The Verge breathlessly detailed Microsoft "revealing" absolutely nothing about its supposedly custom SQ1 chip
It will be tremendous. And perfect too, it will be the most beautiful chip, sooo beautiful, it's the best, it will find Hilary's email server. Then you'll all be saying, 'oh thank you Qualcomm you're the smartest.
Years ago I had this piece of SW installed on a desktop that would download a chunk of data, process it, and upload the answer. I think it was for S.E.T.I or something. Distributed (donated) computing.
Thinking of the A13, and Apple's advances into medical with Apple Watch: Perhaps pretty soon we'll be able to donate some of the IMMENSE computational computing to protein-modelling or some other amazing medical-research (Billions of $ worth of computing power......free), and cure cancer or other such wonder....
Really really cool.
E.
Apple used to have a distributed computing technology built into OS X called Xgrid. But they removed it, sadly. I think it's high time they revisited this technology. Imagine being on the subway or sitting in your university lecture and 20 other iOS devices connected over the same Wifi or 5G network are securely, privately accelerating your iPhone or iPad's processing! Not to mention Macs.
There's more than enough CPUs around us every day now with untapped processing capabilities.
219AD: The word 'technology' does not exist, instead people found happiness in a simple thing like warm food after a long day.
2019AD: People wonder why they can't be happy without technology.
Also 219AD: People die of common bacterial infections due to lack of penicillin, die from smallpox due to lack of vaccines, die from exposure due to lack of protection from the elements, die from lack of transportation to nearest medical aid, die from childbirth complications... All things that have been largely remedied by technology, not that technology didn’t exist in the first place to allow agriculture and livestock and cooking to provide that warm meal before they died at age 32 after toiling in the fields all day doing manual labor that we have machines to do for us nowadays.
I can actually agree with this article. There wasn’t anything in it that was over the top.
Agreed. Surprisingly, DED stuck to largely known facts in the entire article without exaggerating anything over the top. May be it is due to the fact that the editorial is about an technology aspect where Apple is far ahead of competition, so any level of criticism about Apple's competition is valid and would not look out of place.
Only one minor correction required though - Qualcomm is NOT struggling to sell its premium tier SOCs in meaningful numbers. They are being incorporated in MANY Android phones - premium phones (>$600), upper mid-range phones ($400-$600) and even some mid mid-range phones ($300-$400 like Redmi K20 Pro). It is the Android OEMs who are struggling to make Apple like Profits. Qualcomm is generating adequate revenue to keep moving the top tier phone SOC forward in a meaningful way reasonably well. Tablet/Watch SoCs - Yes, DED was spot on. Mobile SoCs - Not really so. Qualcomm has managed to keep up reasonably well despite being late to the 64-bit party by nearly 2 years.
The Verge breathlessly detailed Microsoft "revealing" absolutely nothing about its supposedly custom SQ1 chip
It will be tremendous. And perfect too, it will be the most beautiful chip, sooo beautiful, it's the best, it will find Hilary's email server. Then you'll all be saying, 'oh thank you Qualcomm you're the smartest.
I replaced it with a 64 GB iPhone 11; the cheapest new iPhone in the lowest capacity. While I like the device and Face ID is ridiculously face and seamless, I'm not overwhelmed by it like I was with other iPhones. My usage is still very MacBook Proheavy and I when I'm very mobile the Apple Watch is my go to device.
Not being overwhelmed is more of a personal problem for you instead of Apple’s. I mean after years and years it keeps taking more and more to be overwhelmed and not disappointed. That applies to everything, not just iPhones.
QUite the opposite - it’s not a problem at all for Soli. It sounds like he’s happy with is 2nd tier iPhone 11. It becomes Apple’s problem when everyone is like him and sees no reason to pay top dollar for the top of the line, instead getting the Xr because it’s $300 cheaper and works just as well for them.
If everyone like him decides they’re just buy the lower-priced iPhone, that still isn’t bad news for Apple. Think about what you’re saying.
Right, but if everyone starts waiting 3-4 years to upgrade instead of 2 and then gets the lower model instead of the top of the line model it still spells potential trouble.
