In my estimation it's even worse as you're right they're doing the same type of stuff as Intel, who got caught and fined massive amounts as well as being under extra scrutiny. Unlike Intel vs AMD however there are market players with huge capital who can fight in the mobile market whereas AMD was somewhat crushed by what had happened. This could easily have relatively quick impact in the mobile space.
It was literally crumbs. The amount of money intel was fined and hat to pay is a fraction of the damage they inflicted and the money they made on it. As far as intel is concerned, that is a win. They already inflicted irreversible damage than rendered their sole competitor effectively and perpetually impotent, and all they received was a slap on the wrist, while getting to keep their monopoly.
It' did not matter at that time as AMDs fab were running 100% and they could not have produced more chips anyway. So it was kind of a dumb move from Intel.
Intel wasn't trying to hold back AMD's sales, they were trying to hold back their name recognition, particularly by restricting sales through Dell (the largest PC maker at the time) which crippled them when they ramped up production. The lost revenue during that period (they produced tens of thousands of chips they couldn't even sell around the time the Core 2 Duo launched in 2005-2006) was destructive to AMD's long term R&D and they have never rebounded with architecture or process competitiveness.
As far as Qualcomm goes, it is downright damning to restrict sales of modems or other auxiliary components to an OEM that isn't buying your SoC's. It's hard to imagine they thought they would even get away with it since there are so many OEMs they've been doing this too and they all have evidence.
"Intel wasn't trying to hold back AMD's sales, they were trying to hold back their name recognition, particularly by restricting sales through Dell (the largest PC maker at the time) which crippled them when they ramped up production. The lost revenue during that period (they produced tens of thousands of chips they couldn't even sell around the time the Core 2 Duo launched in 2005-2006) was destructive to AMD's long term R&D and they have never rebounded with architecture or process competitiveness."
Don't forget how AMD's processors weren't using SSE2 at all with programs compiled with the Intel compiler because of the "Genuine Intel" trick. I think that led to 3DMark being drastically distorting for AMD in addition to other problems.
But in reality, at least those in the know (who read sites like Anandtech or magazines like CPU) knew in day-to-day tasks AMD delivered an overall better performance through the entire Netburst-generation of Intel products, and was entirely competitive with Intel up until the Nehalem microarchitecture in performance.
SSE2 hurt benchmarks and some professional applications but most programs and games optimized for "Genuine" Intel didn't show substantial gains because the floating point performance of the Athlon was very competitive with the Core microarchitecture, which depended on large caches to best AMD, something sadly AMD couldn't implement, being so far behind on manufacturing technology from the revenue they gambled on having through the early 00's.
I shouldn't have brought it up, talking about what Intel did to AMD is depressing.
But that's why I don't have pity for Qualcomm, as they have essentially been doing the same shit to their competitors, and even potential competitors they are strongarming out of the industry. This anti-competitive behavior destroys innovation.
Should be interesting to see what evidence the FTC publishes. These are pretty specific accusations, they must have obtained contracts signed by the relevant parties and some damning emails to reach this point.
So Intel buys up Infineon and subjects it to Intel's bloated innovation-lacking corporate bureaucracy, and that becomes Qualcomm fault? Intel is the one who should be charged for being so inept as to destroy Qualcomm's competition. And you want to bring up the word republican? Qualcomm did nothing wrong. Their competition did. Their competition failed, through absolutely no fault of Qualcomm. Punishing the superior competition is about as stupid as bringing in 3rd world migrants.
LMFAO. Too damn good? I'm no Samsung fanboy but it's pretty obvious Samsung (and Apple) have stronger ARM designs than Qualcomm. I mean, you do know what a piece of shit the Snapdragon 808 was, right?
It's safe to say the reason we don't see more Samsung SoC's is due to Qualcomm's behavior. They don't have to license out their modems if they don't want too, but they should require companies that purchase their modems to pair them up with a Qualcomm SoC. That's like saying if you buy an Intel-based computer you can't use an nVidia card (because as we all know, Intel hates nVidia)
There are non-QC choices out there. Samsung and others also make modems. Samsung even combines their own SoCs and in-house basebands, yet they still can't come close to Qualcomm's sales (modems or SoCs). There's a whole lineup of QC chips, 808 was never a top model even when it was new. At various points of the market, SD chips generally hold their own, with a few exceptions over the years. I certainly wouldn't classify them as "too damn good" but also I don't think phone manufacturers choose SoCs at random for their designs.
