Snapdragon S4, Ultrabooks Rival in the Making

Bangalore: Qualcomm, the developer of chips for Smartphones and tablets is launching their new Snapdragon S4 chip on a mission to acquire some share in the PC market.

The Snapdragon S4 chip, based on ARM architecture primarily targets the Ultrabook, which is expected to be future of laptops. According to Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm, the company is in discussions with manufacturers on making fast and light laptops based on its chips.

The Snapdragon based laptops will have features of Smartphones including quick boot and instant cloud access. "Your next PC will deliver the always on, always connected promise," Jacobs said. Snapdragon is currently used in all the Windows based Smartphones and few Android tablets.

Most of the PCs now are based on Intels x86 chips. Intel is also introducing its new ‘Ivy Bridge’ processors in Ultrabooks.   

The Snapdragon based devices will hit the markets later this year with single, dual and quad core processors of speed ranging from 1.5 to 2.5 GHz. According to company, there are 20 manufacturers with more than 70 Snapdragon S4 based products under development. They will be designed to run Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 OS and could include 3G & 4G LTE mobile broadband for connectivity.