A quad-core Snapdragon also for "ultrabook"?

Qualcomm is currently working on a version of its Snapdragon SoC S4 designed specifically to attack the future niche market for ultra-thin notebooks with ARM architecture. This new type of laptop will see the light at the end of the year thanks to the porting of Windows 8 (WOA).

The news is official and the vice president of Qualcomm Rob Chandhok said that the target devices are "much lighter than that Intel calls ultrabook". And it has a point: the design of system-on-chips based on ARM from tablets and smartphones from their simplicity of design that beats hands down the equivalent of Intel and AMD x86 and can provide new levels of portability.

The new chip will therefore be based Snapdragon sull'ossatura but will have a new package, a production process and new features to 28Nm. Strictly quad-cores, the SoC will be equipped with 4G and also assumed a 64-bit version that may come to coincide with the next ARMv8 architecture.

The arrival of Qualcomm and its ARM chip devices with a Windows Forms-like factor family of notebooks is the result of the small revolution initiated by Microsoft, which has promised a radical change, a merger between mobile devices, notebooks, tablets and all its accompanying hardware.