Oh and Apple? Who does Apple sell those chips to again? They limit the market share of their SoCs... so bringing them up in a discussion of market share against QC doesn't make a lot of sense. With that being said, Qualcomm's licensing is greedy and unfair. It has little to do with SoC performance. They're hurting profits of their competition through abusive tactics. I do fear however that we tread down the potentially thorny path of "who decides what patents are worth". I hope they can find a fair middle ground that doesn't set a bad precedent for patent royalties that would hinder investment in (and licensing of) new technology.
1. So Qualcomm, who made the best Baseband, and selling for a competitive price is being sued? 2. We have already established Intel's modem is far behind Qualcomm, both in features and performance. 3. If Qualcomm refuse to license those patents, how did LG, Huawei, Samsung and Mediatek made their own baseband modem? 4. In the likelihood of Qualcomm do license out patents, it is more likely most have calculated the cost to do it themselves and make a modem that is half as decent as Qualcomm isn't worth it.
So I dont think this is anything similar to what Intel did to AMD. The margin on both is totally different too.
Qualcomm told apple not to implement wimax on its phones in return for rebates, intel told its partners not to use amd in return for rebates... seems very similar to me.
That is completely different. No Telecoms, at least most of the major telecoms on the planet wanted Intel to be their ONLY telecom Equipment provider. That was what Intel were aiming for, it was so clear that wanted the telecom to be another x86 desktop market. Most carrier opted for the traditional upgrade from Ericsson, Nokia, Alcatel, Siemens etc,
And with No network, then there is no Phone. It is a chicken and egg problem.
So for it to be similar to Intel AMD case, Qualcomm would have to told its partner NOT to use other LTE baseband chip like from those of Intel, which Qualcomm did not.
Regarding point 3, Qualcomm doesn't demand licenses from baseband manufacturers; it demands them from phone manufacturers. Just like how Microsoft gets patent fees from Android OEMs instead of from Google, even though it's Google's OS that supposedly infringes Microsoft patents.
In this way, other baseband manufacturers are allowed to make and sell their own basebands, but phone manufacturers have to pay Qualcomm for the patent license in order to use the basebands in their phones. And pay extra license fees if the baseband used wasn't manufactured by Qualcomm.
It wasn't extra, but Qualcomm making sure you dont get any cost saving by using other Baseband Modem. Those patents aren't invalid either. In the end it was much easier to buy chips from Qualcomm rather then doing it yourself.
Well, Qualcomm sure is nice to offer, with no prompting, to manage the budgets of its customers. /s
By making it no cheaper to source from other suppliers, Qualcomm was being anti-competitive. Surely they could already win based on their actual merits, but they just had to price competitors out of the market in a roundabout manner (by raising license fees on the same slate of patents, which is discriminatory pricing, and against FRAND).
Not Really rising price. That was the false assumption. And this isn't some rip off patents like HEVC. And they still follow ( under a different view point ) FRAND.
Qualcomm is one of the largest Semiconductor company on the market right now, they know full well the cost of Fabbing from TSMC and Samsung, projected manufacturing cost increase etc. So they offer their SoC for a VERY competitive price.
i.e it wasn't a variable number, it was set long before as % of phone. What Qualcomm said is that instead of paying as this %, you can buy our Chip and get everything in one deal. And in grand view of things, or comparatively speaking, that % isn't an outrageous number.
You could argue the % is high, but that is even more true for numerous other party from a technical perspective.
Best Baseband modem or not, they should let whoever the fuck is buying them pair them with whatever components they want without penalty. Giving a price discount is totally fine (say a OEM buys 10k modems and 10k SoC together) but saying you can't have 10k modems without buying 10k SoC's when you have competitors that make compatible SoC's is entirely illegal.
What's next, do you think Intel should require motherboard makers who buy their chipsets to use Realtek (a loose subsidiary of Intel) Codec's and Intel network controllers? They can have incentives to do so (Centrino anybody?) but they can't strongarm you into NOT buying from the competition. That's just bad for everybody...but them.
