Qualcomm to debut 64-bit Snapdragon 410 in 2H 2014

Qualcomm announced its first 64-bit chip will be the Snapdragon 410. Scheduled to arrive in the second half of 2014, this mid-range SoC for sub-$150 devices will feature the ARM Cortex A53 architecture, a tweaked GPU (Adreno 306) and enhanced cellular capabilities. The Snapdragon 410 will be manufactured on the same 28nm LP process at TSMC as the current Snapdragon 400.

Rather than one of Qualcomm's own custom-made ARM CPU architectures, the company tells us that Snapdragon 410 will use four of ARM's Cortex A53 CPU cores (some variants of the Snapdragon 400, including the one in the Moto G, already use ARM's Cortex A7, so this move isn't without precedent). The A53 architecture supports the same features as the high-end Cortex A57, but it's a smaller, slower, and more power-efficient core—the relationship between Cortex A53 and A57 is similar to the relationship between the Cortex A7 and A15 cores. The A53 architecture will be faster than the A7 that it replaces, but more interestingly it offers support for the 64-bit ARMv8 instruction set. This makes it Qualcomm's first 64-bit ARM SoC.

Source: ARS Technica