network platforms that support the growing number of devices and complexity of applications,” Qualcomm announced.
The first two solutions in the IPQ product line, the IPQ8062 and IPQ8064 for retail routers and home media servers, are currently in production and will be available in commercial products in the first half of 2014.
