Qualcomm – one of Arm’s biggest customers – starts a RISC-V joint venture

Re:Qualcomm – one of Arm’s biggest customers – starts a RISC... by crote on Sunday August 06, 2023 @08:59AM (#37021432)

I bet that is just a matter of multinationals not wanting to bother with tiny startups. Unless you are ordering hundreds of thousands of chips, they are not even going to respond to your emails.

You just aren't worth their time, so they except you to stick to public documentation, buy their dev kit, and figure out out on your own. Want to use a part without public documentation? Tough luck!

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Qualcomm – one of Arm’s biggest customers – starts a RISC... by nomilk on Sunday August 06, 2023 @09:04AM (#37021478)

I have no idea if it's a lot or not, but for reference, Comma's initial (trial) order was for 10k chips.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Qualcomm – one of Arm’s biggest customers – starts a RISC... by pclmulqdq on Sunday August 06, 2023 @09:44AM (#37021849)

That's very small for an automotive product, particularly when you don't have a much bigger follow-up order on your timeline. Around million units is the normal volume, and it's where companies like Qualcomm will start to talk to you.

Many companies are a lot more friendly to small customers, though.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Qualcomm – one of Arm’s biggest customers – starts a RISC... by FirmwareBurner on Sunday August 06, 2023 @11:24AM (#37022945)

>That's very small for an automotive product

Also automotive customers tend to stick with their long term partners. It's why Renesas, Infineon and NXP(former Freescale) own the automotive MCU market.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Qualcomm – one of Arm’s biggest customers – starts a RISC... by szundi on Sunday August 06, 2023 @02:28PM (#37025059)

That’s nothing in automotive

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Qualcomm – one of Arm’s biggest customers – starts a RISC... by crote on Monday August 07, 2023 @12:56PM (#37037170)

That's pretty much an overgrown hobbyist project to them.

Chips are usually sold in reels of 1k or 3k. For quantities like 10k chip vendors will just redirect you to a distributor like Mouser or Digikey - who will be able to ship an order of 150k to you next-business-day without any issues.

The problems start when the chips you want aren't redistributed. You're a rounding error to the manufacturer. Why spend the time and effort assisting a startup with a one-off 10k order when the next email is from a large car manufacturer placing a guaranteed 15M order?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Qualcomm – one of Arm’s biggest customers – starts a RISC... by civilitty on Sunday August 06, 2023 @09:36AM (#37021767)

Qualcomm is especially awful to deal with. Even as a high volume customer getting anything from them (including chip errata!) was like pulling teeth.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Qualcomm – one of Arm’s biggest customers – starts a RISC... by aborsy on Sunday August 06, 2023 @10:25AM (#37022300)

I hear Qualcomm also doesn’t pay its engineers well. I wonder if that’s true.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Qualcomm – one of Arm’s biggest customers – starts a RISC... by hashtag-til on Sunday August 06, 2023 @10:44AM (#37022497)

Yes it is. I have quite a few friends working for them in the UK. Also quite a toxic office environment.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Qualcomm – one of Arm’s biggest customers – starts a RISC... by lnsru on Sunday August 06, 2023 @11:18AM (#37022889)

Salary in Germany is good compared to regular automotive companies because Qualcomm has this nice stock bonus. Environment is rather toxic. The salary does not compensate that.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Qualcomm – one of Arm’s biggest customers – starts a RISC... by FirmwareBurner on Sunday August 06, 2023 @11:26AM (#37022966)

> Environment is rather toxic. The salary does not compensate that.

Same with NXP. Salaries and bonuses are very good(by European standards, ignore FAANG wages) but the overtime, work pressure and workplace toxicity makes that a difficult proposition if you can't stomach the ascension to the level where the REAL money starts to come in.

There are indeed people at these big semi companies who can slack off and collect huge paychecks but those are the exception, as some people in the trenches are burning the candle on both ends to make the deadlines of masks reaching the fabs on time.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Qualcomm – one of Arm’s biggest customers – starts a RISC... by aborsy on Sunday August 06, 2023 @11:34AM (#37023041)

Can you mention examples of toxic practices to better see the situation?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Qualcomm – one of Arm’s biggest customers – starts a RISC... by FirmwareBurner on Sunday August 06, 2023 @11:39AM (#37023102)

Heavily depends on manager/team/business unit, but the main issue is usually insane workload and insane deadlines on projects that are already alte from the moment they start because sales/marketing/execs promised $MAJOR_CUSTOMER something totally unrealistic will be delivered.

