I get the feeling you'll be saying when I say small notebook up there in title of this post, I should have said netbook instead. Well, the reason I didn't use netbook is because that's what Intel is calling the small lightweight and ultra affordable notebook, but Qualcomm has its own idea to name such notebook.
"Our vision is that (the device is) always connected. Even when you shut it down, it's still 'on.' (The laptop) goes to your Exchange server, gets your e-mail, puts it on the drive--solid-state or hard drive--and then when you're ready to do e-mail, you flip it open and it's right there. Instant on, always connected," said Manjit Gill, director of product management, Connected and Consumer Products Group, at Qualcomm.
And Qualcomm's Snapdragon chip contains the technology that will enable Qualcomm to build an un-Intel, un-Netbook type of device, Gill claims. Qualcomm aims to release Snapdragon next year, and the 45-nanometer processor will be built by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).
Brooke Crothers from nanotech blog managed to interview Manjit Gill, and get to know what so special about Snapdragon chip:
"The piece de resistance of this strategy is the Qualcomm QSD8672 dual-core Snapdragon that features two CPU computing cores capable of 1.5GHz performance, and a host of other features includes HSPA+, up to 28Mbps download speeds, 1080p high-definition video, Wi-Fi, mobile TV, and GPS. The graphics core is based on Advanced Micro Devices' ATI unit's technology."
Next year we will be seeing more and more variants of small notebooks, or netbooks as we know it now. And IMHO they all will have the 'real strenght' of netbook, that Jeff Hawkins has predicted before with Foleo.