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Earlier today Qualcomm briefed analysts on its Snapdragon SoC roadmap. The current Snapdragon is available in both 65nm and 45nm versions integrating a single Scorpion CPU core running at up to 1GHz and an Adreno 200 or 205 GPU (respectively). Snapdragon was the SoC of choice for many Android phones over the past year and a half, not to mention the only SoC available in Windows Phone 7 devices.

In the coming months we’ll see the first dual-core Cortex A9 based NVIDIA Tegra 2 SoCs ship in devices. Sometime next year we’ll see A9 based OMAP4 SoCs in smartphones as well. So what does Qualcomm have in store for us over the next few years?

First we have the MSM8260 and 8660 SoCs. These are based on Qualcomm’s current generation technologies: integrating two Scorpion cores and an Adreno 205 GPU on a single 45nm die. The 8260 features HSPA+ support, while the 8660 supports HSPA+, CDMA2000 and 1xEV-DO Rev. B. These two dual-core SoCs will run at 1.2GHz. We should see a GPU upgrade here as well.

The 8x60 SoCs started sampling over the summer and we should expect to see them in high end smartphones sometime in 2011 at the earliest.More exciting however is what comes next. Today’s disclosures included further details for the next-generation Snapdragon SoC built on a 28nm process. The first member of the next-gen Snapdragon family is the Qualcomm MSM8960 SoC.

Inside the MSM8960 are two next-generation processor cores, presumably out-of-order as Qualcomm is promising 5x the performance of the original Snapdragon chip (2x for the move to dual cores and the rest due to OoO, larger caches and other architectural tweaks perhaps?). Qualcomm isn’t disclosing clock speed at this time.

Power consumption is said to be 75% lower, however that seems very aggressive compared to what we have today. It’s unclear if Qualcomm is talking about active or idle power, or what version of Snapdragon it is comparing to (65nm or 45nm).

Samsung made headlines last week when it promised a 2GHz smartphone CPU for 2012. It wasn’t long ago that such a thing didn’t even seem possible, and the news sparked plenty of conversations about how fast the industry is moving. However, it seems Samsung’s lofty promise has already been outdone by Qualcomm, which is planning new single, dual and quad core Snapdragons that will reach clock speeds 2.5GHz.

A leaked Qualcomm presentation details the company’s plans for its next-generation Snapdragon processors, the MSM8270, MSM8930 and MSM8960 processors, and the APQ8064. Electronista reports that these chips are expected to be as much as five times faster than their predecessors in raw CPU power with four times faster graphics and "console quality gaming." The slides, first posted by MobileTechWorld, also detail 1080p video playback on tablets and other large display devices, stereoscopic 3D capture and playback, and support for 7.1 Dolby, and a 20-megapixel camera.

All of the CPUs are expected to sample before the end of the year but don’t expect to see any products until 2012 at the earliest.

complacent wrote:seriously cool performance to watt ratio. the next crop of phones are going to be pretty frigging gangster.