I wonder which TLA's demands they were too slow to acquiesce to? IIRC they already basically admitted to backdooring their products (or, at least, didn't deny it quickly or loudly enough).
Come to think of it, maybe this is retribution for that.
Everything is back-door-ed nowadays. That's just the "norm". Most of the times they call it "vulnerabilities" when it gets accidentally discovered by third parties, and the first patch to fix it comes with a new backdoor. See, it is crucial to fix those "vulnerabilities" so that the ground is never evened for 3rd parties. Only the manufacturer and his benefactors are supposed to have access.
OK, not "everything" everything, but everything that includes proprietary binary blobs.
They say those blobs keep trade secrets, but that's just BS. If those are truly unique, they outta be patented and turned into a stream of revenues, from licensing or suing, plus binary blob or not, once a modest team sets up to it, it can be reverse engineers,
What binary blobs truly hide is and has always been backdoors. If your system's deployed code is not 100% open source, they you are most definitely having backdoors. Note that backdoors can just as easily be implemented into deliberately careless and vulnerable open source as well.
Software today is insanely bloated, and that needless bloat is a perfect place to hide backdoors, as it would take a significant amount of time to identify them even with open source code.
it's not that simple imho. E.g. mobile games that quickly become successful can bring in the cash before they get ripped off, if there are any rip-offs at all that is (not worth it for games that don't make much money, possibly still worth it to make them for single developers though).
If reverse engineering a binary blob is easily reverse engineered by a modest team, then wouldn't those same teams quickly discover any backdoors in the course of their work?
I dont' think that backdoors are as commonplace as you're making them out to be and that binary blobs are as trivial to reverse engineer as you're implying. Nefarious backdoors would be getting a lot more attention if that were the case.
They are rarely deliberately obvious. There are numerous ways to implement backdoors via deliberate flaws, which are not that easy to discover, and really only useful for the people who put them there in the first place.
This is also why it is more complicated to discover them by reverse engineering. Plus they are not always direct exploits, they tend to be implemented as cascades between several "flaws" in a particular sequence and with particular data.
There is the big difference between simply breaking the code and crashing the executable, and breaking it in a way that opens a functional backdoor while retaining stable operation.
It is much easier to reverse engineer the actual algorithms and such, because they constitute direct intent. Naturally, such backdoors can be so complex that they can just as well be hidden in plain view, and implemented in open source as well. Thus I did not say open source is a guarantee for the lack of backdoors, just that binary blobs make much more sense to hide nefarious intent better than to hide intellectual property.
At that will come out of this is that it was totally worth it for QC to do this. The fine will be lower than the profits and the company is too large to give it a fine that will actually hurt it so that people lose jobs.
The fine should be much more subtle. Jail for top-managers. No control over your company? Well your fault. In reality they all knew exactly what they were doing. If you fuck with patent and licensing law, all affected and related patents run out immediately.
You have to hit them where it hurts and cash isn't it. Top-managers will walk away from this once again with 0 damage taken. That's were you need to apply the lever. If you can't be penalized there is no reason you should not try illegal stuff.
It's much worse than that.More from the FTC: a. Qualcomm's royalties are disproportionately high relative to the value contributed by its patented inventions, and often are several times higher than the royalties of other SEP licensors that have made similar technical contributions; b. Qualcomm has continued to calculate royalties as a percentage of a handset's price, even though handsets today offer a number of features—including cameras, high-resolution touch-screen displays, powerful applications and graphics processors—other than cellular connectivity; c. Qualcomm's standard royalty rate has not fallen, even though many of Qualcomm's patents related to CDMA technology have expired
The Korea regulator's accusation (PDF warning) goo.gl/1vWq3Z
Not sure why nobody in the press has ever tried to explain the practice properly. Every phone we buy costs a few extra % because of Qualcomm's outrageous practices.
Just refusing to license standard essential patents to other chip makers is well beyond outrageous. And the amount of undeserved profits are staggering.
Qualcomm's guy was just on NPR yesterday bragging about how it's practically impossible for anyone to touch a mobile device and such and not end up dealing with one of their chips.
And this would be the third government body that sues Qualcomm (after Korea and the EU) for its corporate practices. Sue these dirtbags into the ground and destroy the company, for all I care.
