Qualcomm Snapdragon

Snapdragon is the brand name for Qualcomm's integrated circuit (IC) products. These include systems on chip (SoCs), standalone cellular modems, and wireless network interface controllers (NICs). Snapdragon-branded SoCs are designed to power embedded systems, such as smartphones, laptops, and vehicles. They typically consist of a central processing unit (CPU), a graphics processor (GPU), various digital signal processors (DSP), and optionally, a cellular modem, combined into a single package for compactness. They can run operating systems with graphical user interfaces, like Android and Windows, and can process a variety of signals, like speech from a microphone, images from a built-in camera, and radio waves from Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections. The integrated CPU is based on the ARM architecture, and consists of one or more cores. These are either licensed IP cores developed by ARM Holdings, or in-house cores developed by Qualcomm itself. More than one type of core may be used at once, such as in a big.LITTLE configuration. The integrated Adreno GPU and cellular modem, when present, are always developed in-house.