I can actually agree with this article. There wasn’t anything in it that was over the top.
Agreed. Surprisingly, DED stuck to largely known facts in the entire article without exaggerating anything over the top. May be it is due to the fact that the editorial is about an technology aspect where Apple is far ahead of competition, so any level of criticism about Apple's competition is valid and would not look out of place.
Only one minor correction required though - Qualcomm is NOT struggling to sell its premium tier SOCs in meaningful numbers. They are being incorporated in MANY Android phones - premium phones (>$600), upper mid-range phones ($400-$600) and even some mid mid-range phones ($300-$400 like Redmi K20 Pro). It is the Android OEMs who are struggling to make Apple like Profits. Qualcomm is generating adequate revenue to keep moving the top tier phone SOC forward in a meaningful way reasonably well. Tablet/Watch SoCs - Yes, DED was spot on. Mobile SoCs - Not really so. Qualcomm has managed to keep up reasonably well despite being late to the 64-bit party by nearly 2 years.
What he pointed out, correctly, is that flagship phones from amdrois]d have been seeing declining sales for several years, not increases. So perhaps sales of these chips, a year later, to OEMs making lower level phones compensate for it. But, that second year, the chip sells for less. Qualcomm also makes a lot of money from modem sales as well, at least as much as from SoC sales.
I can actually agree with this article. There wasn’t anything in it that was over the top.
Agreed. Surprisingly, DED stuck to largely known facts in the entire article without exaggerating anything over the top. May be it is due to the fact that the editorial is about an technology aspect where Apple is far ahead of competition, so any level of criticism about Apple's competition is valid and would not look out of place.
Only one minor correction required though - Qualcomm is NOT struggling to sell its premium tier SOCs in meaningful numbers. They are being incorporated in MANY Android phones - premium phones (>$600), upper mid-range phones ($400-$600) and even some mid mid-range phones ($300-$400 like Redmi K20 Pro). It is the Android OEMs who are struggling to make Apple like Profits. Qualcomm is generating adequate revenue to keep moving the top tier phone SOC forward in a meaningful way reasonably well. Tablet/Watch SoCs - Yes, DED was spot on. Mobile SoCs - Not really so. Qualcomm has managed to keep up reasonably well despite being late to the 64-bit party by nearly 2 years.
What he pointed out, correctly, is that flagship phones from amdrois]d have been seeing declining sales for several years, not increases. So perhaps sales of these chips, a year later, to OEMs making lower level phones compensate for it. But, that second year, the chip sells for less. Qualcomm also makes a lot of money from modem sales as well, at least as much as from SoC sales.
Mel - I understand what you are talking about. But I was pointing out the scenario of even $300-$400 phones using the latest Snapdragon SoC in the current year (for example Redmi K20 Pro this year at $350 equivalent price in India with Snapdragon 855, Poco F1 at $300 last year with Snapdragon 845 and so on), not the 2nd year at a discounted price. DED does NOT count those as sales for Qualcomm. DED is mixing up flagship phone sales for Android OEMs with flagship SoC sales for Qualcomm. But that is providing a distorted picture about Qualcomm's sales.
Years ago I had this piece of SW installed on a desktop that would download a chunk of data, process it, and upload the answer. I think it was for S.E.T.I or something. Distributed (donated) computing.
Thinking of the A13, and Apple's advances into medical with Apple Watch: Perhaps pretty soon we'll be able to donate some of the IMMENSE computational computing to protein-modelling or some other amazing medical-research (Billions of $ worth of computing power......free), and cure cancer or other such wonder....
Really really cool.
E.
I’m genuinely surprised this hasn’t come back around. If I remember correctly SETI and some other medical version was available for the PlayStation 2. Supposedly the returned results were far above the processed units from PC’s.
