Qualcomm CEO admits delays in chips using NUVIA technology
During Qualcomm’s earnings call, CEO Cristiano Amon confirmed that the NUVIA team, which was acquired for $1.4 billion in 2021, is designing new processors. It is expected that samples will be provided to Qualcomm’s partners in the second half of 2022, and related products will be available by the end of 2023.
However, in a recent interview, Cristiano Amon introduced the development of processors using NUVIA technology. The new chip will be a mix of CPU, GPU and NPU for laptops on the PC platform, but the plan has been delayed. According to TomsHardware, the time for Qualcomm to provide samples to partners has been changed from August 2022 to 2023, and the release of consumer laptops equipped with NUVIA chips will also be delayed from late 2023 to early 2024.
In Qualcomm’s view, the micro-architecture developed by the Nuvia team can not only be used for mobile platforms but also has a wider space. At a related event last year, Qualcomm said the architecture would expand into mobile, automotive, and data centers in due course, and it believed it could eventually be used to build high-performance PCs.
Qualcomm has been providing Snapdragon platform-based solutions for laptops since 2017 and has partnered with Microsoft to do a lot of work for the Windows-on-Arm ecosystem. After several years of efforts, the results seem ineffective, and the market share has not grown significantly. On the one hand, not all Windows programs can run perfectly on Arm architecture-based systems, which affects the user experience. On the other hand, the Snapdragon platform only provides limited performance compared to the x86 platform, the price is not low, and its appeal is limited.
In contrast to rival Apple, the M-series chips based on the Arm architecture are moving forward step by step. Since launching the first self-developed chip M1 in 2020, it has released its follow-up M2 chip this year. The Mac product line equipped with M-series chips is also becoming more mature and complete, and the products based on Qualcomm solutions appear to have a bigger gap.
In contrast to rival Apple, the M-series chips based on the Arm architecture are moving forward step by step. Since launching the first self-developed chip M1 in 2020, it has released its follow-up M2 chip this year. The Mac product line equipped with M-series chips is also becoming more mature and complete, and the products based on Qualcomm solutions appear to have a bigger gap.
A Qualcomm spokesperson has reached out to Tom’s Hardware with the following statement: “We are on track to sample the first products with our next generation CPUs this year. ”
