At a media event in Beijing on Friday, Qualcomm Senior Product Manager Yufei Wang confirmed to Engadget that the company will enter mass production of its new Snapdragon 800 beginning late May.
The upcoming Snapdragon SoC will feature four Krait 400 CPU cores that use TSMC's new 28-nm HPm process, enabling core clock speeds up to 2.3 GHz. Also included on the chip is an Adreno 330 GPU which promises up to 50-percent more graphics performance over the previous Adreno 320 GPU, and nearly 2x the compute performance increase.
In addition to the CPU and GPU, the chip will include a 2x32 LP-DDR3 memory interface, and the company's third-generation LTE baseband (9x25) component, enabling support for UE Category 4 LTE with up to 150 Mbps downstream. There's also integrated Wireless AC connectivity, Bluetooth 4.0, support for USB 3.0 and FM radio.
On a multimedia front, the chip will be capable of Ultra HD (4K) capture and playback at 30fps, DTS-HD and Dolby Digital Plus audio, "expanded gestures", and a 55MP camera with dual image signal processors. Also supported is a screen resolution up to 2560 x 2048, Miracast 1080p HD, and up to three GPS constellations thanks to an integrated iZat GNSS.
The multithreaded Hexagon QDSP6 DSP is also thrown into the SoC mix for ultra low power applications and custom programmability. "Hexagon DSP enables ultra-low power operation for a variety of applications like music playback, enhanced audio and advanced editing applications," the company said earlier this month. "Hexagon DSP now supports floating point calculations, dynamic multithreading and expanded multimedia instructions for enhanced low power performance."
The Snapdragon 800 will also reportedly include always-on voice recognition, which will allow users to wake the device simply by talking to it rather than having to press a button. The chip will also enable faster battery charging.
