3 ms·

In the west, Qualcomm won. There's basically no one else even trying to make medium or high end chips. The patent encumbrance seems total. Even the mega giant

In the west, Qualcomm won. There's basically no one else even trying to make medium or high end chips. The patent encumbrance seems total. Even the mega giant Apple is reportedly just giving up on trying. And at huge real world impact, as well as market drive. Apple designs tend to use a third or more of their phone motherboard's real estate supporting Qualcomm's forest of different parts required for cellular. It's been stubbornly hard to integrate well, forever. The other IT field I'd cite is GPUs, where it's not at all a secret that companies would love to make more open hardware & stop using so many firmware blobs, but those blobs are the obfuscation layer that gets them legal protection, by making it unclear how the hardware works. In these regards, it's just a miracle wifi and bluetooth and consumer GPUs exist. That anyone can build any chips, given our shitty onerous forsaken legal IP system, seems like a miracle. Qualcomm feels like the dark world hell nightmare we can never escape from but miraculously nightmare-shit-world is in only one key part of information technology, not all of IT. Somehow. Thank the stars.

fomine3 3y ago
I'd count Taiwanese MediaTek as "western", maybe at least half
- ksec 3y ago
  Mediatek took more market share from Qualcomm every single year and yet somehow the narrative is still Qualcomm has a monopoly.
  - jauntywundrkind 3y ago
    MediaTek consistently offers far more value/$, which makes them seem less concerning. For a while they were second tier offerings, but increasingly, they're just fantastic pieces of equipment. The Retroid Pocket 4+ was announced today with the Dimensity 1100 processor - 4x A78 cores, 9 GPU cores - and it looks like a super tight mini-Deck; $200. Beyond a value assessment, if you look at who licenses whose patents, it's MediaTek paying handsomely to license a ton of Qualcomm patents. That happened in November 2009. I wonder how many new patents MediaTek has had to license to keep going, versus how many they're 3/4 of the way to done having to license. I truly like your point! I think a reversal of perspective is totally due here. But so far, MediaTek has been winning marketshare imho by playing a hella competitive game, where-as Qualcomm seems to be ultra expensive chips that consistently under-deliver on their promises. MediaTek also seems to be available in a wider range of systems, where-as Qualcomm chips seem to only be available on a very limited range of products. I wish Qualcomm was at least more competitive; the 8cx series could have been a value chip, but was hot and systems were still far too expensive.
fbdab103 3y ago
I get technology is always advancing, but I do wonder what the landscape will look like in 10 years when a lot of these patents start to expire. As a consumer, it feels like we have been hitting diminishing returns for a while now. Sure, they will have released 11G, and all of the ads will tell me how vital it is the government can track me with millimeter precision, but I think all of my needs were already met with a five+ year old device.
- jauntywundrkind 3y ago
  I have a lot of hope the open core movement is going to help, but right now it's still bonkers hard and expensive & special to attach a good modern bus to a chip. Having ram or USB3+ or PCIe or soon CXL - much less BT or wifi! - is a totally different kind of feat that open silicon seems far off from. The LiteX folks come to mind as deserving as big nod here but I think mainly fpga not basic targeting. A connected computer still feels so far off. It's pretty interesting seeing some plateau forming commercially. The new Intel n100 - n30p chips look awesome. But they compete with mini-pc systems built around 20-65W desktop chips from 3-10 years ago that have a huge cheap second hand market. And they are a bit more power efficient but not vastly, producing similar power. But, good news, Intel & oems can have new systems using these chips on the market for competitive prices. Being able to compete with your own secondary market is a great sign to me.

fomine3 3y ago

I'd count Taiwanese MediaTek as "western", maybe at least half

ksec 3y ago
Mediatek took more market share from Qualcomm every single year and yet somehow the narrative is still Qualcomm has a monopoly.
- jauntywundrkind 3y ago
  MediaTek consistently offers far more value/$, which makes them seem less concerning. For a while they were second tier offerings, but increasingly, they're just fantastic pieces of equipment. The Retroid Pocket 4+ was announced today with the Dimensity 1100 processor - 4x A78 cores, 9 GPU cores - and it looks like a super tight mini-Deck; $200. Beyond a value assessment, if you look at who licenses whose patents, it's MediaTek paying handsomely to license a ton of Qualcomm patents. That happened in November 2009. I wonder how many new patents MediaTek has had to license to keep going, versus how many they're 3/4 of the way to done having to license. I truly like your point! I think a reversal of perspective is totally due here. But so far, MediaTek has been winning marketshare imho by playing a hella competitive game, where-as Qualcomm seems to be ultra expensive chips that consistently under-deliver on their promises. MediaTek also seems to be available in a wider range of systems, where-as Qualcomm chips seem to only be available on a very limited range of products. I wish Qualcomm was at least more competitive; the 8cx series could have been a value chip, but was hot and systems were still far too expensive.

fbdab103 3y ago

I get technology is always advancing, but I do wonder what the landscape will look like in 10 years when a lot of these patents start to expire. As a consumer, it feels like we have been hitting diminishing returns for a while now. Sure, they will have released 11G, and all of the ads will tell me how vital it is the government can track me with millimeter precision, but I think all of my needs were already met with a five+ year old device.

jauntywundrkind 3y ago
I have a lot of hope the open core movement is going to help, but right now it's still bonkers hard and expensive & special to attach a good modern bus to a chip. Having ram or USB3+ or PCIe or soon CXL - much less BT or wifi! - is a totally different kind of feat that open silicon seems far off from. The LiteX folks come to mind as deserving as big nod here but I think mainly fpga not basic targeting. A connected computer still feels so far off. It's pretty interesting seeing some plateau forming commercially. The new Intel n100 - n30p chips look awesome. But they compete with mini-pc systems built around 20-65W desktop chips from 3-10 years ago that have a huge cheap second hand market. And they are a bit more power efficient but not vastly, producing similar power. But, good news, Intel & oems can have new systems using these chips on the market for competitive prices. Being able to compete with your own secondary market is a great sign to me.