Snapdragon’s latest hunks of speedy silicon aren’t destined for your telephone or tablet. No, instead, new tweaks made to the Snapdragon 600 and 800 will power your connected car and home theatre, respectively, instead.
A tweaked version of the Snapdragon 600, the 602A, will share similar specs with its sibling, but come rated for temperature and longevity required in a car. While Qualcomm’s chips have helped process in-car data demands for a while, the 602A is pretty ambitious: as well as providing 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, it will serve video to numerous screens at once, and even provide facial-recognition support which could let you start your car by… well, looking at it. It should also help provide some of the power currently afforded to phones and tablets to in-car duties, such as 3D navigation. This should all chime well with Google’s plans to get into your dash too.
Elsewhere, the new Snapdragon 802 is a TV-specific, quad-core system-on-a-chip that shares an awful lot with the 800. So, as well as powering 4K displays, it should allow the apps on smart TVs to rattle along, allowing multitasking as well as being able to play four HD videos simultaneously on one TV (if, uh, that’s your bag?). It should also allow your TV to upconvert 1080p video to a level “approaching Ultra HD”. All told, that’s some pretty hefty processing for a TV.
Both slabs of silicon will be appearing in devices in late 2014, according to Qualcomm. [Engadget and Engadget]