Qualcomm has announced two additions to its Snapdragon S4 class of mobile processors namely the MSM8625 and the MSM8225 chipsets. Both of these chipsets provide dual-core CPUs operating up to 1 GHz, Qualcomm’s Adreno 203 GPU as well as an integrated 3G modem.

The MSM8625 and MSM8225 chipsets are designed to be hardware and software compatible with the MSM7x27A and MSM7x25A family of chipsets, giving device manufacturers the ability to migrate their existing Snapdragon S1-based designs to S4 dual-core-based designs.

3rd generation QRD ecosystem initiative

Besides the new mobile chipsets, Qualcomm also announced the third-generation of its Qualcomm Reference Design (QRD) ecosystem program, enabling third party device manufacturers to develop differentiated high volume smartphones with lower development costs and faster time to market.

According to the company, this QRD ecosystem program includes a comprehensive set of software and hardware components that will allow third party hardware and software vendors to have their products pre-tested and optimised for the QRD development platform. This allows device manufacturers to focus their engineering resources on developing value-added features that will assist in making their smartphone stand out from the competition.

Availability

The forthcoming MSM8625 and MSM8225 chipsets will be available on Qualcomm’s third generation QRD development platform in the first half of next year, in addition to being available as standalone chipsets.

"Smartphones present a large business opportunity for many of our customers, which is why we have created the QRD ecosystem program to assist them with developing compelling product designs with competitive differentiation," said Cristiano Amon, senior vice president of product management at Qualcomm. "The program combines all the elements our customers need to get a new smartphone design to launch quickly and cost effectively, from carrier-ready hardware and software to local technical support resources."

"As Snapdragon processors power many of today’s most popular smartphones, we are working to port a variety of our core applications to the various QRD platforms," said Chengmin Liu, senior executive vice president of Tencent, China's largest integrated internet services provider. "This will offer our customers a strong processing solution to power our applications for future smartphone designs."

 

In related news on the system-on-a-chip front, Samsung Electronics recently announced its next-generation Cortex A15-based system-on-a-chip (SoC), operating at a frequency of up to 2 GHz, whist Nvidia has officially introduced its Tegra 3 mobile processor.