There may be a lot of competition for Android device manufacturers, but things have really heated up for the processors. Dual-core processors are finally starting to appear in more devices, but behind the scenes, the battle for the next generation of processors is at full throttle.
Qualcomm just had their Q3 2011 earnings call, and on the subject of Krait, Qualcomm Executive Vice President Steven Mollenkopf said, “We sampled the Snapdragon MSM8960 ahead of schedule this quarter. Our first 28-nanometer device will really go commercial at the end of this calendar year.”
Qualcomm is in a rush because NVIDIA, and others, are working just as hard to ready their next generation processors. NVIDIA has Project Kal-El, but who will be first? In our recent article detailing rumors of what could be the next Nexus device, it implies that HTC has already has a working prototype with the Krait processor.
It will be interesting to see, but when it comes to processors, it always seems to take longer than we would like. Last year, dual-core NVIDIA (Tegra) processors were promised by the end of 2010. Not only did it not happen, but other issues came up to cause further delays. NVIDIA's Tegra was adopted by Motorola, and there may have been an issue with Verizon's LTE, because the Bionic was delayed. NVIDIA denies this, but it appears that Motorola has gone all in with Texas Instruments for now. I Would love to see all of these newer processors by the end of 2011, but I won't be holding my breath.
[via androidandme]
