As I look at the path processors for mobile phones and tablets have taken, it's tempting to compare it to an accelerated PC processors journey. Over the last couple of years, we've gone from seeing mobile processors as almost invisible components of mobile devices to emphasizing clock speeds and multiple cores and then to a movement toward heterogeneous processors that contain a variety of specialized features.

But, of course, the mobile processor market is different from the market for PC processors in a lot of ways. To begin with, the stress has always been put on smaller size, lower power consumption, and better battery life, thus all of the processors are system-on-chip designs. Although the focus on graphics has grown with the push for ever-more-powerful smartphones, mobile processors have historically included graphics features, and these are just improving over time. While the PC processor market has in recent years narrowed down to just two players, there are more than half a dozen serious mobile processor makers, many of which share the same basic cores and graphics designs, but combine and customize them in specific ways.

At last month's Mobile World Congress, and through other recent announcements, the makers of these processors have all been touting their capabilities, each claiming to target a slightly different section of the mobile market. Qualcomm, TI, and Nvidia have been competing for most of the high-end smartphone business with ARM-compatible designs. Companies that make devices and design their own processors—notably Apple, Samsung, and now Huawei—are now making inroads, as well. ST-Ericsson is working on a comeback, while Broadcom, Freescale, Marvell, and MediaTek are focusing on lower-cost designs. And it is not just ARM anymore; Intel is finally getting some real attention paid to its x86-based Medfield designs on higher-end phones, while makers of processors based on the MIPS architecture are shining the light on lower-cost devices.

It all makes for a very dynamic and compelling market, and while we didn't hear as many new processor announcements at this year's MWC as we did a year ago, there's still plenty of activity here.

Nvidia

Nvidia is a good place to start. Its emphasis on first dual-core and then quad-core processors over the past couple of years brought it attention as it moved into the mobile processor market. It now has made its Tegra 3, the product at which many of the other processor makers seem to be aiming.

Nvidia's Tegra 3 processor has been the first successful quad-core mobile processor, and at Mobile World Congress, Nvidia was talking up its "4-PLUS-1" design (with four ARM Cortex-A9 cores running at up to 1.5 GHz, as well as one low-power A9 core). The Tegra 3 also has what the company terms a 12-core GeForce GPU and new video engines with support of 1080p video at 40Mbps.

Nvidia scored a number of wins at the show, including the high-end HTC One X, LG Optimus 4X HD, and ZTE Era, as well as a new high-end phone from Fujitsu and some new tablets from Asus. In particular, the company noted how ZTE is using its high-end Tegra 3 in some phones, and the older dual-core Tegra 2 in more mid-range phones, plus Nvidia's Icera modem.

Many of the other companies I met with were comparing their products favorably with the Tegra 3. In some cases, though, they were comparing products that hadn't shipped yet, whereas the Tegra 3 is already out in the Asus Transformer line and should be in some of the other wins very shortly. Nvidia plans a follow-up code-named "Wayne" by late 2012, and another called "Grey" that will incorporate an integrated LTE modem in 2013. The company didn't give a lot of details on these processors, but indicated that it has a license for ARM's higher-end Cortex-A15 core. That may well show up in the "Wayne" processor, which is expected to be manufactured on a 28nm process, as opposed to the 40nm process used in Tegra 3.

In the meantime, Nvidia is focusing on pairing its Tegra 3 with its own Icera HSPA+ modem, as well as with LTE modems from other suppliers. The company continues to have a lead in gaming, in part because of its heritage of making PC graphics and its relationships with various game makers. It showed some very impressive games, such as Dark Kingdom and Sonic 4, in demos at MWC.

Qualcomm

Qualcomm has been quite successful in mobile processors, in part because of its ability to link the processor with its leading modem technology. Qualcomm's processors are in a large range of products, from some models of the Samsung Galaxy Note and Galaxy S II to the HTC One S, XL, and virtually all Windows Phones.

