CES 2011: Qualcomm Demos Snapdragon MSM8660
by Vivek Gowri on January 12, 2011 8:30 PM EST- Posted in
- CES 2011
- Snapdragon
- Qualcomm
- Trade Shows
Everyone, say hello to Raj Talluri.
Raj works for Qualcomm, and his job description basically reads “like a boss.” He’s the VP of Product Management, so he’s in charge of overseeing the development of the entire Snapdragon chip, from the Scorpion CPU to the Adreno GPU, as well as Qualcomm’s other application processors. He started off the roundtable with a demonstration of the next generation Snapdragon development platform, with a Snapdragon MSM8x60 processor inside.
The MSM8x60 has two Scorpion cores clocked at 1.2GHz and the Adreno 220 GPU, is built on the 45 nm process, and is set to show up in smartphones and tablets later this year. Like other Qualcomm SoCs, there are two variants - the 8260 and the 8660. The 8260 has GSM, UMTS and HSPA+ support, while the 8660 adds support for CDMA2000, EV-DO Rev. 0, Rev. A, and Rev. B. Like we've seen with nearly all Qualcomm SoCs, 2 denotes GSM/UMTS and that suite of technologies, 6 adds CDMA2000 and EV-DO support.
The development platform is just a square handset, there’s no real industrial design to speak of. It’s mainly there to give developers a platform to use before handset manufacturers release the final hardware to market. Using that reference hardware, Qualcomm demoed a lot of different things, including physics-enabled games on the new Adreno 220 graphics processor, high definition stereoscopic 3D video, and multi-party video conferencing. Unlike Tegra 2, which can clock gate cores but cannot power gate the second core, scorpion cores can be independently turned off to conserve power as well as be clock gated. Qualcomm showed multi-page web-browsing with the second core enabled and disabled to illustrate the performance difference.
During this entire thing, Qualcomm was taking video of Raj and the rest of us bloggers talking, as well as post-roundtable interviews of the crew. There’s a great clip in here about Anand’s shoes that you really don’t want to miss!
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jonup - Thursday, January 13, 2011 - link
Unfortunately, you and I live in yesterday. Cellphone are the new black. Which by the way, are all black.zodiacfml - Thursday, January 13, 2011 - link
there wouldn't be other news since Sandy Bridge..SSD news seem all the same to me since they got to a point that they're too fast on a desktop. price drops would be news to me.
anyways, phone news still interest me even i'm not buying any soon.
piroroadkill - Thursday, January 13, 2011 - link
You have it all wrong. It's tech. CPU architecture, GPU architecture, it's all interesting, regardless of the end device.ARM is front and centre now, especially with Windows 8 being developed for it. If you don't want to read it, don't, but I would wager a lot of people find it interesting.
Tros - Thursday, January 13, 2011 - link
Are you kidding me?You want bigger screens, go back to the 90s and get a projector television.
You want more x86 madness, go read up on the Sandy Bridge review (while you're at it, you should look at the (old and established) criticisms of x86 and it's architecture.
PC's have gotten stale. Mobile on the other hand is diverse enough to warrant inspections, and attention to new innovations.
juhatus - Friday, January 14, 2011 - link
I have been using windows mobile for _6 years_ now (3 htc's phones+4 symbian Nokia's). Windows mobile where chosen by my company because of Explorer-browser.There is absolutly NOTHING new about these phones OR the app's they are putting them on. (Nokia n-gage have had the best gps+maps with Navicore software(used that 06-08).
Comparing Mobile's and PC, uh, let me know when youv upgraded that cpu and gpu on your mobile with little memory upgrade thrown in. AMD and Intel more active as ever. What is the break now that is holding our pc's back? I think game programmers just can't get all the performance out of hardware, there are many examples where cpu+gpu just doing idle process even though game's are putting low fps (whats need of this new powertune from amd? Furmark is the only thing that uses 100% gpu resources). Or are programmers just doing game's for masses, forgetting high-end. Remember the visions in 80's and 90's about the games we would be playing in 2011. Tron FFS? :)
If you think little about what you are reading on tech-sites its allmost all some feed from tech companies PR with little to none critics. I like Anandtech because its somewhat critical to PR-departments, even sometimes calling their Ace high's.
Just a rant, iv been reading theinq, mcgeek, fud and charlie way too long.
Cheers up!
sotoa - Thursday, January 13, 2011 - link
I happen to like AnandTech's smartphone chip analysis & reviews. It's just as fascinating as desktop & laptop chips.ellarpc - Thursday, January 13, 2011 - link
Wow Anand I just gotta know where did you get those shoes?!tipoo - Thursday, January 13, 2011 - link
They are Vibram FiveFingers. You can order them online.rahvin - Thursday, January 13, 2011 - link
Very popular with celebrities, McConaughey and several others wore them to an awards show. They are meant to be running shoes and are supposed to be more natural, marketed as like running barefoot to your body without the risks to your feet. It's an interesting trend because a lot of people in the running world are arguing modern shoes are causing lots of health problems from back and knee injuries to tendon and muscle injuries, especially when you look at those Kenyan's that run marathons and win and they run the entire thing in sandals or barefoot. There is good evidence to support the idea because modern shoes completely change how you run, without shoes you run on the balls of your feet, with shoes you run on your heels and all that force and vibration is transfered up your legs into your spine, but barefoot a large percentage of the impact force is absorbed in the flexing of your foot.TareX - Friday, January 14, 2011 - link
Ditto.I'm always more curious about the performance of SoC's than I am with Desktop processors.