Qualcomm today unveiled its first high-end 64-bit ARM SoCs. Until now, the company had introduced three 64-bit processors - Snapdragon 615, Snapdragon 610 and Snapdragon 410 - all of them based on the slower ARM Cortex A53 core (as fast as the Cortex A9). With the new Snapdragon 810 and Snapdragon 808, Qualcomm continues to make use of ARM's CPU IP, leaving custom-architected chipsets to be announced later this year.

　　While the Snapdragon 810 features 4 x ARM Cortex A57 in big.LITTLE configuration with 2 x ARM Cortex A53 cores, the Snapdragon 808 brings that number down by half across the board. Also, the former features the new high-end Adreno 430 GPU, while the latter will settle for a slower Adreno 418 (differences between the two are not known at the moment). Both chips come with eMMC 5.0 and screaming-fast LTE Cat6/7 support. The similarities end there.

　　Qualcomm wants to make sure that you notice the Snapdragon 810, even though it doesn't feature the Krait 450-based cores that we were expecting. Support for both H.265 decode and encode is present (making this the first Snapdragon to do so), but one of the most exciting ones is the inclusion of a 2 x 32-bit LPDDR4 memory interface that tops out at 1600 MHz. This memory configuration is nearly twice as fast as the first Snapdragon 800 chips, launched less than a year ago.

　　Both "multi-billion transistor" chips are making use of the new 20nm manufacturing process, details regarding which weren't released today. Devices powered by the Snapdragon 810 and Snapdragon 808 are expected to begin shipping in 1H 2015, so don't hold back from buying the new Xperia Z2, HTC One (M8) or Galaxy S5 just yet. There's still a long way to go before devices land on the market.