The state the baseband market is today is mostly due to market consolidation and technological advances. In the era of 3G my devices used various baseband units from TI, Icera, infineon, ST-Ericsson, and Qualcomm in the transion between 3G (WCDMA/HSPA+) and 4G (LTE). I switched to 4G in late 2010, the modem actually had a Samsung baseband. Between 2011-2016 I have only owned Snapdragon or Gobi based devices from various manufacturers. Late 2016 I got an Honor 8 with their in-house baseband and haven't noticed any any changes compared to SD808 performance, speeds are the same.
Before when devices used 1000s of components there was room for more players, but when more and more features are integrated on the SoC and other chips. Its natural that a handful of companies take become victorious. Baseband chips are rather capital intensive, R&D, licensing, cutting edge fab technologies, reference and validation cost. Most baseband vendors license IP packages from companies like Ceva, while Qualcomm have their own dsp for example, and on top a leading patentportfolio. Other vendors were slow to integrate the baseband on their SoC and the market for discrete modems were in decline.
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invinciblegod - Tuesday, January 17, 2017 - link
Ironic that the Intel who paid PC manufacturers to exclude AMD was handicapped with the same method by Qualcomm.thestryker - Tuesday, January 17, 2017 - link
In my estimation it's even worse as you're right they're doing the same type of stuff as Intel, who got caught and fined massive amounts as well as being under extra scrutiny. Unlike Intel vs AMD however there are market players with huge capital who can fight in the mobile market whereas AMD was somewhat crushed by what had happened. This could easily have relatively quick impact in the mobile space.ddriver - Tuesday, January 17, 2017 - link
"fined massive amounts"It was literally crumbs. The amount of money intel was fined and hat to pay is a fraction of the damage they inflicted and the money they made on it. As far as intel is concerned, that is a win. They already inflicted irreversible damage than rendered their sole competitor effectively and perpetually impotent, and all they received was a slap on the wrist, while getting to keep their monopoly.
Nagorak - Tuesday, January 17, 2017 - link
Yeah, I don't have any sympathy for Intel in this case. Turnabout's fair play, as far as I'm concerned.beginner99 - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
It' did not matter at that time as AMDs fab were running 100% and they could not have produced more chips anyway. So it was kind of a dumb move from Intel.Samus - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
Intel wasn't trying to hold back AMD's sales, they were trying to hold back their name recognition, particularly by restricting sales through Dell (the largest PC maker at the time) which crippled them when they ramped up production. The lost revenue during that period (they produced tens of thousands of chips they couldn't even sell around the time the Core 2 Duo launched in 2005-2006) was destructive to AMD's long term R&D and they have never rebounded with architecture or process competitiveness.As far as Qualcomm goes, it is downright damning to restrict sales of modems or other auxiliary components to an OEM that isn't buying your SoC's. It's hard to imagine they thought they would even get away with it since there are so many OEMs they've been doing this too and they all have evidence.
Oxford Guy - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
"Intel wasn't trying to hold back AMD's sales, they were trying to hold back their name recognition, particularly by restricting sales through Dell (the largest PC maker at the time) which crippled them when they ramped up production. The lost revenue during that period (they produced tens of thousands of chips they couldn't even sell around the time the Core 2 Duo launched in 2005-2006) was destructive to AMD's long term R&D and they have never rebounded with architecture or process competitiveness."Don't forget how AMD's processors weren't using SSE2 at all with programs compiled with the Intel compiler because of the "Genuine Intel" trick. I think that led to 3DMark being drastically distorting for AMD in addition to other problems.
Samus - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
But in reality, at least those in the know (who read sites like Anandtech or magazines like CPU) knew in day-to-day tasks AMD delivered an overall better performance through the entire Netburst-generation of Intel products, and was entirely competitive with Intel up until the Nehalem microarchitecture in performance.SSE2 hurt benchmarks and some professional applications but most programs and games optimized for "Genuine" Intel didn't show substantial gains because the floating point performance of the Athlon was very competitive with the Core microarchitecture, which depended on large caches to best AMD, something sadly AMD couldn't implement, being so far behind on manufacturing technology from the revenue they gambled on having through the early 00's.
