Qualcomm, MediaTek and Intel have just announced their new breed of mobile chipsets which are all set to don the markets in 2014.
Qualcomm’s announcement of the new 64-bit Snapdragon 610 and the 615 chipsets is likely to garner more attention, as the latter is the company’s first octa-core mobile SoC. Despite all the hype surrounding these new chips, Qualcomm will not market this to be a high-end offering.
These chips are targeted solely at MediaTek’s low cost mobile chipsets which have been making plenty of noise over the past several months. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 610 and the 615 make use of ARM’s Cortex-A53 architecture (Krait). Both chipsets will feature LTE support, which is great news for the manufacturers. The GPU on board the two chips will be known as the Adreno 405, which is most likely a toned down version of the Adreno 420 from the Snapdragon 805. Qualcomm will start supplying these chipsets by the end of 2014, so don’t expect to see smartphones running on them anytime soon.
Speaking of MediaTek, the Taiwanese chip maker also announced a 64-bit chipset today. And much like its other mobile SoCs, this will be aimed at mid-range devices as well. The MT6732 features support for 1.5 GHz quad core Cortex-A53 cores which could be a hot favorite for several global manufacturers in the coming months. The chip uses the Mali-T760 GPU with support for 150 Mbps LTE data as well. The only caveat here is that customers won’t be able to enjoy MediaTek’s new offering until the latter part of the year as it will only be supplied to manufacturers after Q3 2014.
Intel isn’t far behind either as it has unveiled its own range of 64 bit chipsets called the Merrifield (dual core) and Moorefield (quad core). The highlights of these new SoCs will be incredible graphics, excellent efficiency, decent battery life and support for a wide array of sensors. Intel is expected to make the dual core Merrifield chip available to manufacturers before the first half of 2014 while the Moorefield should follow in the second half of the year.
It seems like Intel will be the first to the party with its Merrifield based tablets, while devices powered by the Snapdragon 610/615 and the MediaTek MT6732 won’t arrive before October.
