Qualcomm roadmap leaked: quad-cores coming 2013, 1.7GHz dual-cores in 2011

NVIDIA stepped up its chipset game by demonstrating quad-core silicon coming by the end of the year, and one of its main competitors Qualcomm has been left to trail. Up until now, we didn't know what the company's reply was, but this leaked roadmap lays out details about chips expected until 2013. 

First on the list are dual-core chips clocked at the whopping 1.5GHz to 1.7GHz, coming somewhere in the fourth quarter of 2011 or the first quarter of 2012. These 28-nm chips are coming in three varieties: 8960 with LTE, 8270 with HSPA and 8260A with HSPA+, all equipped with the Adreno 225 graphical unit, said to be matching the graphics on the PlayStation Vita in terms of power. 1080p HD video at 30fps is also something we're looking forward to on the chips.

Skip to the third to fourth quarter of next year, and you get the 8230 and 8930 chips with Adreno 305 GPU nearly reaching the performance of contemporary gaming consoles. Both chips will be clocked at 1GHz to 1.2GHz.

Last comes the true answer to NVIDIA's quad-core processors – the monstrous quad-core Qualcomm 8974 chip built using 28nm technology clocked at 2.0GHz to 2.5GHz. It handles 1080p HD video at 60fps, while the graphical core is Adreno 320 – a configuration that might make you reconsider the need of a personal computer. Okay, maybe not that powerful, but Qualcomm's quad-core solution is definitely mind-boggling by today's standards. It's coming in the first quarter of 2013, but is that fast enough? NVIDIA is to release their Kal-El chip with four cores by the end of the year, but others like Samsung and Texas Instruments are not going to match those speeds. One thing is certain, though, with AMD and Intel joining the mobile chip wars, the battle is heating up.

source: MobileTechWorld via Engadget

*Update* Image removed due to request by Qualcomm