I shouldn't have brought it up, talking about what Intel did to AMD is depressing.
But that's why I don't have pity for Qualcomm, as they have essentially been doing the same shit to their competitors, and even potential competitors they are strongarming out of the industry. This anti-competitive behavior destroys innovation.
webdoctors - Tuesday, January 17, 2017 - link
Should be interesting to see what evidence the FTC publishes. These are pretty specific accusations, they must have obtained contracts signed by the relevant parties and some damning emails to reach this point.Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, January 17, 2017 - link
Yet another company is punished for being too damn good.HighTech4US - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
Typical retarded republican logic.Because they think that companies that are monopolies that abuse their monopoly by known monopolist tactics are great companies.
Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
So Intel buys up Infineon and subjects it to Intel's bloated innovation-lacking corporate bureaucracy, and that becomes Qualcomm fault? Intel is the one who should be charged for being so inept as to destroy Qualcomm's competition. And you want to bring up the word republican? Qualcomm did nothing wrong. Their competition did. Their competition failed, through absolutely no fault of Qualcomm. Punishing the superior competition is about as stupid as bringing in 3rd world migrants.Kvaern1 - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
That's how it sounds when they can't blame the money grabbers in the EU.Samus - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
LMFAO. Too damn good? I'm no Samsung fanboy but it's pretty obvious Samsung (and Apple) have stronger ARM designs than Qualcomm. I mean, you do know what a piece of shit the Snapdragon 808 was, right?It's safe to say the reason we don't see more Samsung SoC's is due to Qualcomm's behavior. They don't have to license out their modems if they don't want too, but they should require companies that purchase their modems to pair them up with a Qualcomm SoC. That's like saying if you buy an Intel-based computer you can't use an nVidia card (because as we all know, Intel hates nVidia)
Alexvrb - Thursday, January 19, 2017 - link
There are non-QC choices out there. Samsung and others also make modems. Samsung even combines their own SoCs and in-house basebands, yet they still can't come close to Qualcomm's sales (modems or SoCs). There's a whole lineup of QC chips, 808 was never a top model even when it was new. At various points of the market, SD chips generally hold their own, with a few exceptions over the years. I certainly wouldn't classify them as "too damn good" but also I don't think phone manufacturers choose SoCs at random for their designs.Oh and Apple? Who does Apple sell those chips to again? They limit the market share of their SoCs... so bringing them up in a discussion of market share against QC doesn't make a lot of sense. With that being said, Qualcomm's licensing is greedy and unfair. It has little to do with SoC performance. They're hurting profits of their competition through abusive tactics. I do fear however that we tread down the potentially thorny path of "who decides what patents are worth". I hope they can find a fair middle ground that doesn't set a bad precedent for patent royalties that would hinder investment in (and licensing of) new technology.
iwod - Tuesday, January 17, 2017 - link
1. So Qualcomm, who made the best Baseband, and selling for a competitive price is being sued?2. We have already established Intel's modem is far behind Qualcomm, both in features and performance.
3. If Qualcomm refuse to license those patents, how did LG, Huawei, Samsung and Mediatek made their own baseband modem?
4. In the likelihood of Qualcomm do license out patents, it is more likely most have calculated the cost to do it themselves and make a modem that is half as decent as Qualcomm isn't worth it.
So I dont think this is anything similar to what Intel did to AMD. The margin on both is totally different too.
shabby - Tuesday, January 17, 2017 - link
Qualcomm told apple not to implement wimax on its phones in return for rebates, intel told its partners not to use amd in return for rebates... seems very similar to me.http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/17/14303910/qualcom...
iwod - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
That is completely different. No Telecoms, at least most of the major telecoms on the planet wanted Intel to be their ONLY telecom Equipment provider. That was what Intel were aiming for, it was so clear that wanted the telecom to be another x86 desktop market. Most carrier opted for the traditional upgrade from Ericsson, Nokia, Alcatel, Siemens etc,And with No network, then there is no Phone. It is a chicken and egg problem.
