QUALCOMM Incorporated aims Snapdragon 800 chips at 'premium' phones and tablets. Qualcomm's keynote at the International CES was packed with big names and even a Big Bird, but CEO Paul Jacobs' focus was on something much smaller a new family of processors aimed at high-end smartphones and tablets. The Snapdragon 800 series will appear in premium mobile devices in the second half of the year and give up to a 75% performance boost over Qualcomm's current Snapdragon S4 chips.

The 800 series will be manufactured on a 28-nanometer process, allowing it to consume half the power of its predecessor. The chips include a quad-core CPU, known as the Krait 400, with each core running at up to 2.3GHz. It has a new Adreno 330 GPU and integrates a 4G LTE modem for data rates of up to 150Mbps, as well as the new 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard.

All those numbers should add up to a capable chip. Mobile devices will be able to playback and record UltraHD video and support display resolutions of up to 2,560x2,048 pixels. While the 800 series is for premium devices, The company also introduced the Snapdragon 600 series, which it says offers a 40% performance boost over the S4 Pro and is aimed at high-end devices.

The 600 series chips have a Krait 300 quad-core CPU with core speeds up to 1.9GHz. Those chips are due in devices in the second quarter, sooner than the 800 series chips. The new processors will compete with Nvidia's Tegra 4 chip, Samsung's Exynos 5 and Apple's A5 and A5X, used in its iPhone and iPad.

Intel is also developing more powerful low power chips, and announced its first quad-core Atom chip.