If we had to pick just one favorite feature of modern smartphone design, it would probably be the advent of 1GHz processors, like Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chip and Samsung’s Hummingbird part. Both of these could soon be obsolete, however, as Qualcomm gets ready to ship its dual-core QSD8672 CPU clocked at up to 1.5GHz per core.
We already knew this was in the works, but only had a vague time frame to go on. Now Qualcomm is saying it will start shipping these newer, faster Snapdragon parts in the fourth quarter, which will find their way into smartphones and tablets.
That still doesn’t tell us when actual products built around these new CPUs will hit the street, but according to Mark Frankel, vice president of product management for Qualcomm CDMA Technologies, vendors looking to get a leg-up on the competition could launch products “by Christmas.”
First run chips will likely come clocked at 1.2GHz, but despite the faster clockspeed, battery life could be improved. Individual voltage scaling, for example, is just one of the architectural improvements being implemented in the new Snapdragon silicon that could lead to lower power consumption over its predecessor.
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