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  • Dolda2000 - Monday, February 14, 2022 - link

    >[...] you’ll probably understand what I mean when I say that half the stuff we saw was installer bugs doing ‘if machine’ type checks.
    Sigh. Yes, I do understand.
  • gijames1225 - Monday, February 14, 2022 - link

    It's weird that Qualcomm used to be leading in custom core design, and then totally dropped out of that race for almost a decade and had to buy their way back in. I mean, I'm glad we'll see more competition in high performance ARM cores, but it was just such an extreme strategic fumble to stop building custom cores after the Snapdragon 800 / 805.
  • Raqia - Monday, February 14, 2022 - link

    The saga of Qualcomm's CPU team is directly related to Broadcom's attempted, but shut down hostile bid for the company a few years back. They had diverted CPU engineering resources to a server project which was well reviewed but ultimately scuttled by management after making promises to big institutional investors to cut costs in order to thwart the (very low) bid by Hock Tan and a hedge fund he looped in to close the deal.

    At the time, ARM's stock CPU IP was doing better than Qualcomm's internal IP both due to the diversion of resources to servers and availability of very good designs out of ARM. The CPU division was less impactful to mobile designs (outside of very specific benchmarking) as well as a separate wing from Qualcomm's core SoC competency due to its then server focus that could be cut to appease large institutional stock holders so it went on the chopping block as they promised.

    It seems like they appeased investors after their legal victory over Apple and the US FTC, made plenty of money from design wins at Apple / product line diversification and saw trajectory of ARM's designs was leveling out so they went out to source a core design Nuvia which turned into an outright buy. Indeed, the acquisition of key former Apple talent was a nice FU back at Apple for its bullying through legally flimsy complaints and international coordination with near sighted regulators.
  • fmcjw - Tuesday, February 15, 2022 - link

    Execution is another matter, not only at Qualcomm, but Microsoft. I'm skeptical Windows on ARM will be as good as it is on x86 by 2023, so the new SoC will probably be best for Linux or ChromeOS, which is to say, not mainstream. And the 2 year old tech in Snapdragon 870 is plenty for Android. MediaTek is pretty opportunistic here, riding on ARM stock designs and leading edge processes, and taking a wait-and-see attitude towards laptop SoCs. If Windows gets Windows on ARM right, I'm sure the latest MediaTek 4nm X3 SoC in 2023 will serve Android AND Windows pretty well. If anything, Qualcomm needs to pay for WoA development and somehow legally prohibit others from using its optimizations, which goes against the Windows run anywhere philosophy.
  • Raqia - Tuesday, February 15, 2022 - link

    I think the situation with Windows 11 on ARM is quite good:

    https://youtu.be/nrvnpFCcZeA

    Note this is running on almost 5 year old hardware with less than ideal GPU drivers (CPU emulating Direct X for 64 bit software). It would be a treat if OEMs and Microsoft collaborated to enable Windows to be side-loaded on phones which even come with hypervisors now; making it usable with your usual peripherals and monitors shouldn't be a huge deal either.

    I think Microsoft is fully invested in ARM due to the lack of suitable x86 hardware for ultramobile purposes. Rumors of HoloLens' demise have been greatly exaggerated, but they are going with ARM or nothing in the next 5 years for any of these form factors.
  • iphonebestgamephone - Thursday, February 17, 2022 - link

    A 4 year old soc running 10 year old games sure is impressive.
  • at_clucks - Tuesday, February 15, 2022 - link

    "FU back at Apple for its bullying"

    Awww, poor Qualcomm, being bullied by Apple. What a bad place to be, someone abusing their position and bullying everyone else with through legally flimsy complaints. It's almost as if Qualcomm got way less than it deserved: http://regulatingforglobalization.com/2018/02/15/4...
  • Raqia - Wednesday, February 16, 2022 - link

    If you took a moment to actually compare Qualcomm's model to say Intel's, you'd realize they're adopting an IP licensing model that's actually led to vibrant competition and better consumer pricing and products than one where IP is jealously guarded and improvements and prices stagnated over a decade. (Just compare cellular SoC pricing to x86.) This is impressive given that cellular technologies are far more complicated and valuable than CPUs in both specifications and implementation and require vast amounts of investment.