The Verge breathlessly detailed Microsoft "revealing" absolutely nothing about its supposedly custom SQ1 chip
It will be tremendous. And perfect too, it will be the most beautiful chip, sooo beautiful, it's the best, it will find Hilary's email server. Then you'll all be saying, 'oh thank you Qualcomm you're the smartest.
i came expecting a technical article about processor design, maybe a detail on the incredible power management abilities, differences in neural architecture and other factors like sensors, security, encryption, codecs in hardware.,,
I see from your forum posts count that you are not new here. Yet you saw the article is marked as EDITORIAL, was written by DED and still you were expecting a factual comparison on tech specs...?
he has from time to time gone into mind numbing detail about more technical or historical aspects of a product or system.
I can actually agree with this article. There wasn’t anything in it that was over the top.
Agreed. Surprisingly, DED stuck to largely known facts in the entire article without exaggerating anything over the top. May be it is due to the fact that the editorial is about an technology aspect where Apple is far ahead of competition, so any level of criticism about Apple's competition is valid and would not look out of place.
Only one minor correction required though - Qualcomm is NOT struggling to sell its premium tier SOCs in meaningful numbers. They are being incorporated in MANY Android phones - premium phones (>$600), upper mid-range phones ($400-$600) and even some mid mid-range phones ($300-$400 like Redmi K20 Pro). It is the Android OEMs who are struggling to make Apple like Profits. Qualcomm is generating adequate revenue to keep moving the top tier phone SOC forward in a meaningful way reasonably well. Tablet/Watch SoCs - Yes, DED was spot on. Mobile SoCs - Not really so. Qualcomm has managed to keep up reasonably well despite being late to the 64-bit party by nearly 2 years.
What he pointed out, correctly, is that flagship phones from amdrois]d have been seeing declining sales for several years, not increases. So perhaps sales of these chips, a year later, to OEMs making lower level phones compensate for it. But, that second year, the chip sells for less. Qualcomm also makes a lot of money from modem sales as well, at least as much as from SoC sales.
Mel - I understand what you are talking about. But I was pointing out the scenario of even $300-$400 phones using the latest Snapdragon SoC in the current year (for example Redmi K20 Pro this year at $350 equivalent price in India with Snapdragon 855, Poco F1 at $300 last year with Snapdragon 845 and so on), not the 2nd year at a discounted price. DED does NOT count those as sales for Qualcomm. DED is mixing up flagship phone sales for Android OEMs with flagship SoC sales for Qualcomm. But that is providing a distorted picture about Qualcomm's sales.
Well, for a lot of these second line OEMs, as well as those from China, there is government support for these manufacturers. Some people who breathlessly talk about how some of these companies offer products at prices that are sometimes hundreds of dollars less than the major companies do, forget this. It costs a Chinese company, manufacturing a device in China, about the same as any other manufacturer in China. Marketing and other costs are about the same too.
but Samsung and other major android OEMs often discount their phones just weeks after they are announced. Often you’ll see a flagship Samsung on sale for buy one and get a second at 50% off, or even, as my friend bought them last year, a two for one price. And I’m not talking about pricing from a cell provider, I’m talking about buying from a phone store with no account at the same time.
when you get a phone for “free” from a cell provider with a contract, you are just not paying anything up front, but you are paying full price over that contract time. Even if there’s no contract, you have to buy out the rest of the price of the phone if you leave before two years are up, which is the usual time to pay off a phone.
im mentioning this because pricing isn’t what many people think it is. So a $400 phone from a Chinese or Indian maker is often subsidized by governmental tax and loan forgiveness practices, and,other times high phone list prices are really much lower selling prices. So that $400 phone isn’t less than half of the first year selling price of a flagship phone. It’s much closer than you think.
besides, Qualcomm doesn’t distinguish between sales in the first year, second year, third year, etc. They just discuss sales of a chip any given year. I’m sure DED can’t pick out sales they way you think he can. None of us can.
Apple's silicon design team is truly amazing -- they are second to none. Maybe tied with Intel for first.
You mean AMD, because Intel's team is getting it's ass handed to it.
Mmmm. Not so much. AMD is doing just fine in some areas, while not doing well in others. For example, in HPC, where AMD has been pushing sales, they’ve actually seen their sales drop. Now they’re scaling back on that sales push. They’ve seen better luck with notebook sales. But these are, as usual, on the less profitable end. They were really hoping the HPC area would dramatically pick up against Intel’s offerings.
