Qualcomm acquires startup of former Apple employees to better compete vs. Apple

wco81

Legend
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...ed-by-apple-execs-for-1-4-billion/?comments=1

One of the comments alludes to some of Nuvia's engineers being the one to design the Apple A13.

Qualcomm's press release says Nuvia will deliver "step-function improvements in CPU performance and power efficiency to meet the demands of next-generation 5G computing." Qualcomm plans to use Nuvia's tech in "flagship smartphones, next-generation laptops, and digital cockpits, as well as Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, extended reality and infrastructure networking solutions."

Like the recently launched Apple Silicon line of chips, Nuvia's chips are based on the ARM architecture but not fully licensed by ARM. This will allow Qualcomm to achieve better margins while developing chips that could help it compete with Apple's chips more directly. Qualcomm already provides ARM-based chips for machines designed by Samsung and Microsoft.

The smaller company has fewer than 100 employees, according to Crunchbase, so the acquisition may be chiefly about intellectual property. However, the press release does note that Nuvia's founders "and their employees" will join Qualcomm.

The announcement included statements in support of the acquisition and where it might go from a wide range of tech companies, including Microsoft, Asus, Google, General Motors, and LG, among others. In other words, this acquisition is part of a strategy shared by Qualcomm and its customers and partners to battle growing perceptions that Apple's chips are faster and more efficient.

So maybe SnapDragon was kind of at a dead end for performance improvements and Qualcomm was worried about being competitive with iOS devices?

Maybe the ARM Macs also raised alarm that non-Apple SOCs were falling behind performance-wise.

But this deal could give Qualcomm opportunities in desktops, automotive as well as mobile.
 
They lost their uarch team with Centriq's death, afaik.

However, unless if they want their 5G/future infrastructure chips/IP to be forever dependent on Intel, Marvell, etc, they still need a reasonably high performance CPU with a focus on throughput. Same with managed switches to a lessor degree, IMO.

So I view Nuvia's acquisition as trying to right the ship after Centriq's failure, more than trying to make another Cortex-A competitor. They might be mutual, of course, but I feel their focus is on network infrastructure, then DC, then client, when it comes to this acquisition.

Now they have a silicon/arch engineer leading the company, so hopefully they can hold onto the Nuvia folks after their contract(s) (from the acquisition) expire.
 
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