    None of Apple's claims held water either: Qualcomm capped its royalties and they effectively constitute a discount for producers of cheaper phones (i.e. Apple competitors) and its IP is practiced and forms a network at not just the level of the modem, but RF, antenna, cell tower, network etc.

    Much of media was aligned against Qualcomm because Apple was such a lovable, unstoppable virtue signaling juggernaut, but some could pierce the veil:

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-10-04...

    Courts did examine both the competitive and legal aspects with the US 9th circuit concluding Qualcomm was "hyper-competitive" rather than "anti-competitive" in an unusually lengthy opinion granting Qualcomm's appeal of the case:

    https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/20...

    I would take another look before holding fast to conclusions.
  • uefi - Monday, February 14, 2022 - link

    For a second there at first glance, I thought you interviewed Devin Nunes.
  • PlasticMouse - Tuesday, February 15, 2022 - link

    I particularly liked Ian's comment about how a lot of vendors are clutching at straws when it comes to promoting the on-board AI capabilities of their chips. A lot of it seems to be focused on better audio processing and video effects. Can someone elaborate how edge AI might improve the PC user experience?
  • nandnandnand - Thursday, February 17, 2022 - link

    Hopefully, the applications will slowly accumulate until it's indispensable. But the smartphones will probably always have more use cases for ML acceleration.
  • mode_13h - Sunday, February 20, 2022 - link

    This sort of happened with GPUs. I remember back when it occurred to me that hardware acceleration for 3D was becoming ubiquitous.

    I have a little more anxiety about the same thing happening with AI accelerators. The use case of it being used to spy on you is already too common.
  • SterlingBorrego - Tuesday, February 15, 2022 - link

    We have seen the future of Lamborghini, and it's the Diamante. Separated at birth, the Aventador and this futuristic Diamante do indeed look ...
  • Dahak - Tuesday, February 15, 2022 - link

    "which we've been trying for a while in this industry, is to accelerate. The notebook industry is a little bit slower than the mobile industry, so how do we accelerate the pace of innovation? So you'll see some activity there as well so that we can really drive innovation faster."

    For Me .... slow down already. We are at a point where we are getting new phones pretty much every year, laptops almost as fast.

    Why not slow down a bit and do a 2 year cadence, help limit e-waste, supply issues like we are seeing now(somewhat might not make a big deal) .... but oh yea..... money
  • whatthe123 - Wednesday, February 16, 2022 - link

    problem is most of the updates to mobile barely accomplish anything. if we were accelerating and gaining significant efficiency every year that would be great, but instead a lot of the efficiency is just murdered by pushing chips too far and cramming too many features into everything. would be nice if laptop manufacturers actually had worthwhile advances with their yearly cadence.
  • mode_13h - Sunday, February 20, 2022 - link

    > slow down already. We are at a point where we are getting new phones
    > pretty much every year, laptops almost as fast.

    Nobody is making you upgrade your phone every year, are they? I typically do 3-year phone upgrades. I might get 4 out of my current one. I can't really comment on the laptop market, because I have such limited uses for them.
  • zamroni - Tuesday, February 15, 2022 - link

    Qualcomm should stop force feeding cellular modem into laptop apu.
    Apple m1 proves that it's not needed.

    laptop also doesn't need strong dsp as users only need webcam to capture fhd30 videos
  • nandnandnand - Thursday, February 17, 2022 - link

    FHD60 or Ian cries.
  • mode_13h - Sunday, February 20, 2022 - link

    LOL. I know, right?
  • eastcoast_pete - Tuesday, February 15, 2022 - link

    So, which laptops or 2-in-1s "powered by Qualcomm" with 16 GB RAM are currently available or announced, especially at competitive price points? The previous attempts were ridiculously high priced, and thus had the low sales very niche products tend to have.
    And in the meantime, neither Intel (mobile AL) nor AMD (upcoming mobile APUs) are standing still. If this is supposed to work, QC has to control its greed, and forgo high margins now for longer-term success. Not sure they remember how to do that.
  • abufrejoval - Wednesday, February 16, 2022 - link

