Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 processor is a multi-core processor which supports speeds up to 2.2 GHz. It’s expected to be one of the fastest ARM-based chips to ship this year.
Earlier this year the company showed off prototype tablets demonstrating the chip’s Android gaming performance. But it turns out Snapdragon 800 isn’t just for Android — Qualcomm has announced that it’s working with Microsoft to support Windows RT 8.1.
That’s Microsoft’s next-generation version of Windows for ARM-based devices, which is expected to ship in the second half of 2013.
Aside from offering faster performance than earlier chips, the Snapdragon 800 processor adds support for USB 3.0 and an integrated multimode 3G/4G LTE modem.
It’s based on a Krait 400 processor core, supports 802.11ac WiFi, and can handle display resolutions as high as 2560 x 2048 pixels. It also supports camera with sensors as high as 55 megapixels.
Does Windows 8.1 bring back NFS support to non-Enterprise versions? I can transfer files over 802.11ac using NFS twice as fast (14 MiB/s) as SMB (6 MiB/s).
Unknown, we’ll have to wait till either the preview they’ll show on June 26 or after its officially released and people have a chance to thoroughly test it out and see whether things like that were changed…
So far though, NFC is still only being mentioned for the business users and that suggest its still only for the Enterprise edition but we won’t know for sure until it’s confirmed…
The hardware sounds great! The OS, not so much.
We’ll have to see about the OS… The Windows (Code Blue) 8.1 update applies to RT and they’re suppose to start blurring the lines between the RT and regular Windows 8 with this update.
Keep in mind that many of the original limitations were put in place because of how limited ARM was at the time of its release!
These next gen ARM SoCs though offer much more average performance and support features like hardware virtualization that can allow options that weren’t really available before…
Though, of course, we’ll have to wait and see exactly what MS did to RT with the 8.1 update…