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A comment on Three chips in and Google Tensor is on life support. Parent comment

Re:Three chips in and Google Tensor is on life support by maven29 on Wednesday November 22, 2023 @11:50PM (#38389425)
Has Qualcomm ever engaged in significant semi-custom work? (no, adjusting dvfs frequency limits or adding pluton to 8cX gen 3 doesn't count). Samsung was a semi-custom partner for Apple in the early days of the iPhone (to the extent that the M1 still has some Samsung IP in it[0]).

I heavily doubt that Qualcomm is even capable of working in such a role. In fact, the C-suite probably believes that their core competency is lawsuits and not modems, anyway.

[0] https://twitter.com/calebccff/status/1472517091970494465

(Edit: I meant semi-custom SoC design/architecture not cores, like https://www.anandtech.com/show/7281/understanding-amd-semi-c... )

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Re:Three chips in and Google Tensor is on life support by kevvok on Thursday November 23, 2023 @12:20AM (#38389622)
Has Qualcomm ever engaged in significant semi-custom work?

Yes, the early generations of Snapdragon SoCs were built using a custom ARMv7 core called Scorpion, which was later succeeded by another v7 core called Krait. The first ARMv8 SoC (the infamously disastrous Snapdragon 810) used stock ARM cores, but the next generation (820) switched to an in-house v8 design called Kryo. Around that time though, the company did massive layoffs, including in silicon engineering, leading to all the subsequent designs using tweaked ARM cores (despite also being called Kryo)

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Re:Three chips in and Google Tensor is on life support by maven29 on Thursday November 23, 2023 @12:30AM (#38389670)
I mean helping others execute semi-custom work based partly on qualcomm designs, to clarify
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Re:Three chips in and Google Tensor is on life support by re-thc on Thursday November 23, 2023 @12:32AM (#38389678)
> I heavily doubt that Qualcomm is even capable of working in such a role. In fact, the C-suite probably believes that their core competency is lawsuits and not modems, anyway.

It's not 1 of capability. They're trying to force everyone to use the full SoC and not just the modem.

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