At the show, the company emphasized its new Snapdragon S4 MSM8960, a dual-core chip based on the company's new "Krait" architecture, which seems to be the first 28nm mobile processor shipping in volume. Qualcomm is an ARM architectural licensee, meaning that it is designing its own cores that are compatible with the ARM v7 instruction set rather than using the standard ARM cores. The company also has its own graphics engine, known as Adreno. What really makes this stand out is an integrated LTE modem. The company stressed that if you have high-speed connections, you need a faster processor as well, and most phone applications can't yet use four cores. The dual-core version should be in phones due in the first half of this year.

However, the company does have a quad-core version, known as the APQ8064, coming as well, though without the integrated modem. It's aimed more at tablets and very high-end phones (where it would be paired with a separate modem), likely to ship in the second half of 2012. Qualcomm demonstrated its asymmetrical cores, meaning that each core could run at a different speed, up to 1.5 GHz. The company noted that since few applications are multi-threaded, this allows it to match core speeds with what each individual application needs. Besides, the company said, what matters is whether you can run the cores for a substantial period of time at the speed quoted.

Qualcomm also touted various acceleration blocks within the processor, such as hardware video compression and decoding, which allow it to handle four HD video streams on a mobile processor. One impressive demo showed four simultaneous video decodes, with each processor core running at a different frequency.

Qualcomm also indicated the changes in the way operating systems handle graphics and hardware acceleration; Windows Phone uses Direct X and Android uses the RenderScript API. The graphics can be used for a variety of functions beyond just gaming, for speeding up all sorts of things, such as scrolling. Qualcomm is also a big proponent of the LLVM compiler.

The company also pushed its connectivity solutions, including its 802.11ac line from its Qualcomm Atheros division.

Texas Instruments

Texas Instruments has had a lot of success with its OMAP 4 family of products, which are used in Kindle Fires and Nook tablets, as well as the first Android 4.0 devices like the Google Nexus. TI showed both that family and the upcoming OMAP 5 at Mobile World Congress.

In particular, it claims its dual-core OMAP 4 family could be faster than the quad-core Tegra 3, even though both use the same Cortex-A9 core, due to differences in cache size and structure, memory bandwidth etc. Its benchmark was a simulated browsing session. As usual, I take all such benchmarks with a grain of salt, but it was interesting.

Within the OMAP 4 family, TI has just begun pushing the 4470, which offers higher frequencies and an Imagination Technologies VR SGX-544 graphics core, which should be faster than the graphics cores in the older OMAP 4s. The OMAP 4 family uses dual Cortex-A9 processors as well as two Cortex-M3s, which run lower-level processes such as controlling the specialized coprocessors within the chip.

The big emphasis, however, is on the upcoming OMAP 5 family, which should introduce the new ARM Cortex-A15 core. It is meant to be faster and more powerful, and have twin SGX-544 graphics cores, video compression, and two Cortex-M4s. In this "smart multicore architecture," the M4 processors handle a real-time embedded OS, while the A15s run Android. This is different from Nvidia's 4-Plus-1 architecture (with four high-power A9s and one low-power one) or ARM's reference big.LITTLE architecture (which pairs two A15s with two more energy-efficient A7s), in that those all involve multiple cores running Android.

The company demonstrated the 28nm OMAP 5430, which it is sampling now and should be in products by the first quarter of 2013.

One difference between Texas Instruments and vendors like Qualcomm and now Nvidia is that it no longer creates its own modems. It thinks separating the modem from the applications processor makes sense in an era of great change. Interlocking the two would slow things down, it claims. Instead, the company showed designs at MWC with OMAP processors and LTE modems from Renesas and ST-Ericsson.

Apple, Huawei, Samsung

Qualcomm, TI, and Nvidia may be the leading merchant application processor vendors for higher-end smartphones, but in some respects, the market is actually being driven by phone makers who are creating their own processors.

Apple is certainly the best known of these. It has the A5 processor in the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S and the just announced A5X in the new iPad. Apple is famously tight-lipped and did not show anything at Mobile World Congress, but these chips are generally considered to have Cortex-A9 style cores, with Apple moving from dual-core to quad-core graphics with the A5X. At the iPad announcement last week, Apple talked about how the A5X would have four times the graphics performance of a Tegra 3, though it failed to mention on which test that performance claim is based.

