Motion co-processors made a splash after Apple announced the low-power M7 co-processor with the iPhone 5Sthat continuously monitors motion data to enable third party apps to log it without having to wake up the main A7 processor. This brings battery performance benefits. Motorola too did something similar with the Moto X, where it had companion processors that continuously listen for voice commands to wake up the phone from sleep for a touch-free experience. Just when everyone expected co-processors to become the latest buzzword for smartphones, Qualcomm’s Raj Tallluri believes that won’t be the case.
“Eventually everything will be integrated in the chipset. We have seen this in the past as well and that’s where the industry is headed. It brings cost and space optimization,” Talluri said at the sidelines of the 3G/LTE Summit in Hong Kong. Talluri, who is the Senior Vice President of product management for Qualcomm Technologies, leads the company’s Snapdragon chipset development. Prior to Qualcomm, he was responsible for Texas Instruments’ OMAP application processors for smartphones.
Qualcomm has been spearheading the integrated chipset model where most of the elements including the application processor, graphic processor, integrated modems including 2G/3G and multi-mode LTE, among other modules like GPS, Wi-FI are integrated directly into the chipset – hence the term System on Chip (SoC).
The SoC model helps reduce the number of individual components within the smartphone that brings performance, space and cost efficiencies for manufacturers. The company’s Snapdragon 800 processor, for instance, has a voice activation feature that works similarly to what we have seen in the Moto X but is integrated directly into the chipset.
