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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Trisagion - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 - link
Love the shoes! Anand, make sure you stand really close to someone and when they step on your feet, to start howling in fake pain ;DQualcomm looks like they are more than up to the task of taking on nVidia. Can't wait to see these SoCs in some real phones.
Jedi2155 - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 - link
Well, its AMD graphics chip in those SoC's ;).Dribble - Thursday, January 13, 2011 - link
Unfortunately for AMD when you sell something it's no longer yours.GiantPandaMan - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 - link
Anand, do you do barefoot running or parkour?Back on topic. Did they give you a breakdown on power usage and what sort of power gating they'll have? Also, are we talking 32nm here? I'm not too up on my mobile SoC's and processes. Did you get anything more about Mirasol either?
DanNeely - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 - link
It says 45nm on the 1st line of the 2nd paragraph of the article...iwod - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 - link
I thought Imageon was like a Cut down version of Radeon specially made for Mobile. Much like what Nvidia has done to Tegra. And i always wonder how would AMD sold of its GPU to competitors.We all know it is impossible to make a decent GPU without infringing on AMD / NV Patents. Did QualComm has an Cross Patents agreement with AMD as well?
dagamer34 - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 - link
I'm assuming that when you sell a product to another company, you still get access to the patents that make that product work...metafor - Thursday, January 13, 2011 - link
Qualcomm bought the mobile division of AMD back in 2008, along with all of the patents involved.marc1000 - Thursday, January 13, 2011 - link
yep. Imageon IS a cut down version of Radeon specially made for Mobile, but AMD sold that division back then.mcveigh - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 - link
Yet another reason I love this site.....Anand's outstanding taste in foot wear.I'd love to hear how he toned them down, just a sharpie?
Sometimes I get annoyed at comments about my red ones :(
on topic: when will qualcomm drop to a 32nm process?