8660: The New Mobile Powerhouse

I have written on Snapdragons many times here. But today we have another reason to celebrate. The 8660, Qualcomm's new mobile processor is coming to the wave of mobile devices right now. ARM - based, dual core, clocked up to 1.5GHz with powerful Ardeno 220 GPU on board, it will be available in two incarnations. One, I should say, traditional, with advanced 3G radios on board. Its sibling will be a WiFi only chip. The first 8660 device on the market will be the HTC Pyramid phone. And then the avalanche will follow, with such notable design like HP's PalmOS -based tablets.

In February, at the Mobile World Congress I played with the 8660-based MDP (Mobile Development Platform), a form-factor reference design made by Qualcomm to demonstrate the virtues of the new chip. Basically there are three:

1. Power. Or I should say performance, as power is misleading. It simply looks like the 8660 is the most powerful mobile processor available today. AnandTech has put it through various tests, and the results are a blow - away. Read the report for the details. But using the iPhone 4 as a reference - the 8660 is not just faster. It is several times faster in every benchmark. And the graphics are mind blowing. It outputs 60fps FullHD stream and is capable of rendering very fine detailed objects. Gaming console quality. Here is a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwoB7XOf3n4.
   
   
2. Power. Or I should say power consumption. The 8660 is dual core. But its unique feature is independent clocking of the cores. So the cores can be slowed down as needed, depending on applications and system load. One can idle at low speeds, and service simple system interrupts, while the other may be engaged in some heavy number crunching. We do not have any production devices specs yet, but the general expectation is the dual core chip will not draw more power than its single core predecessor. A remarkable achievement indeed.
   
   
3. Integration of functions. This has been the strength of Qualcomm designs for years. The 8660 is not just a processor. It is a fully loaded system on chip, with essentially every communications and peripheral interface on board. Of course every mobile device today has radio communications. Some have only WiFi, some have all radios you can think of: HSPA, UMTS, CDMA, GSM, Bluetooth... you name it. They are all integrated in this single chip, lowering cost, saving board space and lowering power consumption again.

The 8660 - based devices will be the winners when they come to market in the coming months. If you look for a tablet or a high end smartphone, look for the ones with the 8660 inside. You will be well rewarded.