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> Whether they’ll sacrifice their mobile lead in the pursuit of gaining ground for higher end gaming. It's hard to imagine why they'd distract themselves with

> Whether they’ll sacrifice their mobile lead in the pursuit of gaining ground for higher end gaming. It's hard to imagine why they'd distract themselves with that, except perhaps with a token small-run demo for pure brand marketing purposes. Because of Apple's strict vertical integration, there's so much market for them as the de facto manufacturer delivering parts to pretty much every competitor making products that want a high performance/power ratio.

dagmx 2y ago
Well it depends which space they want to be taken seriously in. Currently the 741 is very poor when compared to any dGPU or Apple. It only favourably compares to iGPUs. I believe they have three options 1. Say it’s meant to be like an iGPU, and work on supporting dGPUs to complement it. 2. Say that they want to compete with dGPUs/Apple and risk losing their mobile crown. Which is what Apple did in exchange for one design across all products. 3. Say they want to have a split product portfolio. A more desktop focused GPU for Snapdragon X with a more mobile centric one for 8xx
- silisili 2y ago
  I think it's going to be 3, but a split between mobile and laptop/desktop without any concern for competing with dGPUs. It makes no sense at all for them to. If they can give good enough, on par or better with current iGPUs, with a lower power usage and potentially even fanless, they're going to sell a billion of them. They'll be in every Chromebook in the world.
  - hypercube33 2y ago
    They aren't gunning for Chromebook deployments...these are currently in business laptop models and AMD may have already beaten them in all fronts on some of these per dollar other than ultralight and video playback duration. Lenovo has a A model that can do 16 hours and light gaming. more importantly it runs x86 apps full speed. I agree these likely will take over the sub $1000 market if given the chance but they are shooting at $1500-2000
    - silisili 2y ago
      Interesting. Seems like a huge missed opportunity there, as those outsell everything else by quite a margin. Perhaps they'll expand into both ends like they do phones, eg the 4xx on the low end and 8xx on the high end.
      - RussianCow 2y ago
        Presumably the margins on Chromebook are terrible compared to those of mid to high end laptops. I don't blame them for wanting to start with the higher margin market and eventually work down.
  - dagmx 2y ago
    They aren’t fighting for Chromebook territory with this though. All their comparisons are to the MacBook Air and mid-high end windows laptops because that’s the market they’re gunning for. These are meant to be $1k-2k devices.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    Chromebooks are basically the US school systems, Google employees, and little else.
    - oldpersonintx 2y ago
      [dead]
- HeWhoLurksLate 2y ago
  IIRC, on the LTT video on the topic they mentioned that there were like 8 extra PCIe lanes that could theoretically get run to a dGPU
benreesman 2y ago
I grew up in San Diego and at the time being involved with technology meant living in Qualcomm’s shadow in one way or another. So I tend to agree that being the reference mobile SoC vendor outside of Cupertino is pretty on brand for their absolute top priority. At Qualcomm if it doesn’t make dollars it doesn’t make sense as we used to say. And good for them! After a brief flirtation with the idea of becoming a pure play CDMA patent troll they seem to have gotten back to their roots and started doing engineering again. It’s a cool company.
a-dub 2y ago
> It's hard to imagine why they'd distract themselves with that, except perhaps with a token small-run demo for pure brand marketing purposes. haven't google and samsung started making their own socs?
InDubioProRubio 2y ago
I think there is a market for a dual-world architecture, with loads of dark silicon in a low battery setting (and suffering performance being acceptable) and a high power mode, that is able to compete with regular desktop gpu architectures.

dagmx 2y ago

Well it depends which space they want to be taken seriously in. Currently the 741 is very poor when compared to any dGPU or Apple. It only favourably compares to iGPUs. I believe they have three options 1. Say it’s meant to be like an iGPU, and work on supporting dGPUs to complement it. 2. Say that they want to compete with dGPUs/Apple and risk losing their mobile crown. Which is what Apple did in exchange for one design across all products. 3. Say they want to have a split product portfolio. A more desktop focused GPU for Snapdragon X with a more mobile centric one for 8xx

silisili 2y ago
I think it's going to be 3, but a split between mobile and laptop/desktop without any concern for competing with dGPUs. It makes no sense at all for them to. If they can give good enough, on par or better with current iGPUs, with a lower power usage and potentially even fanless, they're going to sell a billion of them. They'll be in every Chromebook in the world.
- hypercube33 2y ago
  They aren't gunning for Chromebook deployments...these are currently in business laptop models and AMD may have already beaten them in all fronts on some of these per dollar other than ultralight and video playback duration. Lenovo has a A model that can do 16 hours and light gaming. more importantly it runs x86 apps full speed. I agree these likely will take over the sub $1000 market if given the chance but they are shooting at $1500-2000
  - silisili 2y ago
    Interesting. Seems like a huge missed opportunity there, as those outsell everything else by quite a margin. Perhaps they'll expand into both ends like they do phones, eg the 4xx on the low end and 8xx on the high end.
    - RussianCow 2y ago
      Presumably the margins on Chromebook are terrible compared to those of mid to high end laptops. I don't blame them for wanting to start with the higher margin market and eventually work down.
- dagmx 2y ago
  They aren’t fighting for Chromebook territory with this though. All their comparisons are to the MacBook Air and mid-high end windows laptops because that’s the market they’re gunning for. These are meant to be $1k-2k devices.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Chromebooks are basically the US school systems, Google employees, and little else.
  - oldpersonintx 2y ago
    [dead]
HeWhoLurksLate 2y ago
IIRC, on the LTT video on the topic they mentioned that there were like 8 extra PCIe lanes that could theoretically get run to a dGPU

benreesman 2y ago

I grew up in San Diego and at the time being involved with technology meant living in Qualcomm’s shadow in one way or another. So I tend to agree that being the reference mobile SoC vendor outside of Cupertino is pretty on brand for their absolute top priority. At Qualcomm if it doesn’t make dollars it doesn’t make sense as we used to say. And good for them! After a brief flirtation with the idea of becoming a pure play CDMA patent troll they seem to have gotten back to their roots and started doing engineering again. It’s a cool company.

a-dub 2y ago

> It's hard to imagine why they'd distract themselves with that, except perhaps with a token small-run demo for pure brand marketing purposes. haven't google and samsung started making their own socs?

InDubioProRubio 2y ago

I think there is a market for a dual-world architecture, with loads of dark silicon in a low battery setting (and suffering performance being acceptable) and a high power mode, that is able to compete with regular desktop gpu architectures.