Qualcomm will reveal the first Nuvia-designed laptop chip in 2022

nanoguy

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In brief: Qualcomm bought Nuvia to get a leg up in the laptop processor market, and the company is determined to impress with its next core design in 2022. At the same time, the silicon giant is willing to use Arm designs when needed, as well as licensing Nuvia's architecture for companies that want to make custom server chips.

Qualcomm's last big announcement was the Snapdragon 888+ Mobile Platform that comes with higher clocks and improved machine learning performance and will power new flagship phones that will land later this year, but the chip maker also has big plans for the notebook market.

Today, Qualcomm revealed plans to release new mobile chips for laptops in 2022 that leverage Nuvia's architecture. Qualcomm bought Nuvia earlier this year for $1.4 billion, and with it brought on board three silicon veterans that previously worked at Apple, AMD, Google, and Broadcom. The trio was previously focused on designing energy-efficient Arm-based chips for the data center, but now their efforts are directed at making better processors for phones, laptops, advanced driver assistance for cars, and network infrastructure.

During a Reuters interview, newly-appointed Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said he's confident his company can come up with chips that will not only be competitive with Apple's M1 but could very well end up leading the pack. Amon didn't go into more details, but he did say the company is aiming to have "leading performance for a battery-powered device," alluding to the energy-efficiency of Nuvia's Phoenix core.

That means Qualcomm could come up with a laptop chip that could deliver between 40 to 50 percent more IPC performance when compared to Intel's 10th generation processors and AMD's Zen 2 equivalents, while needing only one third of the power to achieve that performance level. Currently, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8cx, 8c, and 7c do challenge x86 offerings in terms of battery life, but don't come close to Apple M1 levels of performance.

The company will also continue to nurture its relationship with Arm and is open to using an Arm design if it turns out better than what Qualcomm and Nuvia engineers can come up with. Amon added that Qualcomm won't be using Nuvia's architecture to make server or smartphone chips anytime soon. Instead, it will license Nuvia's core designs for other companies who want to build custom silicon for the data center.

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Unless it can run x86 designed apps that run on Windows this will be a failed venture. They see Apple doing well and think they can get that market. I sincerely doubt that Microsoft would push this seeing as without intel and AMD there would be no windows or server OS products licensed.
 
Why should we bother purchasing a laptop with Qualcomm chips when the best we can get on average is 3 years support on their mobile phone SoC's? Granted I've broken most of my phones (I'm getting better though), but had I not, it wouldn't have matter that much anyway.
 
Unless it can run x86 designed apps that run on Windows this will be a failed venture. They see Apple doing well and think they can get that market. I sincerely doubt that Microsoft would push this seeing as without intel and AMD there would be no windows or server OS products licensed.
Wrong. This is exactly what the ARM market needs.
 
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The current custom Qualcomm processor in the Surface X is, at best, underwhelming. They'll improve over 100%, just like that? I call BS, Qualcomm.
 
It would be interesting to see what a 8xx series could do with a 10 watt power budget and a laptop cooling system. Even one the size of a chromebook could deliver promising improvements as we saw with the M1 chips while offering far better battery life then intel or AMD.

I eagerly look forward to laptops with 24 hr battery life.
Unless it can run x86 designed apps that run on Windows this will be a failed venture. They see Apple doing well and think they can get that market. I sincerely doubt that Microsoft would push this seeing as without intel and AMD there would be no windows or server OS products licensed.
That's not really dependent on Qualcomm, rather that effort falls on Microsoft creating a software compatibility layer. Apple has done this twice with success with Rosetta, so we know its possible.

And windows licensing is not dependent on Intel and AMD. Even with top of the line ARM cores, that doesnt magically mean everyone switches to linux or android on desktop. Cmon now....
 
They'll improve over 100%, just like that? I call BS, Qualcomm.
You say that like you think Qualcomm is actually going to listen to you. I find that very amusing! Qualcomm is one of the best in the world at making high quality, top performing ARM SOCs. They're going to soldier on regardless of whatever minimal whining comes at them.
 
The only saving grace on Snapdragon 8cx or 8cx gen 2, and Microsoft SQ1 or SQ2 are it's GPU capabilities. Otherwise it's CPU performance are terribly subpar. Don't forget that it all still uses Cortex-A76 cores that was used by 2019 Snapdragon 855.

Now ARM has Cortex-A710 and Cortex-X2 to offer, but I doubt Qualcomm will fully utilize it, instead using their own custom cores made by Nuvia.
 
You say that like you think Qualcomm is actually going to listen to you. I find that very amusing! Qualcomm is one of the best in the world at making high quality, top performing ARM SOCs. They're going to soldier on regardless of whatever minimal whining comes at them.
It's amusing when autists take a comment 100% literally and act like the whole world hinges on it.
 
As we've learned with the Android phone / tablet market, at some point the hardware is not really important, the key differentiator is software.

Software is what makes electronic hardware useful. It's why Chromebooks are for filling a specific niche and not a direct competitor to Windows laptops or Macbooks. Perhaps Qualcomm is trying to compete with Chromebooks with this move to the laptop form-factor.
 
Why should we bother purchasing a laptop with Qualcomm chips when the best we can get on average is 3 years support on their mobile phone SoC's? Granted I've broken most of my phones (I'm getting better though), but had I not, it wouldn't have matter that much anyway.

Exactly, even if they can deliver a chip with 50% better performance and 70% less power draw than a similarly priced AMD or Intel (and I doubt they will), I will never switch to a platform where hardware becomes forcibly obsolete in 3 years. I don't even tolerate this nonsense in the mobile market, much less in the desktop/general computing market.
 
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