CES 2013: Qualcomm unveils 2.3Ghz quad-core processors

With Nvidia having recently unveiled the Tegra 4, it looks like it's time for escalation. Qualcomm has unveiled the new Snapdragon 600 and 800 chips at the ongoing CES 2013. The new SoCs are going to be making an appearance in high-end devices and Smart TVs in the next six months.

Qualcomm claims that the Snapdragon 800 offers 1.75 times better performance than the S4. While this is yet to be seen, the  specifications of the new SoC include 28nm HPm fabrication, an upgraded Hexagon V5 digital signal processor, 800MHz LPDDR3 memory, Krait 400 architecture running at clock speeds of up to 2.3GHz and an Adreno 330 GPU.

Qualcomm has announced the new Snapdragon 600 and 800 SoCs

The Snapdragon 600 seems to be an upgraded version of the S4 with some tweaks to the architecture, including a 1.9GHz maximum clock speed, an Adreno 320 GPU and LPDDR3 memory. Both the 600 and the 800 include 802.11ac WiFi, Miracast HD at 1080p and 150Mb/s LTE with Advanced Carrier Aggregation.

While the 800 will be showing itself in the middle of the year, the 600 will be in devices by quarter 2 of 2013. Qualcomm looks like it wants to compete with Nvidia and its Tegra 4.

Just recently, Nvidia had unveiled the Tegra 4, which includes a number of improvements, including 72 graphics core and better imaging capabilities. The CPU is based on ARM's latest Cortex A-15 architecture, which gives it a considerable boost compared to the current ARM Cortex A-9 based Tegra 3 quad-core chipset. The new chip sticks to Tegra 3's 4-plus-1 design. In this design, a fifth smaller core helps regulate the power among the four more powerful cores.