The churn level is high. People are constantly fired, let go, or leave after their relocation bonus expires if they don't see any promotions after their tolls.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Qualcomm – one of Arm’s biggest customers – starts a RISC... by lnsru on Sunday August 06, 2023 @03:17PM (#37025530)

There are insane deadlines in semiconductor industry. We started many times already being too late to make main customer happy. I was able to catchup couple times doing 55-65 hour weeks. But it gets slowly normal practice instead of exception.

Tooling is also very specific. There are gazillions of scripts written in all possible languages for all sorts of semiconductors. Some colleagues will happily backstab you not sharing information about their tools.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Qualcomm – one of Arm’s biggest customers – starts a RISC... by FirmwareBurner on Sunday August 06, 2023 @03:35PM (#37025727)

>Some colleagues will happily backstab you not sharing information about their tools

Oh yeah, that sounds familiar.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Qualcomm – one of Arm’s biggest customers – starts a RISC... by RicoElectrico on Sunday August 06, 2023 @11:58AM (#37023274)

Any insider knowledge of other chip companies culture for a someone laid off SNPS, please?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Qualcomm – one of Arm’s biggest customers – starts a RISC... by FirmwareBurner on Sunday August 06, 2023 @02:28PM (#37025063)

No idea what's SNPS and how to help you with that.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Qualcomm – one of Arm’s biggest customers – starts a RISC... by RicoElectrico on Sunday August 06, 2023 @03:48PM (#37025854)

Ah, the stock ticker for Synopsys.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Qualcomm – one of Arm’s biggest customers – starts a RISC... by FirmwareBurner on Sunday August 06, 2023 @04:52PM (#37026606)

Sorry can't speak for that. I'm mostly familiar with the semi companies in central Europe. Don't know anyone working at Synopsys.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Qualcomm – one of Arm’s biggest customers – starts a RISC... by brucehoult on Friday August 11, 2023 @03:14AM (#37085981)

I found Samsung very good. My direct experience was as an English-speaking foreigner doing compilers and JITs etc in their Moscow R&D office mid 2014-early 2018, and visiting colleagues working on the same project in San Jose. You had to be around the office 45 hours a week (first entry to last exit each day, so that includes breaks), but they were serious about people taking weekends off, and their legally-entitled vacation (28 days, plus about 10 statutory holidays, plus about 8 days from New Year to Orthodox Christmas). If your manager asked you to work in the weekend then you got double or triple time.

Unfortunately the location is undesirable at the moment.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Qualcomm – one of Arm’s biggest customers – starts a RISC... by hashtag-til on Sunday August 06, 2023 @01:15PM (#37024255)

I actually heard good things from friends working at NXP. Long term career incentives, good salary, training and incentives to collaborate to OSS… quite good signs to me

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Qualcomm – one of Arm’s biggest customers – starts a RISC... by FirmwareBurner on Sunday August 06, 2023 @02:27PM (#37025050)

In which country/division?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Qualcomm – one of Arm’s biggest customers – starts a RISC... by hashtag-til on Sunday August 06, 2023 @03:59PM (#37025985)

Toulouse

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Qualcomm – one of Arm’s biggest customers – starts a RISC... by FirmwareBurner on Sunday August 06, 2023 @04:41PM (#37026450)

Thanks. As with any big corporation it really depends on the location, business unit and local management.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Qualcomm – one of Arm’s biggest customers – starts a RISC... by RF_Savage on Monday August 07, 2023 @01:20AM (#37030443)

NXP has bought so many companies that it depends on the unit and country a lot. Likely quite a bit of difference between former Philips and former Freescale/Motorola for example.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Qualcomm – one of Arm’s biggest customers – starts a RISC... by interrupt1 on Monday August 07, 2023 @12:32AM (#37030160)

> geohot has been ranting on stream non-stop for the last few days about how terrible it is to work with them for his comma.ai self-driving startup

For reference https://www.linkedin.com/posts/george-hotz-b3866476_comma-3x...

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/george-hotz-b3866476_qualcomm...

[ Parent | on HN ]