Qualcomm Eyes World Beyond Smartphones in Latest Processor Release

In a pronounced expansion beyond smartphones, Qualcomm introduced a pair of Snapdragon processors Wednesday: one for embedded applications in vertical markets including set-top boxes and IoT applications and the other for use cases including smart homes, digital media players and smart surveillance. The launch is the first time stand-alone Snapdragon processors are available through distributors, making them available to manufacturers "of all sizes for embedded computing and IoT products,” said a Qualcomm announcement. Qualcomm called distributors, led initially by Arrow Electronics, “an important extension” of the product portfolio’s strategy to target “highly fragmented consumer, enterprise and industrial categories.” The Snapdragon 600E and 410E are being made available globally by third-party distributors for a minimum of 10 years from the Snapdragon 600 and Snapdragon 400 product families' first commercial sampling, Qualcomm said. The company is positioning the embedded processors as a way for device manufacturers, solution providers, and system integrators to speed commercialization through off-the-shelf and custom modules and as a means to a cost-optimized “chip on board” design for specific applications. The Snapdragon 600E quad-core processor incorporates Qualcomm’s 1.5 GHz Krait 300 CPU, Adreno 320 graphics processor and Hexagon digital signal processor (DSP) and supports Bluetooth 4.0/LE and 3.x, 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac and GPS for connected applications, said the company. The Snapdragon 410E 1.2 GHz quad-core processor offers high performance, low power consumption and multimedia with an Adreno 306 graphics processor and Hexagon DSP, said the company, and it supports Bluetooth 4.1/LE, 802.11 b/g/n and GPS.