Windows Codename Scorpion

Well... may be not exactly like the title says, but the announcement about Qualcomm and Microsoft joining forces to port Windows Mobile to MSM chipsets is huge. It may be not that huge for Qualcomm, who enjoys 3G mobile phones dominance similar to what Microsoft has with Windows on desktop PCs, but for Microsoft it is a really strong move towards gaining market share in mobile phones. Especially against Symbian, that clearly crystallizes around the last two phone manufacturers not using Qualcomm MSM 3G chipsets (Nokia and SonyEricsson).

Since Palm went with Windows last year, the mobile phone operating system battlefield has been clearly divided between Symbian and Windows Mobile. There is a number of other proprietary OSes for phones, but as phones become more and more smartphones, more resembling computing powerhouses than dial - and talk devices, there is a growing need for a full blown operating system to manage the environment and applications. So it will be very likely the world will divide into two camps. The Symbian camp, supported by Nokia and SonyEricsson, the companies who do not use Qualcomm's chips (SonyEricsson have their own 3G chip platform and Nokia has its own too). The rest of the world (Motorola, Siemens BenQ, Samsung, HTC and others) has just realized it pays to go with Qualcomm, as nobody else has anything even close to them, HSDPA being the crown example of their leadership.

This brings us to the Scorpion. Announced at the end of 2005, Scorpion is the new application processor from Qualcomm. Here is a quote form Qualcomm's press release "The Scorpion microprocessor provides a superior power-to-performance ratio, enabling next-generation mobile handsets to deliver processing power comparable to many of today's personal computers. Possessing up to 1 GHz of processing speed, the Scorpion core provides up to eight times the performance of existing MSM solutions. The microprocessor features a sophisticated micro-architecture and advanced power management and circuit design techniques. The companion multimedia coprocessor to Scorpion implements ARM NEON™ technology to provide an additional 8 billion operations per second for added multimedia capabilities, a key requirement for next-generation advanced mobile devices."

The Scorpion announcement stirred quite a lot of interest in the industry. Scorpion itself is based on the ArmV7 instruction set, but what is interesting, Qualcomm somehow managed to design a better Arm than Arm itself. The original Arm Cortex v8 core has been designed into three runners up in the field - Texas Instruments (OMAP), Freescale and Samsung. However Scorpion, that is based on Arm's architecture license (to ensure software compatibility), but the design of its core is done by Qualcomm itself, will run faster than the Arm's Cortex A8 core, at 1GHz, and will consume half as much power at that faster speed. This is how Qualcomm excels again. What is more important today, than speed and power consumption granted software compatibility? This is what differs today's Qualcomm chipsets from the rest of the crowd. The performance in the details. After opening a huge gap to its followers in communications chipsets, Qualcomm has just fired up its boosters to secure pole position in mobile application processors. And Microsoft has placed the bets on the very winning horse. I just can't wait for a new Scorpion - based, Windows Mobile powered superphone to arrive.