4 ms·
No, handoff design is more difficult than picking and tuning ALU designs from the 70 years of CPU design history, then generating the control circuitry. A lack
by systemBuilder 7y ago
No, handoff design is more difficult than picking and tuning ALU designs from the 70 years of CPU design history, then generating the control circuitry.
A lack of design-for-handoff OF ANY SORT is why Intel failed with 802.16. Qualcomm invented soft handoff which made frequency reuse 3x more efficient, and it made CDMA possible. People are pretty ignorant that due to shadow fading you have to keep 3 or more MACIDs active on different base stations and use high speed feedback control to hand off roughly every 1.6 seconds. I statistically analyzed drive testing logs for 1x-EV-DO at Qualcomm to produce one of the world's first handoff markov models, as part of OFDMA handoff design for Qualcomm.
A lot of practical experimentation goes into cellular system design in the most challenging handOff locales on Earth - San Diego and Hong Kong.
- foobarian 7y agoIt seems that there is a lot of focus on Qualcomm's strong-arm monopoly tactics. But that seems to me to work exactly as designed - patents are intended to literally grant a temporary monopoly to reward the holder for the expensive research work that otherwise wouldn't have happened. If Qualcomm won't license someone a patent for whatever reason, that is up to them. Clearly if customers are deciding to pay the price, it must be worth it. In fact, Apple itself did after realizing Intel can't deliver the 5G chipsets on time. The article points out where QCOM actually violated a contract, though. It's related to FRAND patents [1] - they committed to licensing a certain set of patents this way so they can be included in a standard, something very valuable to Qualcomm, and then later reneged on that commitment. That I can totally side with. But all the other bellyaching about QCOM the big bad monopolist for other reasons is missing the point IMO. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminat...
- makapuf 7y agoI agree. If they alone in the world can make good modems well they can charge a lot for it. 3% seems ok with the value I get from the the modem compared to the whole phone. If not the market will price them out. The issue is not with clients but other suppliers (or lack theeeof). The issue is patents. And enforcing frand policies. Again if no other team in the world can deliver what they do why should they charge less ? If they violated agreements it's not even an systemic issue with patents. Am I missing something ?
- throwaway2048 7y agoThe issue with patents is, no other team in the world is even allowed to try.
- makapuf 7y agoYou are theoretically under frand terms, although not free of charge: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discrimin...