With GHz and number of cores becoming something of a battleground from mobile chip companies, Qualcomm has laid down its view on the subject.

Rob Chandhok, SVP, who handles software strategy for its semi conductor business, highlighted the company's overall approach in a press briefing at Mobile World Congress.

"We think about chips a little bit differently than the press," he explained.

"We don't focus on the number of cores, but the user experience."

Part of the process

As a company that provides an integrated SoC architecture for the entire mobile experience, Qualcomm sees its advantage as being the ability to optimise that integration process.

"We take a lot of effort in terms of designing the entire pipeline of software and hardware. It's the balance between the components of the hardware chain and how they interact with the OS that matters," said Chandhok.

And that’s the reason Qualcomm points out its dual core S4 8960 Snapdragon chip out performs most current quad cores in terms of industry benchmarks.

Too hot to handle

Chandhok also said such an approach has important implications in terms of thermal efficiency.

"It's not about how fast this device can run, it's for how long and fast can this device run," he stated.

"This will one of the things that limits the processing power within a given form factor in future," he adding, displaying slides of the thermal gradient of various devices running benchmarks over various time periods. 

Of course, the Qualcomm device was much cooler than the unlabelled competitors.

"We focus on performance at a particular power budget, and that translates to sustained performance," Chandhok ended.