    While I’d very much like an ARM based laptop with i5 like computing power at fully passive TDP, I wouldn’t want to run Windows on it, nor x86 code for that matter. Emulations are cool, I run my last good Apple (a ][ )as such, but less relevant than ever, open source compiles to any ISA and the most intensive workloads need accelerators anyway.

    Where I used to have no more than a single PC from 1981 to around 1995, these days I have dozens in various form factors and most of them are tied to certain use cases, not single purpose mind you, but not everything on each either.

    And for the sit-down work after years of home-office, nothing is as important as a big screen any more, 40-50” and at least 4k. I’ve got a wonderful Ryzen 5800U based notebook with a high-res 16:10 screen on 13.3” that I would have died for only a few years ago, but when I take it out for some work away from the desk, I feel almost claustrophobic, just because it’s too small to keep eyes on more than a single thing, even worse when there is a conference going on, too.

    Really seamless wireless (optical?) docking, without a single plug and with any screen in the house or office would be a welcome treat much more important than two continuous days on a single charge: I rarely stay for days in places without a socket and even 65Watt chargers are tiny these days.

    That Ryzen has just about the same scalar peak power as my monster workstation for as long as I tolerate to wait for any answer, while the multicore performance obviously suffers in this form factor, rarely though to the point where it hurts: that’s why I have beefy workstations and giant servers to do that type of work.

    And I can’t see myself gaming on something in this form factor, pretty much the only (on-premise) workload that really stresses the hardware, even if they were able to fit 400 Watts of GPU power into that form factor at single digit TDP, which even ARM won’t do for the foreseeable future. And gaming is currently the only holdback for Windows, everything else I do on a laptop is starting to be done better with the same Linux that runs on the back-ends.

    I’d value fanless over extra punch at 15 Watts TDP also because I dislike what dust and crumbs do to a laptop’s insides and might provide the extra space that a replaceable (or really long-life) battery requires.

    The only good thing about Windows 11 is that it starts to look like KDE, the fact that it starts to talk home as soon as you hit the start button, is simply inacceptable, an invasion of my personal computing space where Microsoft only had permission to run an operating system not my life.

    Which is why Microsoft’s attempt to lock these machines down as Windows 11 hardware is so terribly dangerous and needs to be countered before they launch.

    Microsoft wants to overtake Apple on the slow lane and pervert the personal computer into a “super-block-mode” terminal for its cloud orchestrated AI, using NPU IP blocks for local analytics that I see more directed against the user’s best interest than serving only the person which bought the device only to have its loyalty misdirected to Macrosoft. Let that remain Apple’s domain, if anyone's, for those who prefer convenience over sovereignty.
  • GeoffreyA - Wednesday, February 16, 2022 - link

    In the early stages, I was tempted, horribly so, to install Windows 11, but I held out and don't feel the pang any more. The thing that saved me was reflecting, why do I need to make a mess of my taskbar, why do I have to go through more trouble to open Task Manager, and why do I need to lose Quick Launch? After that, I washed my hands of the ISO and said, keep it, Microsoft.
  • mode_13h - Sunday, February 20, 2022 - link

    Eventually, you'll have some hardware that's only supported under Windows 11. That's how they get you.
  • GeoffreyA - Thursday, February 24, 2022 - link

    This weekend, I finally tried 11 in a VM and was put off from the start. As others have pointed out, it seems very like an incomplete house. From a functional point of view, none of it feels sensible or intuitive. Usually, the new aesthetics are hindering the path of efficient action. Some genius at Redmond led the redesign of the context menu generations were familiar with. I got the feeling that, having grown weary of minimal design, Microsoft tried to "do up" their looks, making it worse. Isolated, some elements looked all right; but coming together in the tapestry of the OS, it's clearly drawing attention away from, and obscuring, function. Ashamed of who it was, 11 put on a posh, mobile, MacOS look, but ended up looking cheap and making Windows an embarrassment once more.

