(iTers News) - A burst of 1080p full HD video streaming is now severely straining mobile cellular networks’ bandwidth capacity all over the world, prompting mobile service carriers across the world to newly build far wider 4G LTE cellular networks.
Yet, LTE network alone won’t work to relieve the ever-worsening bandwidth crunch. Mobile carriers are turning to a new generation of HEVC technology to make the most use of the limited bandwidth resources, as the video compression technology enables them to transmit 1080p full HD video clips using far less of the network bandwidth capacity.
To keep up, mobile CPU maker Qualcomm has designed its Snapdragon 800 CPU with a home-grown HEVC codec software stack. Coming complete with ARM core-compatible Krait 400 quad core processor, Adreno 330 GPU, and LTE baseband circuitry, the Snapdragon 800 chipset incorporates a HEVC codec software stack.
During its demonstration, Qualcomm showed that the Snapdragon 800 chipset compressed 1080p 30 frame video clips at a bit rate of 4Mbps using its built-in HEVC codec software stack.
On the other hand, the predecessor H.264 video codec technology encoded the same 1080p 30 frame at far higher bit rate of 6Mbps. The lower bit rate enables Qualcomm to reduce the file size from 52.9 megabyte to 32.2 megabytes. It can also stream and play back 4K UHD video clips.
“This is a significant savings in terms of fie size, but its video quality didn’t degrade. The smaller file size translates into the consumption of less bandwidth, meaning you can stream data a lot faster and in a lot more efficient way, “ said Michael Liew, manager with Qualcomm.
True enough, picture quality on both of the H.264 and the HEVC codec format was almost the same, and even the number of SNR, or signal to noise –a measure of picture quality – showed little difference, showing 43.6dB on the HEVC, while measuring 43.1 dB on the H.264.
Often called as H.265, HEVC, or high efficient video codec technology is a new generation of video compression standard to encode and decode 4K video image of about 8 million pixels, boasting two times compression rate, compared with the H.264.
The Snapdragon 800 chipset is the latest of the Snapdragon family that runs at a clock speed of 2.3GHz, zeroing in on high-end mobile communications devices like premium smart phones and tablet PCs.
Fabricated with a 28nm high performance for mobile (HPm) node, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processors will deliver up to 75% better performance than the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor. Its built-in 4G LTE modem boasts a data rate of up to 150 Mbps. The Snapdragon 800 is scheduled to roll off by the mid-2013.