• Tweet

Chip maker Qualcomm is giving its Snapdragon processor line a bit of a performance boost… and a new set of names. Gone are the Snapdragon S3 and S4 processors for smartphones and tablets, and instead we’ll start to see Qualcomm Snapdragon 200, 400, 600, and 800 chips later this year.

The higher the number, the more powerful the chip, and while the 200 and 400 are aimed at budget devices, the upcoming Snapdragon 600 and 800 processors are quad-core beasts for higher performance devices.

They both offer more performance than any Qualcomm chip on the market today, while consuming less power than a Snapdragon S4 Pro chip.

Snapdragon 800

We should see the first devices featuring Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chips by mid-2013. The company’s new top tier processor features a 2.3 GHz quad-core Krait 400 CPU.

Krait is Qualcomm’s custom ARM-based design, and the new Krait 400 is expected to offer up a performance boost of up to 75 percent over the current Snapdragon S4 Pro… which is already one of the fastes mobile chips on the market.

The new processor also features Adreno 330 graphics which the company says is twice as fast as Adreno 320. In tersm of real-world performance, that means not only will you be able to handle the latest Android or Windows RT games, but also ultraHD displays with resolutions of 4096 x 2304.

Qualcomm is also baking in dual image signal processors to allow cameras with image sensors as high as 55 megapixels.

The company is positioning the new high-end chip as a solution not just for phones and tablets, but also smart televisions and other media devices.

Snapdragon 600

While the Snapdragon 800 is Qualcomm’s new high-end processor, the upcoming Snapdragon 600 which is aimed at mid-level devices is 40-percent faster than any Qualcomm chip on the market today.

It’s a 1.9 GHz quad-core processor with a Krait 300 CPU and Adreno 320 graphics.

Qualcomm says the first devices with the Snapdragon 600 chip should hit the market in the second quarter of 2013.