Snapdragon

WHAT IS SNAPDRAGON?

Snapdragon is a suite of system on a chip (SoC) semiconductor products for mobile devices designed and marketed by Qualcomm Technologies Inc. The Snapdragon's central processing unit (CPU) uses the ARM architecture. Snapdragon semiconductors are embedded in devices of various systems, including Android, Windows Phone and netbooks. They are also used in cars, wearable devices and other devices.

WHEN HAS IT EMERGED?

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).

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.

According to CNET, Snapdragon claim to fame was having the first 1 GHz mobile made processor. Most smartphones at the time were using 500 MHz processors. By November 2008, 15 device manufacturers decided to embed Snapdragon semiconductors in their consumer electronics products.

In November 2008, Qualcomm announced it would also compete against Intel in the netbook processor market with dual-core Snapdragon system-on-chips planned for late 2009. That same month, Qualcomm introduced a Snapdragon-based prototype netbook called Kayak that used 1.5 GHz processors and was intended for developing markets.

In May 2009, Java SE was ported and optimized for Snapdragon. At the November 2009 Computex Taipei show, Qualcomm announced the QSD8650A addition to the Snapdragon product suite, which was based on 45 nanometer manufacturing processes. It featured a 1.2 GHz processor and had lower power consumption than prior models.

By June 2010, Snapdragon chips were embedded in 20 available consumer devices and incorporated into 120 product designs in development. 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, such as Google's Nexus One and the HTC Incredible, challenging Apple's market position. Android devices did end up taking market share from the iPhone and predominantly used Snapdragon. 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. In early 2011, Qualcomm announced a new processor architecture called Krait, which used the ARM v7 instruction set, but was based on Qualcomm's own processor design. The processors were called S4 and had a feature named 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 each generation. By 2012, the Snapdragon S4 (Krait core) had taken a dominant share from other Android system-on-chips like Nvidia Tegra and Texas Instruments OMAP which caused the latter to exit the market. However, the September 2013 debut of Apple's 64-bit A7 chip in the iPhone 5S forced Qualcomm to release a competing 64-bit product, despite the capable performance of the Snapdragon 800/801/805, since their existing Krait cores were only 32-bit.The first 64-bit SoCs, the Snapdragon 808 and 810, were rushed to market using generic Cortex-A57 and Cortex-A53 cores and suffered from overheating problems and throttling, particularly the 810, which led Samsung to stop using Snapdragon for its Galaxy S6 flagship phone, and Galaxy Note 5 phablet.

As of July 2014, the market share of Android phones had grown to 84.6 percent, and Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips were embedded in 41% of smartphones.

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