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Qualcomm announces new S4 series chips

by on05 June 2012

Dual and quads, new Adreno 320 graphics

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 chips are proving to be quite a coup for the company. They are faster than anything the competition has to offer, more power efficient and some versions include integrated LTE. The only problem is that Qualcomm is having trouble meeting demand.

Qualcomm announced four new S4 chip series aimed at wildly different market segments, all based on the very successful Krait architecture.

Snapdragon S4 Prime chips will target smart TVs and similar applications. The first Prime part is the MPQ8064, a 1.5GHz quad-core with Adreno 320 graphics. Qualcomm promises “leading” audio/video capabilities and low power consumption, although we are not sure efficiency very important in TVs.

Meanwhile Snapdragon S4 Pro parts sound like all-rounders. They also feature Adreno 320 graphics and the S4 Pro tier includes the APQ8064 quad-core and MSM8960T, the Pro version of MSM8960. Pro parts are likely to end up in tablets, hybrids and other “ultra-thin and sleek” devices.

S4 Plus parts are geared towards the traditional mobile market, smartphones and tablets, ranging from the low-end to the high-end. Processors in the S4 Plus tier include MSM8960, APQ8060A, MSM8660A, MSM8260A, APQ8030, MSM8930, MSM8630, MSM8230, MSM8627 and MSM8227.

Snapdragon S4 Play processors are designed for high-volume smartphones, i.e. they will be dirt cheap. Still, they are no pushovers. The MSM8625 and MSM8225 chipsets feature dual-core CPUs clocked up to 1.2GHz. However, they rely on Adreno 203 graphics instead of the new 320-series. S4 Play parts are designed to be software and hardware compatible with previous generation Snapdragons, allowing manufacturers to migrate to S4 chips with ease.

Last modified on 06 June 2012
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