Qualcomm's Next-Gen Snapdragon MSM8960: 5x Performance Improvement + Dual Cores

[tsowen]

The MSM8960 will combine a 1.2-Ghz, dual-core processor with LTE, CDMA, and UMTS radios to become the heart of top smartphones probably in early or late 2011.

The press release was made in February 16, 2009 but the chip will be built into devices in 2011.

Androids smartphones are always launched with snapdragon chips and could be one of them next gen
devices with a built in Qualcomm MSM8960 dual-core cp

"Inside the MSM8960 are two next-generation processor cores, presumably out-of-order as Qualcomm is promising 5x the performance of the original Snapdragon chip (2x for the move to dual cores and the rest due to OoO, larger caches and other architectural tweaks perhaps?). Qualcomm isn't disclosing clock speed at this time."



A 5x performance increase, dual cores, and - can you believe this? - a 75% reduction in power. The details are sketchy on the power savings - it might be 75% less power at idle, or it might be under full load. And is that per core, or overall? It would be quite the feat to double the number of cores yet still use 75% less power. Regardless, it looks like there's some good hardware coming our way in the years ahead!

"Multi-mode 3G/LTE chipsets will be crucial to smooth deployments of LTE by operators who are looking to complement their existing 3G networks, and the MSM8960 delivers maximum flexibility by supporting EV-DO Rev. B and HSPA+ in addition to LTE,” said Steve Mollenkopf, executive vice president of Qualcomm and president of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies.
“The MSM8960 raises the bar for LTE solutions by not only offering support for all leading mobile broadband standards, but also integrating exceptional multimedia performance. This allows device manufacturers to leverage their existing HSPA+ device designs for significant economies of scale.”

The MSM8960 features radio frequency, software and pin-compatibility with the MSM8260™ and MSM8660™ chipsets for HSPA+ and HSPA+/EV-DO Rev. B, allowing device manufacturers to benefit from the economies of scale and existing investments into designs based on those two solutions. The MSM8960 chipset also supports LTE-TDD.

The MSM8960 is compatible with the QTR8610™ transceiver, which integrates support for all worldwide CDMA2000 and UMTS radio frequency bands and eliminates the need for standalone GPS, Bluetooth, FM radio chips and codecs.