Snapdragon is the brand name for Qualcomm's integrated circuit (IC) products. These include systems on chip (SoCs), standalone cellular modems, and wireless network interface controllers (NICs). Snapdragon-branded SoCs are designed to power embedded systems, such as smartphones, laptops, and vehicles. They typically consist of a central processing unit (CPU), a graphics processor (GPU), various digital signal processors (DSP), and optionally, a cellular modem, combined into a single package for compactness. They can run operating systems with graphical user interfaces, like Android and Windows, and can process a variety of signal, like speech from a microphone, images from a built-in camera, and radio waves from Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections. The integrated CPU is based on the ARM architecture, and consists of one or more cores. These are either licensed IP cores developed by ARM Holdings, or in-house cores developed by Qualcomm itself. More than one type of cores may be used at once, such as in a big.LITTLE configuration. The integrated Adreno GPU and cellular modem, when present, are always developed in-house.
History
Pre-release Qualcomm announced it was developing the Scorpion central processing unit (CPU) in November 2007. The Snapdragon system on chip (SoC) was announced in November 2006 and included the Scorpion processor, as well as other semiconductors. This also included Qualcomm's first custom Hexagon digital signal processor (DSP).
According to a Qualcomm spokesperson, it was named Snapdragon, because "Snap and Dragon sounded fast and fierce." The following month, Qualcomm acquired Airgo Networks for an undisclosed amount; it said Airgo's 802.11a/b/g and 802.11n Wi-Fi technology would be integrated with the Snapdragon product suite. Early versions of Scorpion had a processor core design similar to the Cortex-A8.
2007–2013 The first Snapdragon was released in November 2007. CNET noted its relatively high 1 GHz CPU clock speed as the product's "claim to fame", when contemporary smartphone processors are commonly using 500 MHz CPU. The product can output display at up to 720p resolution, render 3D graphics, and supports a up-to 12-megapixel camera. By November 2008, 15 device manufacturers had embed Snapdragon chips in their consumer electronics products. In November 2008, a techdemo processor and netbook was showcased. The processor consumed less power than the contemporary Intel Atom Z500. The netbook used 1.5 GHz processors and was intended for developing markets. In collaboration with Sun, Java SE received Snapdragon-specific optimizations in May 2009. Qualcomm started using 45 nm process for SoC productions in late 2009. In June 2010, Snapdragon chips were incorporated into 120 product designs in development. The company announced the MSM8960 for LTE networks that November. Apple had a dominant market position for smartphones at the time and did not incorporate Snapdragon into any of its products. The success of Snapdragon therefore relied on competing Android phones. Support for the Windows Phone 7 operating systems was added to Snapdragon in October 2010. By 2011 Snapdragon was embedded in Hewlett Packard's WebOS devices and had a 50% market share of a $7.9 billion smartphone processor market. As of July 2014 Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips were embedded in 41% of smartphones.
Snapdragon chips are also used in Android-based smartwatches, and in vehicles like the Maserati Quattroporte and Cadillac XTS. In early 2011, Qualcomm announced Krait, an in-house CPU microarchitecture design supporting the ARM v7 instruction set. SoCs featuring Krait were named S4 supports asynchronous symmetrical multi-processing (aSMP), meaning each processor core adjusted its clock speed and voltage based on the device's activity in order to optimize battery usage. Prior models were renamed to S1, S2 and S3 to distinguish between each generation. The S4-based generation of Snapdragon SoCs began shipping to product manufacturers with the MSM8960 in February 2012. In an overall system benchmark, the 8960 obtained a score of 907, compared to 528 and 658 for the Galaxy Nexus and HTC Rezound respectively. In a Quadrant benchmark test, which assesses raw processing power, a dual-core Krait processor had a score of 4,952, whereas the quad-core Tegra 3 was just under 4,000. The quad-core version, APQ8064, was made available in July 2012. It was the first Snapdragon SoC to use Qualcomm's Adreno 320 graphics processing unit (GPU). In July 2011 Qualcomm acquired certain assets from GestureTek in order to incorporate its gesture recognition intellectual property into Snapdragon SoCs. In mid-2012 Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon software development kit (SDK) for Android devices at the Uplinq developer conference.It also collaborated with Microsoft to optimize Windows Phone 8 for Snapdragon semiconductors. As of July 2014, the market share of Android phones had grown to 84.6 percent, and Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips powered 41% of smartphones. Snapdragon SoCs were also used in most Windows phones and most phones entering the market in mid-2013. On the announcement of Snapdragon 800 in 2013 Consumer Electronics Show, Qualcomm renamed their prior models to the 200, 400 and 600 series.
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