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The MSM7x30smartphone chipset family supports "HD video recording andplayback, exceptional graphics with dedicated 2D and 3D cores, and anoverall chip design optimized for a highly responsive, immersive Webexperience," says the company. The chipset family is said to include an MSM7230chipset for HSPA+ networks, as well as an MSM7630 chipset formulti-mode HSPA+/EV-DO Rev. B and SV-DO devices. The first devicesbased on the MSM7x30 are expected to ship by the end of 2010.
The MSM7x30 incorporates the same Scorpion CPU used in theSnapdragon QSD8x50 chipset (see later in this story for details), and will clock from 800MHzto 1GHz, says Qualcomm.
Other touted features include:
The new chipsets may not be a performance upgrade over upcomingdual-core Snapdragons, and in fact are said to target the "mainstreamsmartphone tier," says the company.
According to a story on Silicon Investor back in March, theMSM7230 was originally announced last year as the QSC7230, and asimilar CDMA version has now changed to the new MSM7630. Whereas theearlier chipset prototypes ran on ARM11, Qualcomm has now switched themto the Scorpion and dubbed them with new names.
The name change also reflects a repartitioning of the design, saidthe story. Qualcomm's QSC chips combine the baseband processor and RFchip in a single package, but like other MSM designs, the MSM7230 movesthe RF chip out of the package, said Silicon Investor. TheMSM7230 will use a PoP package to allow the memory to be placed on top,thus maintaining a similar footprint as the QSC approach, the storyadded.
Lenovo's Snapdragon-based smartbook
At the analyst event, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs also showed off a nameless, red Lenovo smartbook during the company's annual analyst meeting in New York today, said a story in Forbes. The story describes the mini-netbook as being "slimmer than most smart phones and not much larger than [Jacobs'] hand."
Sporting a "full" keyboard and a screen big enough to simultaneously display "six active widgets", the device runs on Qualcomm's Snapdragon chipset, and offers 3G access designed to link to AT&T's network. The device is also said to offer "instant on" boot-ups. More information will follow at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January, says the story.
According to a PCWorld story on the Lenovo smartbook (pictured at right courtesy of a brief Electronista report), the device is based on Linux. There was no mention of whether Windows CE or Windows Mobile versions were in the works, as well.Jacobs' demonstration was said to have involved e-mail and Facebook widgets, as well as a Flash session running YouTube, the result of a Qualcomm collaboration with Adobe. Qualcomm also claimed the device will support HD video, although the resolution was not defined, PCWorld said.
The Forbes story on the Lenovo smartbook interviewed Glen Burchers, director of segment marketing for Freescale, the other major semiconductor vendor to adopt the "smartbook" concept that Qualcomm announced in June. Disputing Qualcomm's claim that the Lenovo device is the first ARM smartbook on the market, Burchers notes that Japanese consumer electronics maker Sharp launched the Freescale i.MX515-based NetWalker PC-Z1 Mobile Internet Tool in September, and that it has been selling well.
Based on Ubuntu Linux, the UMPC-like NetWalker features a five-inch touchscreen and 10 hours of battery life while weighing less than one pound. According to the story, Burchers predicts that eight to 12 smartbooks will hit stores in the first quarter of 2010.
Of course, various vendors have been shipping ARM-based mini-notebooks running Windows CE for years. Ironically, Qualcomm's "smartbook" launch in June came on the same day that Intel and Psion settled their dispute about the rights to the term "netbook." Psion released the three-pound Netbook Pro (pictured below, left), featuring Windows CE and an ARM processor, back in 2003. Psion later complained that Intel had unjustly appropriated part of the product's name when the chipmaker started promoting the x86-based mini-laptops it calls netbooks.
Like the popular Texas Instruments OMAP3x line of processors, the i.MX515 is based on the ARM Cortex-A8 core. Clockable from 500MHz to 1GHz, the Cortex-A8 is notable for additional performance enhancements based on its superscalar technology, which means that the core enables instruction-level parallelism within a single processor.
Technically, the Qualcomm Snapdragon is not a Cortex-A8, but it is similarly based on the ARMv7 instruction set and similar superscalar technology, and according to some perspectives, is essentially a Cortex-A8 model. In fact, it is arguably the most powerful such processor available, due in part to its ability to clock to 1GHz. Samsung, however, is expected to start sampling 1GHz Cortex-A8-based S5PC110 and S5PV210 SoCs next month.
The currently available Snapdragon is the QSD8250, which is built around an ARM-based 1GHz "Scorpion" microprocessor with 128-bit SIMD (single instruction multiple data) capability, plus a 600MHz low-power, "low-leakage" DSP. The chipset includes a "universal modem" claimed to support "all 2G and 3G mobile broadband standards," and can receive broadcasts in MediaFLO, SDMB, ISDB-T, TDMB, and DVB-H formats.
The Snapdragon has appeared in a variety of Windows Mobile phones, including the Toshiba TG01 (pictured at right), the Acer F1, and HTC's HD2. It is now beginning to appear in several Android phones, including the Acer Liquid and Sony Ericsson Xperia X10.
While Qualcomm did not mention which Snapdragon would be used in the Lenovo smartbook, it is likely the QSD8250. When Qualcomm announced the "smartbook" format in June, the company also announced a new Snapdragon QSD8650A chipset manufactured with 45-nanometer technology. Clocked at 1.3GHz, the SoC is said to be 30 percent faster than the QSD8250 and is touted as consuming less than 10 millwatts in standby mode. The QSD8650A was set to start sampling this fall.
According to the PCWorld story, Qualcomm is also working on a dual-core 45nm QSD8672 chipset, which offers dual CPUs clocked at 1.5GHz. Expected to start sampling by the end of the year, the chipset is expected to support up to 1440 x 900 resolution, 1080p video playback and record, and faster mobile broadband using HSPA+ (High-Speed Packet Access).
AvailabilityQualcomm has begun sampling the MSM7x30 chipset family, with devices incorporating the chipsets expected to ship in 4Q 2010. More information may eventually be found at Qualcomm's website, here.
The Silicon Investor story on Qualcomm's MSM7x30 chips from last March may be found here.
More information on the Lenovo smartbook based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon will be disclosed at CES in January, and should eventually show up on Lenovo's site, here.
The Forbes story on the Lenovo smartbook may be found here, the Electronista story should be here, and the PCWorld story should be here.