Samsung is an interesting case, offering phones and tablets using all sorts of different processors, including the OMAP 4 in the Galaxy Nexus and the Qualcomm S3 in some versions of the Galaxy S II and Note. The company also offers its own processor line, called the Exynos, in other versions of the S II and other devices, depending on markets.

The current Exynos is a dual-core model produced at 45nm, but the company recently announced a quad-core version, known as the 4412, running at up to 1.5 GHz and produced on a 32nm process. Both seem to use the Cortex A9 cores, ARM's Mali graphics, and a NEON media engine.

In addition, the company has begun sampling a faster 32nm dual-core version, called the 5250 based on two Cortex-A15 cores. Samsung promoted its Exynos line at the show, but pointedly did not introduce the widely expected Galaxy S III at the show.

And then there's Huawei, which introduced a new high-end phone, the Ascend D quad, with a new processor from affiliate HiSilicon, known as the K3V2. This is a quad-core processor with four ARM Cortex-A9 cores, a 16-core GPU and a 64-bit memory system. The company claims this is the fastest processor yet, though it didn't release benchmarks. (Note that what counts as a graphics "core" varies among suppliers.)

ST-Ericsson

ST-Ericsson has had some issues in recent years with its largest customers, Nokia and Sony Ericsson, both losing market share. It plans to come back with a line of products known as NovaThor, with Nova as the applications processor and Thor as the modems. Already, the company has its NovaThor products in Sony's Xperia P and U phones and Samsung's Galaxy S Advanced, and its Thor modem in a larger number of designs, paired with an application processor from another vendor.

Currently, the company is shipping its NovaThor L9540 platform with the Nova 9540 application processor and Thor M7400 LTE modem, which it is currently sampling. At MWC, the company highlighted its new NovaThor L8540, based on 28nm process technology. The company says the new platform will offer a 10 percent improvement in power at a 15 percent decrease in size and a significantly lower cost. This platform will including dual Cortex-A9s running at up to 1.85 GHz, a PowerVR™ SGX544 GPU, and 1080p 3D and 1080p with up to 60fps video recording and playback, as well as an integrated global 4G LTE modem on a single die. This platform should be sampling by the end of the year. In many respects, this sounds similar to what Qualcomm is doing with its Krait-based S4 8960.

The company has plans to get back into Nokia with future Windows Phone designs and hopes to be back within the top three vendors by 2014. It is focusing on mid-to-high-end phones, but not the "premium" smartphones.

Lower-Cost Platforms: Broadcom, Marvell, Freescale, MediaTek

Application processors come in all sizes and many of the companies better known for connectivity solutions have entrants as well, mostly aimed at lower- and mid-tier phones.

Broadcom is probably better known for its wireless connectivity solutions (including such features as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support) and certainly pushed such solutions including the 802.11ac "5G WiFi" chip it showed at CES. (Broadcom had the first such chip announced, though others have since joined.)

The company is also beginning to push more applications processors, including a new 1 GHz single-core 21654, and two 1.3 GHz dual core solutions, the 28145 and 28155, the latter with support for 1080p graphics. All of these are based on the ARM Cortex-A9 and are 40nm chips; the lower-end one has an integrated HSPA modem and the higher-end ones have HSPA+.

With these chips, and new combo connectivity chips, the goal is to reduce the bill of materials for a phone significantly, allowing less-expensive but still quite powerful smartphones. For a mid-tier smartphone, Broadcom said it could drop the bill of materials from about an average $158 to between $70 and $90. For a higher-end phone, it could drop the cost from an average $183 to between $90 and $125. Of course, the specs on both of these are changing over time, but it's important in lowering costs.

Marvell, which also emphasized its communications platforms, especially dual-band LTE and 802.11ac at the show, announced a new processor called the Armada 2128. It has a new symmetric multiprocessing architecture called Hybrid-SMP, which will lower power consumption while increasing performance. Like Qualcomm, Marvell has an architectural license, and this chip is said to be based on two higher-performance cores paired with a third low-power core. It said a reference platform is already available.

