Qualcomm has announced its new line of Snapdragon processors at MWC 2014, showcasing the 64-bit Snapdragon 600 series.
The Snapdragon 600 series, which now includes the Snapdragon 610 and Snapdragon 615, will be available in Android smartphone arriving in Q4 2014.
Some say the 600 series chips have been launched now in response to the 64-bit Apple A7 processor introduced with the iPhone 5S in September.
The Android devices may not be able to fully utilise the 64-bit architecture, but both SoC offer full backwards compatibility with 32-bit apps.
Both the 610 and 615 use ARM’s 64-bit Cortex A53 CPU IP, with the difference between the two being the number of cores.
The Snapdragon 610 has four Cortex A53s, but the Snapdragon 615 is an octa-core chipset.
The new 600 series also feature the Qualcomm Adreno 405 GPU. The SoCs are built on a 28nm process and utilise a multitasking process similar to ARM’s big.LITTLE design.
Qualcomm also announced the Snapdragon 801, which is a direct upgrade to the Snapdragon 800 featured in smartphones like the LG G2.
The Snapdragon 801 is the faster version of the 800 and has already been introduced in the Sony Xperia Z2 and should feature in other upcoming smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S5 and HTC One 2.
The Snapdragon 801 and 800 share “software and pin-compatibility” and both have largely identitcal make-ups.
With four CPU cores, the Snapdragon 801 is based on the 32-bit Krait 400 architecture and features an Adreno 330 GPU, integrated 150Mbps 4G LTE and 802.11ac Wi-Fi. It is also built using TSMC’s 28nm process like the Snapdragon 600 series.
Qualcomm has added eMMC 5.0 support with the Snapdragon 800, which should enhance maximum storage performance.
The Snapdragon 801 now has a top clock speed of 2.45GHz compared to the 800’s 2.26GHz and 2.36GHz speeds.
Read more: Sony Xperia Z2 Tablet review - First look from MWC
