Inventec, the Taiwanese company that is the largest contract PC maker in the world, expects to commence the shipping of the upgraded version of Qualcomm's Snapdragon microprocessor - QSD8650A - towards the end of this year.

According to Qualcomm - which is Texas Instruments' rival in the application chips market - the Snapdragon chip makes use of 45 nanometer technology, and would expectedly trim down battery depletion for advanced features like 3D graphics, high-definition video recording and playback, and Global Positioning System.

Using Qualcomm's CDMA wireless technology that is widely used in the US, as well as the UMTS wireless standard for mobile phones, the dual mode Snapdragon chipset would work both in phones as well as portable computers.

Equipped with the Arm microprocessor core, the processor would offer competition to Intel's Atom, which presently powers most of the netbooks. With a six-hour battery life, the bodily smaller processor has a better integration with 3G networks, sans the mainstream Windows operating system.

At this week's Computex in Taipei, Qualcomm will display Inventec's latest reference design, which runs the Millos Linux operating system on a 10.1 inch screen. With several laptop makers considering using Google's Android operating system, Inventec too is involved in development work towards that end.

Mark Hirsch, Inventc's Vice President for Marketing, said that the "tremendous potential" of the operating system is yet to be realized!