Qualcomm is not looking to retire its single-core mobile chips, or replace dual-core chips with quad-core ones - but rather... believes all types of mobile chip will remain useful. It's a case of horses for courses, according to Salvatori, who noted the chipmaker now has a single-core mobile chip that runs at 1.4Ghz.
"We're not in the market of replacing the dual-core with quad-core. But taking into account the use cases and the applications, there are devices and apps that are very well supported by single core [chips] and so that's why we continue developing the single-core architecture and the dual-core architecture in parallel [to the new quad-core chip]," he said.
What can quad-core do that dual- or single-core chips can't? These chips aren't necessarily more powerful than their fewer-cored brethren but they are likely to be better at running apps concurrently, which could benefit certain uses, according to Salvatori - while for other tasks, single- or dual-core chips will remain perfectly adequate.
Qualcomm: Single-core chips remain useful
Posted on Monday, April 11 2011 @ 4:40 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck