Qualcomm Roadmap (2011-2012)

Lazy8s said:
Qualcomm had gotten a steal on the acquisition of the mobile graphics team(s) from AMD, so the loss on investment would be little overall.
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Considering Qualcomm's sales figures I'd be very surprised if the investment hasn't been covered multiple times by now. We don't know what Qualcomm's true intentions are yet, but on the other hand I don't see much reason why they couldn't hypothetically sustain their graphics department and license 3rd party GPU IP at the same time (for higher end stuff f.e.).

While Qualcomm may start out committed to being competitive, their priority is their SoCs, and they'll ultimately make their graphics reach far enough for the needs of those SoCs while IMG must dedicate themselves to conquering the world with their graphics. An IP supplier like ARM would be like IMG in that way, investing what's needed to be better.
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IMG isn't obviously the real topic here but despite the majority of their IP being sold and integrated is graphics related at the moment, I wouldn't suggest that it's their only concentration. If IMG wants to grow to N height and reach its targeted 1B chips in the future I'm afraid the other two subdivisions like Ensigma and Metagence should pose a quite huge growth rate in sales too. Even further and being quite ironically they're gaining quite a big pile of revenue (always compared to the IP revenue) from PURE. Don't forget the Hellosoft and Caustic acquistions either and it all comes back to the point that a significant growth for IMG will be more a combined effort of all addressed markets then a pure graphics IP concentration.

Qualcomm could have instead of acquiring the Imageon team just licensed 3rd party GPU IP from whoever, but I'm not convinced they would had done any worse at least they've done so far. IF they should now license 3rd party IP it might imply that they've hit some sort of brickwall in order to get N technology level in time to market. With the embedded market accellerating more and more it comes hardly as a surprise.

If they should have gone or will go for a Rogue license the source who fed the above to the press should be mostly likely be prepared to look over its own shoulder.
 
The MSM7227A is now in selling devices, apparently.
This review of the HTC Explorer, http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_explorer-review-692p3.php, has some benchmarks, the first ones I could find for a Cortex-A5 based device.
It does quite well in some areas (clock for clock as fast as Cortex-A8 in BenchmarkPi it seems though it's always difficult to discern if those benchmark scores are really due to cpu), being clock for clock twice as fast as the old msm7227 sometimes (in BenchmarkPi and Linpack). The Adreno 200 in it also seems to got boosted to near Adreno 205 levels.
Looks like quite a nice low-end SoC, though the cpu clock is really surprisingly low. Maybe Qualcomm will sell a Turbo version later much like they did with the msm7227 :).
Given the msm7227 was one of the fastest arm11 chips around (I think - having L2 cache and a FPU after all) this is a very good showing for the Cortex-A5 (and it should use a smaller area too so that's a huge win). No wonder ARM claims the Cortex-A7 can exceed the performance of the Cortex-A8 if even the Cortex-A5 can already equal it sometimes (but definitely not always).
 
Anyone notice that Qualcomm stadium is now called SnapDragon stadium?

Qualcomm thinks consumers will seek out smart phones with SnapDragon SOCs in them?

You wonder, what brings more revenues, the SnapDragons or the radio silicon that they seem to sell to a broader swath of manufacturers than the SnapDragons?
 
wco81 said:
Anyone notice that Qualcomm stadium is now called SnapDragon stadium?

Qualcomm thinks consumers will seek out smart phones with SnapDragon SOCs in them?

You wonder, what brings more revenues, the SnapDragons or the radio silicon that they seem to sell to a broader swath of manufacturers than the SnapDragons?
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Historically it has been the latter but baseband die size is going down and application processor die size is going up so... They know where their future has to be and they've known so for quite some time.
 
Arun said:
Historically it has been the latter but baseband die size is going down and application processor die size is going up so... They know where their future has to be and they've known so for quite some time.
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But it seems like everyone's giving their LTE chipset contracts over to Qualcomm. Every now and then you hear about something homegrown from Samsung (Galaxy Nexus & Droid Charge) or Motorola (Droid Bionic and RAZR) besides being used in their own products, no one seems to be selling to other OEMs in large quantities.

And it seems like Infineon just folded in the baseband area after Apple left them earlier this year.
 
dagamer said:
But it seems like everyone's giving their LTE chipset contracts over to Qualcomm. Every now and then you hear about something homegrown from Samsung (Galaxy Nexus & Droid Charge) or Motorola (Droid Bionic and RAZR) besides being used in their own products, no one seems to be selling to other OEMs in large quantities.
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That's because no one is ready besides them. A few companies (including startups) have good single-mode solutions but there's not much incentive to use them instead of Qualcomm's multimode solution. NVIDIA (via Icera), Renesas (via Nokia), and ST-Ericsson will likely have the first other multi-mode chips available in high volume end-devices.

And it seems like Infineon just folded in the baseband area after Apple left them earlier this year.
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What are you talking about? They're in the main Samsung Galaxy S II model and the GSM Samsung Galaxy Nexus. They're in the LG Optimus 3D and the Nokia N9 (the latter obviously being much lower volume than they hoped it would be). It's very clear that Intel/Infineon is still the largest slim baseband supplier besides Qualcomm today. The loss of Apple might have been a very bad one but they certainly haven't "folded out" just yet :)
 
Arun said:
That's because no one is ready besides them. A few companies (including startups) have good single-mode solutions but there's not much incentive to use them instead of Qualcomm's multimode solution. NVIDIA (via Icera), Renesas (via Nokia), and ST-Ericsson will likely have the first other multi-mode chips available in high volume end-devices.