Intel just had a great quarter. Profits and revenue all above expectations, some well above. Excellent forecast for next quarter. So much for AMD’s imagined threat.
I can actually agree with this article. There wasn’t anything in it that was over the top.
Agreed. Surprisingly, DED stuck to largely known facts in the entire article without exaggerating anything over the top. May be it is due to the fact that the editorial is about an technology aspect where Apple is far ahead of competition, so any level of criticism about Apple's competition is valid and would not look out of place.
Only one minor correction required though - Qualcomm is NOT struggling to sell its premium tier SOCs in meaningful numbers. They are being incorporated in MANY Android phones - premium phones (>$600), upper mid-range phones ($400-$600) and even some mid mid-range phones ($300-$400 like Redmi K20 Pro). It is the Android OEMs who are struggling to make Apple like Profits. Qualcomm is generating adequate revenue to keep moving the top tier phone SOC forward in a meaningful way reasonably well. Tablet/Watch SoCs - Yes, DED was spot on. Mobile SoCs - Not really so. Qualcomm has managed to keep up reasonably well despite being late to the 64-bit party by nearly 2 years.
What he pointed out, correctly, is that flagship phones from amdrois]d have been seeing declining sales for several years, not increases. So perhaps sales of these chips, a year later, to OEMs making lower level phones compensate for it. But, that second year, the chip sells for less. Qualcomm also makes a lot of money from modem sales as well, at least as much as from SoC sales.
Mel - I understand what you are talking about. But I was pointing out the scenario of even $300-$400 phones using the latest Snapdragon SoC in the current year (for example Redmi K20 Pro this year at $350 equivalent price in India with Snapdragon 855, Poco F1 at $300 last year with Snapdragon 845 and so on), not the 2nd year at a discounted price. DED does NOT count those as sales for Qualcomm. DED is mixing up flagship phone sales for Android OEMs with flagship SoC sales for Qualcomm. But that is providing a distorted picture about Qualcomm's sales.
Well, for a lot of these second line OEMs, as well as those from China, there is government support for these manufacturers. Some people who breathlessly talk about how some of these companies offer products at prices that are sometimes hundreds of dollars less than the major companies do, forget this. It costs a Chinese company, manufacturing a device in China, about the same as any other manufacturer in China. Marketing and other costs are about the same too.
but Samsung and other major android OEMs often discount their phones just weeks after they are announced. Often you’ll see a flagship Samsung on sale for buy one and get a second at 50% off, or even, as my friend bought them last year, a two for one price. And I’m not talking about pricing from a cell provider, I’m talking about buying from a phone store with no account at the same time.
when you get a phone for “free” from a cell provider with a contract, you are just not paying anything up front, but you are paying full price over that contract time. Even if there’s no contract, you have to buy out the rest of the price of the phone if you leave before two years are up, which is the usual time to pay off a phone.
im mentioning this because pricing isn’t what many people think it is. So a $400 phone from a Chinese or Indian maker is often subsidized by governmental tax and loan forgiveness practices, and,other times high phone list prices are really much lower selling prices. So that $400 phone isn’t less than half of the first year selling price of a flagship phone. It’s much closer than you think.
besides, Qualcomm doesn’t distinguish between sales in the first year, second year, third year, etc. They just discuss sales of a chip any given year. I’m sure DED can’t pick out sales they way you think he can. None of us can.
I agree with most of what you are saying. Just one clarification from my end on my earlier point - The way DED writes, he seems to imply that Apple is selling 200 million iPhones with latest and greatest SOC every year, hence Apple is able to pump billions of dollars into R&D of SoC development. But Qualcomm is DOOMED because Android flagship phones are selling ONLY 40 million including ALL of the Android OEMs included (Samsung, BBK subsidiaries such as OnePlus/Oppo/Vivo, Google and other minor OEMS such as Asus, Sony, LG etc).
