Qualcomm Snapdragon 600E And 410E Chips Target The IoT

Qualcomm has revealed its Snapdragon 600E and 410E system-on-a-chip (SoC) processors, which aims to further the company’s push into the Internet of Things (IoT) arena.

The Snapdragon 600E comes sporting a 1.5GHz quad-core processor, Bluetooth 4, 802.11 a through to ac Wi-Fi, and GPS connectivity. The SoC appears to be more geared up for devices and software that makes heavy use of 3D rendering given it comes with the Qualcomm Adreno 320 GPU and Qualcomm Hexagon DSP.

As the smaller sibling the Snapdragon 410E sports a 1.2GHz processor and Adreno 306 GPU. While it lacks the power of the 600E, the slower processor and GPU chips means less power consumption making the 410E suitable for being embedded in IoT devices and wearables where access to power and space is at a premium.

The chips are being offered as stand-alone SoC, a first for Qualcomm, through a partnership with electronics distribution firm Arrow Electronics. This should open up access to Qualcomm’s chips to a wider range of manufacturers rather than just large hardware firms like LG and Samsung.

Snapdragon for IoT

Qualcomm’s SoCs can be found in a large variety of devices, with Android smartphones being prolific users of Snapdragon chips.

But the IoT is the area Qualcomm has been targeting of late, and its new chips along with the Arrow Electronics partnership, should see it become more appealing to a range of companies developing the next wave of IoT devices and systems.

“Snapdragon is a powerful and versatile processor with many potential applications in a wide variety of IoT applications and we can now offer this technology to a much wider range of customers with the additional benefit of long-term support and availability,” said Raj Talluri, senior vice president of product management at Qualcomm. “The Snapdragon 600E and 410E bring together some of our best connectivity and compute technologies to meet the needs for a large range of embedded and IoT applications.”

However, as companies like Qualcomm facilitate the spread of IoT devices, they also potentially open up new vectors for hackers to exploit, as security firm Symantec recently discovered that cyber criminals are using consumer IoT devices to create cobbled-together network from which to launch DDoS attacks.

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