The future hardware powering Windows Phone 7

As you probably already know by now all Windows Phone 7 handsets will be powered by a Qualcomm SoC. The specifics of the chipsets used are still unknown but we do know that it will have minimum click rate of 1Ghz which hints at a SnapDragon or similar architecture (the QSD8x50, MSM8x55, MSM7X30, QSD8x50A all qualify). The only reall info we have so far comes from the leaked HTC Mondrian ROM which mentions the presence of a QSDx50A chipset on board. So how is this piece of hardware interesting? Well, first off it is still unreleased and when the HTC Mondrian finally launches this fall it will probably one of the first devices to sport one. Secondly it’s the new shrunk down (45nm) version of the now famous QSD8X50 found in the majority of high-end Windows Phone and Android phones and is clocked at 1.3ghz (compared to the regular 1ghz chips shipping now). But the most interesting aspect of this new SoC is the updated GPU known as the Andreno 205 (the current SanpDragon CPU is the Adreno 200 aka AMDZ430). This new unit has been tweaked to have better OpenVG and Flash perfomance as well and improved shader performance:

This GPU features dedicated 2D Open VG graphics hardware along with 3D hardware which provides faster, higher-quality 2D rendering, simultaneous use of 2D and 3D, and lower power use.

•Hardware-accelerated SVG and Adobe Flash®
•Significant improvements in shader performance over Adreno 200 GPU
•Streaming textures that can combine video, camera, SVG and other image surfaces with 3D graphics
Supported APIs:

OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenGL ES 1.1, OpenVG 1.1, EGL 1.3, Direct3D Mobile, SVGT 1.2, Direct Draw, GDI. Concurrent CPU, DSP, graphics, and MDP