The reality is a lot different though. Qualcomm could be selling their latest and greatest Snapdragon SoCs about 80 to 100 million (it is a guess because there is no official numbers provided) in its 1st year, while Apple is selling about 120-140 million of their latest and greatest SoC in its 1st year. DED is distorting the picture by excluding mid-range Android phones which use Qualcomm's latest SoC while including older iPhone models for Apple while painting the overall picture (without putting the numbers of course). The reality though is that the numbers are fairly close for the Qualcomm's latest and greatest SoC Vs Apple's latest and greatest SoC in terms of sales.
On the point about Chinese government possibly supporting the mid-range models by Xiaomi/Huawei/BBK/other OEMs with the high end SoCs, i would agree that it is a possibility. But Qualcomm does NOT care whether the money comes to them from Xioami/BBK/<any other OEM> or Chinese government. They get their money for the number of SOCs that they sold to the Chinese OEMs. When we discuss about Qualcomm's business, we should count ALL of Qualcomm's sales. This is something DED deliberately chooses to avoid, by focusing on the Flagship Android phone sales Vs Apple's iPhone sales in a bid to distort the picture and paint Qualcomm in a poor light.
And as you rightly pointed out, Qualcomm also makes lots of money through their modem sales/patent licensing. Given that they were 2 years behind Apple to the 64-bit party (A7 by Apple in 2013 Vs first proper 64-bit SoC Snapdragon 820 by Qualcomm in 2015), they are making sure to NOT fall behind Apple by a long shot. They are behind Apple in single core CPU performance by about 2 years and multi-core CPU performance by about 1 year consistently in the last 3-4 years without falling behind further. Bottom line is - Qualcomm is NOT going out of business anytime soon and is going to provide high-end SoCs to Android OEMs in the next 4-5 years without trouble and are making enough money to fund their R&D efforts to move the high-end smartphone SoC forward meaningfully.
Right, but if everyone starts waiting 3-4 years to upgrade instead of 2 and then gets the lower model instead of the top of the line model it still spells potential trouble.
That’s been happening for several years now, and Apple saw it coming back in 2014/2015. It’s the entire reason they introduced a $1,000 super premium flagship: increase ASP to keep revenue/profits up, despite stagnant demand.
Like PCs before it, in the early 2010s—at a certain point the iPhone became fast enough, with no compelling reason to upgrade for many users. (Elimination of carrier subsidies exacerbated the shift.) With the iPhone, it happened with the 6s/SE: A9/2GB is a great platform, and runs iOS 13 extremely well. I’ve seen no slowdown from iOS 12.
I’m not a picture taker, so I’m still using my 6s. 4s—>5s—>6s. In year five, it still works great.
Comments
It will be tremendous. And perfect too, it will be the most beautiful chip, sooo beautiful, it's the best, it will find Hilary's email server. Then you'll all be saying, 'oh thank you Qualcomm you're the smartest.
Apple used to have a distributed computing technology built into OS X called Xgrid. But they removed it, sadly. I think it's high time they revisited this technology. Imagine being on the subway or sitting in your university lecture and 20 other iOS devices connected over the same Wifi or 5G network are securely, privately accelerating your iPhone or iPad's processing! Not to mention Macs.
There's more than enough CPUs around us every day now with untapped processing capabilities.
Agreed. Surprisingly, DED stuck to largely known facts in the entire article without exaggerating anything over the top. May be it is due to the fact that the editorial is about an technology aspect where Apple is far ahead of competition, so any level of criticism about Apple's competition is valid and would not look out of place.
Only one minor correction required though - Qualcomm is NOT struggling to sell its premium tier SOCs in meaningful numbers. They are being incorporated in MANY Android phones - premium phones (>$600), upper mid-range phones ($400-$600) and even some mid mid-range phones ($300-$400 like Redmi K20 Pro). It is the Android OEMs who are struggling to make Apple like Profits. Qualcomm is generating adequate revenue to keep moving the top tier phone SOC forward in a meaningful way reasonably well. Tablet/Watch SoCs - Yes, DED was spot on. Mobile SoCs - Not really so. Qualcomm has managed to keep up reasonably well despite being late to the 64-bit party by nearly 2 years.
