Qualcomm Scorpion. Ghz-capable mobile device platform.

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Categorized | arm

Posted on 15 November 2007 by Chippy

Almost a year ago, we heard about new Marvel ‘Monahans’ processors that were capable of Ghz+ speeds. It turned out that the Ghz figures where only test speeds but even so, the 800Mhz of the Monahans PXA 320 was pretty impressive. A version of the chip is going to appear in the Ipaq 214 at 624 Mhz (capable of 30fpx H264 at VGA res apparently…very tasty!) and I’m going to be keeping an eye on that PocketPC very closely. Especially is Opera Mobile 9 launches soon.

Today we’re hearing about another ARM-based solution from Qualcomm. Its the Snapdragon mobile device platform which includes the Scorpion Cortex-A8 processor *1 (references to this processor go way back to 2006 so its nothing new) that can scale to 1Ghz. Qualcomm call it the worlds fastest mobile processor.

XGA display support with LCDC
Up to 12.0 megapixel camera
WVGA encode/decode
Supports Launchpad™ audio and video solutions including: Qcamera™, Qtv™, Qvideophone™, Qcamcorder™
Digital audio support for MP3, aacPlus™ and Enhanced aacPlus
Ubiquitous Connectivity. Support for all mobile broadband standards and many technologies complementary to WWAN finally delivers on the promise of seamless always-on connectivity.
Universal Modem supporting all 2G and 3G mobile broadband standards (CDMA2000 1xEV-DO, Revisions B, A and 0; HSPA, WCDMA, GSM / GPRS / EDGE)
Support for IEEE 802.11 (WLAN) and VoIP with VCC capabilities
Broadcast technologies: MediaFLO™, SDMB, ISDB-T,TDMB, and DVB-H with QUALCOMM’s UBM™ universal broadcast modem
Support for Bluetooth® 2.0 + EDR solution for personal wireless connectivity

According to the press release and WindowsForDevices, Samsung and HTC are adopting this platform for some of their future products. For some I can’t get the word ‘Android’ out of my head!

Press release. Thanks to JKK and Kenneth for the tips.

*1. Some info on Scorpion, its processing power and architechture here.

3 Comments For This Post

turn_self_off says:
November 16th, 2007 at 8:02 am
where exactly did you get the impression that its cortex-A8 based?
Chippy says:
November 16th, 2007 at 10:14 am
Tracing back through references to scorpion reveals that it’s Arm v7 / Cortex 8.

Will add a link into the story.

Regards
Steve
Steve 'Chippy' Paine says:
November 11th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
@Olo2 Snapdragon is a *platform* with a Cortex A8 CPU called Scorpion. http://bit.ly/3NNaFk

2 Trackbacks For This Post

Pandora highlights the evolution of the smartphone platform. | UMPCPortal - The Ultra Mobile Computing reference site says:
May 21st, 2008 at 3:30 pm
[...] around the corner. This ARM-developed architecture is being used by licensees such as Qualcomm (Scorpion platform) and Ti (OMAP 3430 platform) to make mobile devices that are targeting exactly the mobile computing [...]
HTC Digitimes NoNews. | UMPCPortal - The Ultra Mobile Computing reference site says:
June 17th, 2008 at 10:09 am
[...] job of turning that one into UMPC news. It has long been rumoured that HTC will use Snapdragon [Nov 2007 news] and that HTC will make a MID [March 2008 News]. It looks like Digitimes are pushing the limits of [...]