Freescale mostly focused on a broadband base station system-on-chip design and some new software at the show, but has recently updated its i.MX 6 series of applications processors, including single, dual, and quad-core variants. New versions include the i.MX SoloLite, which is designed for e-readers and similar products, and the DualLite, which is aimed at lower-end tablets and embedded devices. Both are based on Cortex-A9 cores and both include E-Ink controllers.

MediaTek, well-known for its processors for low-cost devices, introduced a new platform called the MT6575, with a single core Cortex-A9, graphics, and an HSPA modem. The company says it sold 10 million smartphone processors last year (mostly Chinese phones that run on slower networks), and is aiming for 50 million this year.

At the show, it presented a variety of smartphones running its platforms. Again, these seem aimed at the low- to mid-tier part of the smartphone market. If manufacturers can deliver smartphones that are as good as the high-end phones from a couple years ago at, say, half the price, it should result in a much larger market.

MIPS

Others are also focused on the low-end. MIPs showed processors from Ingenic Semiconductor (with its Xburst line) and Action Semiconductor. The company, which showed an inexpensive tablet at CES that I recently tried, showed more inexpensive smartphones and tablets. It believes smartphones using its architecture could be sold for $75 to $80 in emerging markets, with higher-end 1 GHz models available for $120 to $150.

MIPS, which makes a processor architecture that competes with ARM, is working on compatibility and like several of the other vendors, pushing RenderScript and LLVM for more applications portability. The company also showed MIPS-based modems, including an LTE baseband chip from Altair Semiconductor.

Intel

And then, of course, there's Intel, the PC processor behemoth that is finally starting to make some inroads in mobile processors. At MWC, Intel announced plans for new phones based on its 32nm Medfield Atom design from European carrier Orange, as well as China's ZTE and India's Lava. This is in addition to a Lenovo phone and a partnership with Motorola the company unveiled at CES.

Many of these are devices based on Intel's reference design, including an 8MP camera, the ability to take 10 pictures in under one second, 1080p video with HDMI out, and 14 days of standby power. Most seem to be aimed at the second half of this year, and Lenovo's entry is expected to be the first.

While you might think of Intel as coming in at the high-end of the market, Intel actually plans to go after a wider target. Some of Intel's partners said their goal with the new phones was to be able to come up with an unsubsidized selling price of under $150.

The company's smartphone platform roadmap is now splitting into two paths. The current Z2460 is a single-core processor aimed at performance phones with the ability to burst up to 2.0 GHz and an HSPA+ modem; this will be supplemented by the dual-core Z2580 with improved graphics based on the Power VR 544, as well as a lower-end single-core chip called the Z2000, running at 1 GHz. Both of these are likely not to be in devices until early next year. Intel has already promised new products based on 22nm in 2013 and 14nm in 2014.

One issue with Intel (and all the non-ARM competitors) is applications compatibility. Intel representatives told me the vast majority of applications just run, and even most native apps can be recompiled and run very quickly. The company is working on tools to make the unique applications easier to port.

Intel, which has a modem business through its acquisition of that part of Infineon, said it thinks it makes sense to separate the application processor from the modems for now, at least for mid-range and higher-end devices.

When asked why competitors had quad-core offerings but Intel did not, Intel CEO Paul Otellini said he doesn't think it matters. "I may have started the core wars when we did our first dual core product, but we learned that wasn't what's important," he said. What matters is processor performance.

That's a message that most of the phone processor makers were trying to sell at Mobile World Congress this year: A combination of different kinds of cores, graphics, specialized processing, and memory systems are more important than any one specific feature. In that way, the "core wars" may have come and gone from mobile even faster than they did for PCs.

Ultimately, it will come down to the specific implementation in specific phones. I would expect some phones will be fastest for browsing, some best at games, and maybe others better at multitasking. Others won't care about which is fastest, but rather which gets better battery life. In that way, it should be a quite competitive market.