The X version of the A13 is almost scary to consider in terms of performance. Maybe a Halloween reveal would be appropriate?
Whole lot of facts, testing, objective opinions.
You know, journalism.
not often i grant you.
but Samsung and other major android OEMs often discount their phones just weeks after they are announced. Often you’ll see a flagship Samsung on sale for buy one and get a second at 50% off, or even, as my friend bought them last year, a two for one price. And I’m not talking about pricing from a cell provider, I’m talking about buying from a phone store with no account at the same time.
when you get a phone for “free” from a cell provider with a contract, you are just not paying anything up front, but you are paying full price over that contract time. Even if there’s no contract, you have to buy out the rest of the price of the phone if you leave before two years are up, which is the usual time to pay off a phone.
im mentioning this because pricing isn’t what many people think it is. So a $400 phone from a Chinese or Indian maker is often subsidized by governmental tax and loan forgiveness practices, and,other times high phone list prices are really much lower selling prices. So that $400 phone isn’t less than half of the first year selling price of a flagship phone. It’s much closer than you think.
besides, Qualcomm doesn’t distinguish between sales in the first year, second year, third year, etc. They just discuss sales of a chip any given year. I’m sure DED can’t pick out sales they way you think he can. None of us can.
Mmmm. Not so much. AMD is doing just fine in some areas, while not doing well in others. For example, in HPC, where AMD has been pushing sales, they’ve actually seen their sales drop. Now they’re scaling back on that sales push. They’ve seen better luck with notebook sales. But these are, as usual, on the less profitable end. They were really hoping the HPC area would dramatically pick up against Intel’s offerings.
I agree with most of what you are saying. Just one clarification from my end on my earlier point - The way DED writes, he seems to imply that Apple is selling 200 million iPhones with latest and greatest SOC every year, hence Apple is able to pump billions of dollars into R&D of SoC development. But Qualcomm is DOOMED because Android flagship phones are selling ONLY 40 million including ALL of the Android OEMs included (Samsung, BBK subsidiaries such as OnePlus/Oppo/Vivo, Google and other minor OEMS such as Asus, Sony, LG etc).
The reality is a lot different though. Qualcomm could be selling their latest and greatest Snapdragon SoCs about 80 to 100 million (it is a guess because there is no official numbers provided) in its 1st year, while Apple is selling about 120-140 million of their latest and greatest SoC in its 1st year. DED is distorting the picture by excluding mid-range Android phones which use Qualcomm's latest SoC while including older iPhone models for Apple while painting the overall picture (without putting the numbers of course). The reality though is that the numbers are fairly close for the Qualcomm's latest and greatest SoC Vs Apple's latest and greatest SoC in terms of sales.
On the point about Chinese government possibly supporting the mid-range models by Xiaomi/Huawei/BBK/other OEMs with the high end SoCs, i would agree that it is a possibility. But Qualcomm does NOT care whether the money comes to them from Xioami/BBK/<any other OEM> or Chinese government. They get their money for the number of SOCs that they sold to the Chinese OEMs. When we discuss about Qualcomm's business, we should count ALL of Qualcomm's sales. This is something DED deliberately chooses to avoid, by focusing on the Flagship Android phone sales Vs Apple's iPhone sales in a bid to distort the picture and paint Qualcomm in a poor light.
And as you rightly pointed out, Qualcomm also makes lots of money through their modem sales/patent licensing. Given that they were 2 years behind Apple to the 64-bit party (A7 by Apple in 2013 Vs first proper 64-bit SoC Snapdragon 820 by Qualcomm in 2015), they are making sure to NOT fall behind Apple by a long shot. They are behind Apple in single core CPU performance by about 2 years and multi-core CPU performance by about 1 year consistently in the last 3-4 years without falling behind further. Bottom line is - Qualcomm is NOT going out of business anytime soon and is going to provide high-end SoCs to Android OEMs in the next 4-5 years without trouble and are making enough money to fund their R&D efforts to move the high-end smartphone SoC forward meaningfully.