By In an act of all that is unknown and feared, Qualcomm has found a way to highly increase the performance of their next-generation mobile processors while highly decreasing the amount of power they consume. The chip – the MSM8960 – is using a 28nm process to help keep the juice consumption low while the 5x power increase over (we’ll assume, for now) the original Snapdragon chipset. That’s only referring to the CPU as it’s being fitted with dual cores. We’re not even counting the GPU, which sees a 4x increase in performance. Again, we don’t know what they’re comparing this to, so we’ll assume it’s the original Adreno 200 found in the original Snapdragon chipset. That would mean that the Adreno 205 could still be the GPU featured in this chipset, though their graphic states that the beefier GPU will be a part of the 28nm process line, which the current Adreno series isn’t.
Looking even further down the line, Qualcomm claims that their Adreno 3xx series GPU – being introduced sometime between 2011 and 2013 – will bring us performance that rivals the Xbox 360 and the PS3 gaming consoles. My heart literally just skipped a bit after seeing that. (No, really, it did.) We’re not sure how realistic it’ll be to have that much juice in mobile phones or any mobile devices, but we’ll certainly be watching closely as the months and years trickle by and we’re greeted with devices holding so much power that we won’t know what to do with them. [via AnandTech] [Thanks, Jeff!]
Well that’s nice.
cool, I’ll be due for an upgrade for the next gen of processors
With all that processing power running apps should be quick as lightning. Gaming is a bonus.
Now if they can find a way to drastically decrease screen power consumption so I can play Angry Birds for 5-6 hours would be fantastic.
Viewing is believing.
Now THIS…….is badass.
I don’t really believe it yet but if it became reallity just think of the possibilities, with a retina res screen, ps3 performance, bluetooth and an hdmi output it could be the end of traditional consoles. Your mobile and home gaming device would be identical save games go everywhere and all you’d need to do would be plug & unplug the hdmi cable to switch between big screen gaming with surround and a bluetooth gamepad or mobile gaming with gesture controls to keep the action going.
@craigd
Or just have phones as terminals to the cloud when wireless networks are fast enough.
The future of tablets is bright…
I’m in the uk so the chances of that happening here are non existent with our 500mb unlimited bandwidth tarrifs :(
So long as it helps improve battery life, I am game!
The problem never was hardware, but that smartphones just don’t have enough/the right buttons to play proper games on them.
Phones with this kind of power can’t replace consoles until they can put a powerful enough video card in a phone as well.
I’d say this is pretty realistic if it delivers on the promise. We are learning that the form factor doesn’t really dictate the performance profile.
There is an ever-present demand for increasing performance on handsets and other portable devices.
This is usually a balance with performance, power consumption (and heat and size), and cost/availability being the main factors.
If perf can increase and power consumption can go down significantly and the cost is neutral (or the increase is within some kind of tolerance for “premium/new” tech parts), how could it be anything but a slam dunk?
Device manufacturers are constantly looking for differentiators to drive sales…differentiators not only between their offerings and competitors’ but also (and increasingly) between their new devices and their old devices to drive upgrade sales.
The portable form factor is potent. The more powerful these devices can become, the more compelling it is…fewer form-factor “compromises” and the potential to increasingly replace larger/other devices with portables (and the service contracts that often go with them)…home media? Get a dock. Streaming video device? Plug your phone into to your TV. etc etc.
awww, im jealous coz i have hummingbird processor on my captivate, i dont know what sucks the battery, only use it for just a day, a heavy use though, from morning to evening.! :)
Meh… still looking forward to the Orion chip
So full of shit. No adreno 2xx series system competes with a PS2. Maybe a PS1.
i know right. marketing hype, you gotta love em. Samsung always fulfills their promise of their CPU Chips. Last time they said the Hummingbird GPU was 3 times better than Snapdragon, it turned out to be true. Now they say the Orion is 3 times better than the Hummingbird. I can only wait.
It will be years until phones will be ahead of 360 and ps3. Buy the time that hits there should be next gen. 360 & ps3
hehe rather ominous ending, but I can’t say I disagree
Consumes 75 percent less energy ? .. that would be amazing.. are you sure it doesn’t consume 75 percent of the energy of existing chips ?
This would make that sweet-ass Firefox phone mock up a reality!!! I want it soooooo bad!
Ok, so in a few years a phone will have more grunt than a PS3, but we will be playing on a PS4 or PS5 by then, probably in 3D without glasses and without controllers!
Not really hard to believe, “Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.”
– Popular Mechanics, 1949
lmao ps2? pfft don’t kid me.
Will be getting an Orion chip.
2011 will be the year of sandibridge, fusion, dualcore mobile devices, and tegra powered devices like the dual core LG phone capable of 1080p rec!
Please get over your selves the ps3 and xbox is 3 to 4 years old, these new chips are based on 28nm chips!
Next gen consoles are comming in 2012 to 2013.
So expect phone to break into the gaming market. (Imagine a phone that will have better visuals then a 4 to 5 year console)
@user01
As the methods for producing smaller chips are improved the manufacturing costs will go down, not up… So, it’s cheaper to produce 28nm chips than 32nm, 45nm and so on…
@craigd
You’ll never be able to use your phone as a mobile console gaming system with the kind of power a PS3 or Xbox 360 puts out. One problem…heat. The amount of heat those systems put out would melt a phone. The only way this would ever be possible is with photonics…which most people have never even heard of. Photonics is like electronics, except instead of transferring electrons to generate electricity, it transfers photons (light). This would all but eliminate heat dissapation and circuits would be reduced to the size of hairs. But we’re a long way from ever seeing that. Even if they had the ability to produce photonic circuits right now, they wouldn’t because they want to milk everything they can out of electronics before they completely flip the market upside down with photonics.
@Contraus
have you heard of passive cooled graphics cards:
eg.
HD 5550 direct x11 gpu 1gig (40nm)
FirePro 2460 512MB dx11 (40 nm)
all passive cooled no fans needed (quite)
better graphics then PS3 now with much less heat!
ps3 chip size original 65nm to 45 nm current
MSM8960 – is using a 28nm size way cooler and requires less power
its not impossible!
Personally I’m really tired of smartphones improving in all areas except for the most important. When will they release a smartphone that can be used heavily for a good few days on a single charge? It is great if this phone can achieve 75% power saving with 5x performance but I would gladly settle for no increase in performance to have say 95% power saving. Does a phone really need to be dual core with 5x power? Seems OTT.
@ Lan their is low end phones with longer battery life!
unfortunately high end phones require more juice but perform better! their are chips in the pipeline that work efficiently that are high end, but those will come out later then soon!
Nano solar charger, built in micro projector and some way to make bluetooth headset users NOT look like technospas would all top my list before an Xbox 360 gaming phone.