What are you talking about? They're in the main Samsung Galaxy S II model and the GSM Samsung Galaxy Nexus. They're in the LG Optimus 3D and the Nokia N9 (the latter obviously being much lower volume than they hoped it would be). It's very clear that Intel/Infineon is still the largest slim baseband supplier besides Qualcomm today. The loss of Apple might have been a very bad one but they certainly haven't "folded out" just yet :)
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Hmm... I don't know how I missed the GSM Nexus or GS II. I guess I am just disappointed that no one else is going to be making the alphabet soup network chipset like the upcoming MDM9615 (seriously, it's got everything under the sun packed in there!). Sadly, when I look at all the articles about how there are 38 separate frequency bands for LTE, it really doesn't matter that CDMA is going the way of the dodo. Heck, even Verizon and AT&T's LTE phones don't share frequencies, and they are off by less than 50Mhz!! If no one is going to "force" phone interoperability, the future is gonna suck!
 
dagamer said:
Hmm... I don't know how I missed the GSM Nexus or GS II. I guess I am just disappointed that no one else is going to be making the alphabet soup network chipset like the upcoming MDM9615 (seriously, it's got everything under the sun packed in there!). Sadly, when I look at all the articles about how there are 38 separate frequency bands for LTE, it really doesn't matter that CDMA is going the way of the dodo. Heck, even Verizon and AT&T's LTE phones don't share frequencies, and they are off by less than 50Mhz!! If no one is going to "force" phone interoperability, the future is gonna suck!
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Who's responsible for that, the companies or the way the govt. allocated/auctioned off those bands?

Or were overlapping spectrum auctioned off and the companies have overlapping bands but they made sure the LTE devices don't operate on any overlapping bands?

Why did the ITU or whatever body allow so many bands to be a part of the standard in the first place?

If LTE brings about balkanized device ecosystem, that is a distinct step back from GSM/UMTS. Doesn't the EU require interoperability across networks, whether those networks are in the same country or in different countries?

If there's no spectrum overlap, can there even be roaming, either domestic or international? Does that mean T and VZ plan to go without roaming over each other's LTE networks (of course they never did before but they do offer international plans for their subscribers who travel overseas).
 
The limitation is more than just the chipset. The antenna and PA will have to operate over a large spectrum. That's the biggest limitation, tbh.

The ideal solution would be to have a mandated CSMA protocol and allow anyone to use the spectrum. That way, access to a broader range of spectrum merely means more bandwidth for a device rather than take-it-or-leave-it.
 
metafor said:
The limitation is more than just the chipset. The antenna and PA will have to operate over a large spectrum. That's the biggest limitation, tbh.
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Bingo, and by far. The RF chip is basically a solved problem already but the PA is lagging behind a bit (and the antennae as well if you want optimal efficiency but I don't know the details). You really want 'wide PAs' that span a very large range of frequencies. These are already available from a few companies but would have extremely low power efficiency if used like a normal PA - they require either an unusual Polar RF scheme (ala Infineon/Intel) or something more clever than a DC/DC to drive the PA (ala Nujira). I'm confident that will become mainstream eventually and hopefully sooner rather than later.
 
Adreno 225 means it's a dual-core Krait, right?
 
Yep, if it's really MSM8960 then it's dual-core Krait plus Adreno 225.
 
Krait is proprietary to Qualcomm but is compatible with ARM instruction set?

So ARM binaries will run as-is?
 
Second version of transformer prime? It sure looks strange...
Besides, I thought that msm8960 will run at 1,7Ghz and that there won't be Transformer Prime with 3G/4G connectivity but use of msm chipset means it has all radio needed.
 
Wishmaster said:
Second version of transformer prime? It sure looks strange...
Besides, I thought that msm8960 will run at 1,7Ghz and that there won't be Transformer Prime with 3G/4G connectivity but use of msm chipset means it has all radio needed.
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Could it simply the Transformer Prime available in other regions? Smartphones have used different SoCs for different regions under the same model. The Adreno 225 seems to perform worse than Tegra 3, and 2 cores isn't as fancy as 4 cores from a marketing perspective even if Krait is a new architecture so perhaps this version of the Transformer Prime is intended for Eastern European or emerging markets?
 
ltcommander.data said:
Could it simply the Transformer Prime available in other regions? Smartphones have used different SoCs for different regions under the same model. The Adreno 225 seems to perform worse than Tegra 3, and 2 cores isn't as fancy as 4 cores from a marketing perspective even if Krait is a new architecture so perhaps this version of the Transformer Prime is intended for Eastern European or emerging markets?
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It could easily be the LTE variant. Remember, 8960 will be out before the standalone 28nm LTE modem.
 
ltcommander.data said:
Could it simply the Transformer Prime available in other regions? Smartphones have used different SoCs for different regions under the same model. The Adreno 225 seems to perform worse than Tegra 3, and 2 cores isn't as fancy as 4 cores from a marketing perspective even if Krait is a new architecture so perhaps this version of the Transformer Prime is intended for Eastern European or emerging markets?
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If it's intended for different markets why is it running at FullHD resolution instead of 1280x800 like Prime? It looks more like a slightly upgraded version of standard Prime.

metafor said:
It could easily be the LTE variant. Remember, 8960 will be out before the standalone 28nm LTE modem.
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Then why did Asus themselves confirm that they won't release version with 3G nor 4G?
 
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