Qualcomm announces first 64-bit octa-core and hexa-core Snapdragon 810 and 808 SoCs

Today, Qualcomm let loose two new additions to their Snapdragon 800 family of the SoCs (System On a Chip), which finally complete the company’s line up of 64-bit enabled chipsets. The new additions aren’t merely faster chips with 64-bit support however as they also debut a host of new technologies. Both chipsets are based on ARM’s v8-A architecture and consists of a combination of Corrtex-A53 and Cortex-A57 CPUs.

Both chipsets will integrate the latest Cat 6 LTE Advanced multimode modem along with support for Carrier Aggregation up to 60MHz. Translated to English, this means you’ll be able achieve 4G speeds of up to 300Mbps given ideal conditions. The 810 and 808 will also mark Qualcomm’s shift to the 20nm manufacturing process. The smaller node means less power consumption and longer battery life.

The Snapdragon 810 SoC has native support for 4K UHD video decoding along with an upgraded camera suite using gyro-stabilization and 3D noise reduction. It can even do 1080p at 120FPS. The 810 will be able to support image sensors up to 55MP. This SoC consists of four Cortex-A57 and Cortex-A53 CPUs in ARM’s big.LITTLE configuration. The chipset will also play host to the Adreno 430 GPU which supports OpenGL ES3.1, hardware tessellation, geometry shaders and programmable blending. Another first is the introduction of high speed LPDDR4 memory. We also have Bluetooth v4.1, USB 3.0, NFC and Qualcomm’s IZat location service support.

The Snapdragon 808 is the company’s first hexa-core SoC as it combines two Cortex-A57 CPUs and along with four Cortex-A53 CPUs. This chipset is designed for devices with 2K displays and will feature the Adreno 418 GPU. The chipset uses the existing LPDDR3 memory interface itself but will support external 4K displays.

Here’s Qualcomm’s Alex Katouzian explaining why the Snapdragon 810 and 808 processor announcement matters.

The new chipsets will only be seen in devices sometime next year as Qualcomm’s 805 chipset that debuted at MWC 2014, is only expected towards the year end. The 810 chipset is truly a remarkable piece of engineering and if we were to guess, we can expect this to debut in Samsung’s Galaxy S6 next year.

While that’s still a long wait, we do have five 64-bit smartphone chipsets that we’re very excited to see this year.