At the Snapdragon Summit today, Qualcomm is officially announcing the Snapdragon 8 Elite, its flagship SoC for smartphones. The Snapdragon 8 Elite is a major upgrade from its predecessor, with improvements across the board. Qualcomm is also changing its naming scheme for its flagship SoCs from Snapdragon 8 Gen X to Snapdragon X Elite.
↫ Pradeep Viswanathan at Neowin
It’s wild – but not entirely unexpected – how we always seem to end up in a situation in technology where crucial components, such as the operating system or processor, are made by one, or at most two, companies. While there are a few other smartphone system-on-a-chip vendors, they’re mostly relegated to low-end devices, and can’t compete on the high end, where the money is, at all. It’s sadness.
Speaking of our mobile SoC overlords, they seem to be in a bit of a pickle when it comes to their core business of, well, selling SoCs. In short, Qualcomm bought Nuvia to use its technology to build the current crop of Snapdragon X Elite and Pro laptop chips. According to ARM, Qualcomm does not have an ARM license to do so, and as such, a flurry of lawsuits between the two companies followed. ARM is now cancelling certain Qualcomm ARM licenses, arguing specifically its laptop Snapdragon X chips should be destroyed.
What we’re looking at here is two industry giants engaged in very public, and very expensive, contract negotiations, using the legal system as their arbiter. This will eventually fizzle out into a new agreement between the two companies with renewed terms and conditions – and flows of money – but until that dust has settled, be prepared for an endless flurry of doomerist news items about this story.
As for us normal people? We don’t have to worry one bit about this legal nonsense. It’s not like we have any choice in smartphone chips anyway.
This right here is why RISC-V will replace ARM. It has nothing to do with license fees.
https://9to5google.com/2024/10/22/report-qualcomm-arm-chip-design/
LOL. RISC-V is quickly becoming the HW equivalent of the “Year of the Linux Desktop”
It’ll be infinitely cheaper for Qualcomm to settle than moving all their ecosystem over to RISC-V
This will likely happen at some point in the future – starting with lower power, single purpose chips, and moving up the chain. But I wouldn’t bet on it any time soon.
(This prognostication assumes governments won’t meddle – they do have some incentive to meddle in this kind of tech.)