So for it to be similar to Intel AMD case, Qualcomm would have to told its partner NOT to use other LTE baseband chip like from those of Intel, which Qualcomm did not.
londedoganet - Tuesday, January 17, 2017 - link
Regarding point 3, Qualcomm doesn't demand licenses from baseband manufacturers; it demands them from phone manufacturers. Just like how Microsoft gets patent fees from Android OEMs instead of from Google, even though it's Google's OS that supposedly infringes Microsoft patents.londedoganet - Tuesday, January 17, 2017 - link
In this way, other baseband manufacturers are allowed to make and sell their own basebands, but phone manufacturers have to pay Qualcomm for the patent license in order to use the basebands in their phones. And pay extra license fees if the baseband used wasn't manufactured by Qualcomm.iwod - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
It wasn't extra, but Qualcomm making sure you dont get any cost saving by using other Baseband Modem. Those patents aren't invalid either. In the end it was much easier to buy chips from Qualcomm rather then doing it yourself.londedoganet - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
Well, Qualcomm sure is nice to offer, with no prompting, to manage the budgets of its customers. /sBy making it no cheaper to source from other suppliers, Qualcomm was being anti-competitive. Surely they could already win based on their actual merits, but they just had to price competitors out of the market in a roundabout manner (by raising license fees on the same slate of patents, which is discriminatory pricing, and against FRAND).
iwod - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
Not Really rising price. That was the false assumption. And this isn't some rip off patents like HEVC.And they still follow ( under a different view point ) FRAND.
Qualcomm is one of the largest Semiconductor company on the market right now, they know full well the cost of Fabbing from TSMC and Samsung, projected manufacturing cost increase etc. So they offer their SoC for a VERY competitive price.
i.e it wasn't a variable number, it was set long before as % of phone. What Qualcomm said is that instead of paying as this %, you can buy our Chip and get everything in one deal.
And in grand view of things, or comparatively speaking, that % isn't an outrageous number.
You could argue the % is high, but that is even more true for numerous other party from a technical perspective.
londedoganet - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
BTW, not disputing the fact that the patents are valid, or that Qualcomm should be paid for them.Samus - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
Best Baseband modem or not, they should let whoever the fuck is buying them pair them with whatever components they want without penalty. Giving a price discount is totally fine (say a OEM buys 10k modems and 10k SoC together) but saying you can't have 10k modems without buying 10k SoC's when you have competitors that make compatible SoC's is entirely illegal.What's next, do you think Intel should require motherboard makers who buy their chipsets to use Realtek (a loose subsidiary of Intel) Codec's and Intel network controllers? They can have incentives to do so (Centrino anybody?) but they can't strongarm you into NOT buying from the competition. That's just bad for everybody...but them.
Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer - Tuesday, January 17, 2017 - link
I wonder which TLA's demands they were too slow to acquiesce to? IIRC they already basically admitted to backdooring their products (or, at least, didn't deny it quickly or loudly enough).Come to think of it, maybe this is retribution for that.
ddriver - Tuesday, January 17, 2017 - link
Everything is back-door-ed nowadays. That's just the "norm". Most of the times they call it "vulnerabilities" when it gets accidentally discovered by third parties, and the first patch to fix it comes with a new backdoor. See, it is crucial to fix those "vulnerabilities" so that the ground is never evened for 3rd parties. Only the manufacturer and his benefactors are supposed to have access.ddriver - Tuesday, January 17, 2017 - link
OK, not "everything" everything, but everything that includes proprietary binary blobs.They say those blobs keep trade secrets, but that's just BS. If those are truly unique, they outta be patented and turned into a stream of revenues, from licensing or suing, plus binary blob or not, once a modest team sets up to it, it can be reverse engineers,
What binary blobs truly hide is and has always been backdoors. If your system's deployed code is not 100% open source, they you are most definitely having backdoors. Note that backdoors can just as easily be implemented into deliberately careless and vulnerable open source as well.
Software today is insanely bloated, and that needless bloat is a perfect place to hide backdoors, as it would take a significant amount of time to identify them even with open source code.