    Evidently, it's following in the footsteps of its illustrious predecessors, ME, Vista, and 8.
  • mode_13h - Thursday, February 24, 2022 - link

    > having grown weary of minimal design, Microsoft tried to "do up" their looks

    Some elements of Windows 10 is too minimal for me. I have apps where you cannot easily see which window has focus, because they toned down the cues so much. Even after I customized what's easily customizable, it's still not great.

    Another example is the scrollbar-hiding. They really went too far with the minimalistic push, to the point of making the UI less usable.
  • GeoffreyA - Friday, February 25, 2022 - link

    Yes, the scrollbar-hiding is silly. I think the overdone minimalism was a reaction to the ornate style of Vista and 7. I liked XP's plain, almost cartoonish style the best. It was actually minimalistic, and helped you forget about the OS and get the work done. Microsoft should implement a theming system where you get to choose which Windows appearance you want (98, XP, Aero, 10). It would solve much complaint targeted at new Windows versions.
  • mode_13h - Saturday, February 26, 2022 - link

    > Microsoft should implement a theming system where you get to choose
    > which Windows appearance you want

    They probably look at MacOS and the way Apple can succeed in spite of its paternalistic attitude and feel that gives them license to do the same. And I'm sure they tell themselves all kinds of things about the importance of a consistent user experience.
  • GeoffreyA - Sunday, February 27, 2022 - link

    Well, I wonder what the users had to say. Anyway, MS seems always stuck in Apple's shadow when it comes to the GUI, as if they're ashamed of Windows. Aero, the centered titles in 8, and now the centred taskbar, which is like a cheap version of the dock.
  • Raqia - Wednesday, February 16, 2022 - link

    You may have much better options very soon:

    https://www.androidauthority.com/windows-11-androi...
  • mode_13h - Sunday, February 20, 2022 - link

    > I wouldn’t want to run Windows on it

    Yeah, it's really too bad Ian didn't ask about Linux support. Qualcomm doesn't have a good track record, there.

    > I’ve got a wonderful Ryzen 5800U based notebook with a high-res 16:10 screen on
    > 13.3” that I would have died for only a few years ago, but
    > when I take it out for some work away from the desk, I feel almost claustrophobic,
    > just because it’s too small to keep eyes on more than a single thing

    Yup, same. I have no interest in hunching over a small laptop screen. Laptop ergonomics are horrible.

    Maybe what you need is a VR HMD for computing on the go? Full, wrap-around screen! Hopefully, the resolution of mainstream units should be getting to a good point, within the next couple of generations. That said, I'd hate to be wearing a HMD all day. Best in limited doses.
  • nico_mach - Thursday, February 17, 2022 - link

    V disappointed that there were no chromebook questions!? Since these chips aren't going into gaming PCS, chromebooks seem like the most relevant devices for consumers. And as for Qualcomm business Windows devices, I'm sure they will happen but slowly because Intel is entrenched not only with OEMS but with the IT teams as well. Its an interesting interview but lacking a bit in relevance.
  • mode_13h - Sunday, February 20, 2022 - link

    True. You can understand why he's focused on corporate/premium laptops, though. That's the most juicy market and their biggest challenge. Chromebooks are a given and almost an afterthought, because most are low-margin products.
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  • mode_13h - Sunday, February 20, 2022 - link

    Spammer.
  • mode_13h - Sunday, February 20, 2022 - link

    As I mentioned above, I was sad to see no questions about Linux. I'd love to have a Qualcomm-powered mini-PC running Linux.

    This could go in lots of directions, but we can talk about the GPU, for starters. Either Qualcomm should opensource its binary driver, or at least give official support to the Freedreno driver that some really talented people had to make through reverse-engineering.
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  • mode_13h - Wednesday, February 23, 2022 - link

    spammer.

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