Murloc - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
it's not that simple imho. E.g. mobile games that quickly become successful can bring in the cash before they get ripped off, if there are any rip-offs at all that is (not worth it for games that don't make much money, possibly still worth it to make them for single developers though).Murloc - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
and these games can be not backdoored even if they are proprietary binary blobs.BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
If reverse engineering a binary blob is easily reverse engineered by a modest team, then wouldn't those same teams quickly discover any backdoors in the course of their work?I dont' think that backdoors are as commonplace as you're making them out to be and that binary blobs are as trivial to reverse engineer as you're implying. Nefarious backdoors would be getting a lot more attention if that were the case.
ddriver - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
They are rarely deliberately obvious. There are numerous ways to implement backdoors via deliberate flaws, which are not that easy to discover, and really only useful for the people who put them there in the first place.This is also why it is more complicated to discover them by reverse engineering. Plus they are not always direct exploits, they tend to be implemented as cascades between several "flaws" in a particular sequence and with particular data.
There is the big difference between simply breaking the code and crashing the executable, and breaking it in a way that opens a functional backdoor while retaining stable operation.
It is much easier to reverse engineer the actual algorithms and such, because they constitute direct intent. Naturally, such backdoors can be so complex that they can just as well be hidden in plain view, and implemented in open source as well. Thus I did not say open source is a guarantee for the lack of backdoors, just that binary blobs make much more sense to hide nefarious intent better than to hide intellectual property.
coburn_c - Tuesday, January 17, 2017 - link
Sounds like Qualcomm didn't pay someone off like they were told to. Good for them.beginner99 - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
At that will come out of this is that it was totally worth it for QC to do this. The fine will be lower than the profits and the company is too large to give it a fine that will actually hurt it so that people lose jobs.The fine should be much more subtle. Jail for top-managers. No control over your company? Well your fault. In reality they all knew exactly what they were doing. If you fuck with patent and licensing law, all affected and related patents run out immediately.
You have to hit them where it hurts and cash isn't it. Top-managers will walk away from this once again with 0 damage taken. That's were you need to apply the lever. If you can't be penalized there is no reason you should not try illegal stuff.
Same with VW. They had record sales this year...
Murloc - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
well they did arrest VW managers in the US and VW has advised their employees not to travel to the US.jjj - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
It's much worse than that.More from the FTC:a. Qualcomm's royalties are disproportionately high relative to the value contributed by its patented inventions, and often are several times higher than the royalties of other SEP licensors that have made similar technical contributions;
b. Qualcomm has continued to calculate royalties as a percentage of a handset's price, even though handsets today offer a number of features—including cameras, high-resolution touch-screen displays, powerful applications and graphics processors—other than cellular connectivity;
c. Qualcomm's standard royalty rate has not fallen, even though many of Qualcomm's patents related to CDMA technology have expired
The Korea regulator's accusation (PDF warning) goo.gl/1vWq3Z
Not sure why nobody in the press has ever tried to explain the practice properly. Every phone we buy costs a few extra % because of Qualcomm's outrageous practices.
Just refusing to license standard essential patents to other chip makers is well beyond outrageous. And the amount of undeserved profits are staggering.
Oxford Guy - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
Qualcomm's guy was just on NPR yesterday bragging about how it's practically impossible for anyone to touch a mobile device and such and not end up dealing with one of their chips.The irony.
JoeyJoJo123 - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 - link
And this would be the third government body that sues Qualcomm (after Korea and the EU) for its corporate practices. Sue these dirtbags into the ground and destroy the company, for all I care.Ariknowsbest - Thursday, January 19, 2017 - link
The state the baseband market is today is mostly due to market consolidation and technological advances. In the era of 3G my devices used various baseband units from TI, Icera, infineon, ST-Ericsson, and Qualcomm in the transion between 3G (WCDMA/HSPA+) and 4G (LTE). I switched to 4G in late 2010, the modem actually had a Samsung baseband. Between 2011-2016 I have only owned Snapdragon or Gobi based devices from various manufacturers. Late 2016 I got an Honor 8 with their in-house baseband and haven't noticed any any changes compared to SD808 performance, speeds are the same.Before when devices used 1000s of components there was room for more players, but when more and more features are integrated on the SoC and other chips. Its natural that a handful of companies take become victorious. Baseband chips are rather capital intensive, R&D, licensing, cutting edge fab technologies, reference and validation cost. Most baseband vendors license IP packages from companies like Ceva, while Qualcomm have their own dsp for example, and on top a leading patentportfolio. Other vendors were slow to integrate the baseband on their SoC and the market for discrete modems were in decline.