Discussion The end of Qualcomm's Nuvia dreams?

[beginner99]

And many do. However, the iPhone is completely different from Android phones in every way, including the SoC.

Therefore, if Nuvia is performing significantly better than anything else Samsung or Mediatek can make, then Nuvia will take the highend completely. Mediatek and Samsung will still sell some, but they'll be relegated to low end. Nuvia can fill the stack from high to low and command premium prices in each segment.

Samsung has sold flagship phones with slower Exynos processors internationally for years, and they've beaten LG, HTC, Sony etc.

Exactly. Came here to say this that Samsung was selling their very much worse exynos (compared to snapdragons) for years in Europe and still beat all the other brands.

My current phone has a mid-range chip in it. It was basically the only non-high end phone with waterproofing, wireless charging and a 3.5mm jack. I don't game on my phone. Even the smartphones 6-7 years ago were mostly fast enough for basic web stuff.

 

[Doug S]

Android phone makers can't call their phones high end if they don't use a Nuvia chip that is 30% faster and provides longer battery life. In a scenario like this, the highest end Android phones must use Nuvia.

So are you arguing that no Android OEM can call their phones high end today because none of them comes close to iPhone in CPU performance?

 

[mikegg]

So are you arguing that no Android OEM can call their phones high end today because none of them comes close to iPhone in CPU performance?

Highend isn't determined by what the OEMs call it. It's determined by price point.

 

[Doug S]

Highend isn't determined by what the OEMs call it. It's determined by price point.

You just said and I quote "Android phone makers can't call their phones high end if they don't use a Nuvia chip that is 30% faster and provides longer battery life", now you're saying it is determined by price point. Make up your mind.

 

[DisEnchantment]

I was under the impression almost all Android apps were native code these days. Are there any leading apps (with more than 10 million installs let's say) that are solely Java or Kotlin or whatever they're calling it these days.

Most apps are Java based in the store. Some publishers release their apps with dex_preopt=enabled, which releases AOT version of the app for the specific platform. Such apps are not portable across architectures.
But usually most developers publish normal Java apps which goes through a dexopt pass at first launch which is the best of both worlds, AOT and portability.
However if the apps come with some JNI native libraries then they are platform dependent and not portable.
That being said, it is still possible to ship JNI libs for multiple architectures and the System.loadLibrary() could be called to load a platform specific library depending on the properties ro.product.cpu.* for instance.
You can also embed your tuned JNI libs for multiple arch using use_embedded_native_libs: true (e.g. armv7, armv8) which is what most multi platform apps do when they want to support wide range of HW with tuned JNI libs.
Then there is Apex. So it is a matter of demand.

 

[eek2121]

I feel like you don't understand how software development works at all. No developer is going to trust that their app will "just work" on a different architecture without testing it and its existence (if the compiler starts spitting out fat binaries by default) doesn't mean they will care if it is reported to not work correctly - at least not until there are enough RISC-V Android phones for them think it is worth bothering with.

If someone tries to run their Disney+ app on their Windows PC and it doesn't work right and they contact Disney what do you think they will say? "Sorry we don't support running our app on Windows, you can use our website to access Disney+" is what they'd probably say.

Developers typically don’t limit the apps to a specific architecture in the play store. Go install android + play services in virtual box and you will see.

See the comment above for more details.

I was under the impression almost all Android apps were native code these days. Are there any leading apps (with more than 10 million installs let's say) that are solely Java or Kotlin or whatever they're calling it these days.

Very few apps are native. See the comment by @DisEnchantment above. He articulates in words what I failed to do, apparently.

Anyone can build a RISC-V CPU without having to worry about licensing issues, but it's another thing entirely to build something that's actually worth a damn. Most of the companies producing ARM SoCs are licensing designs. Hiring a design team is expensive. Qualcomm spent $1.4 billion just to acquire the Nuvia team and they still are paying those people a lot of money every year.

A simple RISC-V core design isn't going to be too difficult, but building something that can reliably execute multiple instructions per clock cycle out of order becomes far more difficult. That's what makes Apple's CPUs so beastly. Building something capable of that kind of performance isn't trivial and it took Apple themselves several years to cultivate the capability to design those chips.

If China wants to crank out basic designs on older process nodes no one is going to be too bothered. It's probably fine for their domestic market where the emerging middle class would be fine with something low cost even if the performance isn't winning any awards. Apple's cores are overkill for a phone at this point. But the only thing they really compete on is price and no sane person is going to trust that their totalitarian despotic government didn't force the companies to add some kind of back door.

We already have RISC-V parts that are competitive with the SoC in the Raspberry Pi 4 while consuming less power. While that isn’t exactly saying much, it is certainly enough to run a smartphone.

Companies have previewed next-gen designs that are even faster, with one design performing as well as coffee lake.

 

[FlameTail]

Wow this thread blew up

 

[FlameTail]

Arm-Qualcomm Lawsuit Could Muddle US Chip Design Leadership

Leonard Lee of neXt Curve considers the potential impact of a dispute between Qualcomm and Arm on the US semiconductor industry amid growing competition from Asia.

news.bloomberglaw.com

The US government gonna get involved in the lawsuit?

This would be a very interesting situation.

 

[Doug S]

The US government gonna get involved in the lawsuit?

This would be a very interesting situation.

Sounds like a Qualcomm mouthpiece hoping for that, with his bogus claims that "Nuvia's revolutionary CPU technology promised to outdo ... Apple's M series" and attempting to imply that HiSilicon was somehow better positioned to compete despite using the same standard ARM cores everyone in the Android world is currently using - despite sanctions completely cutting them off from selling to the western world.

 

[FlameTail]

Sounds like a Qualcomm mouthpiece hoping for that, with his bogus claims that "Nuvia's revolutionary CPU technology promised to outdo ... Apple's M series" and attempting to imply that HiSilicon was somehow better positioned to compete despite using the same standard ARM cores everyone in the Android world is currently using - despite sanctions completely cutting them off from selling to the western world.

I thought so too.

But in a hypothetical scenario where the US government would indeed get involved, what would be the result? Will ARM be forced to concede?

 

[soresu]

and attempting to imply that HiSilicon was somehow better positioned to compete despite using the same standard ARM cores everyone in the Android world is currently using - despite sanctions completely cutting them off from selling to the western world

Eh?

I was under the impression that HiSilicon's Kirin SoC's were basically dead at this point due to the sanctions situation - the last having A77 was it?

Ironic that you mentioned Qualcomm as I think it was almost certainly a measure to protect them that originally had the US govmt gunning for Huawei.

The Kirin series were not always up to date with nu cores, but the years that they were they managed to crank them out in Huawei phones at least 4-5 months ahead of Qualcomm's equivalent SoC being available in a new phone.

 

[moinmoin]

Eh?

I was under the impression that HiSilicon's Kirin SoC's were basically dead at this point due to the sanctions situation - the last having A77 was it?

Ironic that you mentioned Qualcomm as I think it was almost certainly a measure to protect them that originally had the US govmt gunning for Huawei.

The Kirin series were not always up to date with nu cores, but the years that they were they managed to crank them out in Huawei phones at least 4-5 months ahead of Qualcomm's equivalent SoC being available in a new phone.

Huawei/HiSilicon/Kirin are essentially dead since they no longer get access to TSMC's services.

 

[soresu]

Huawei/HiSilicon/Kirin are essentially dead since they no longer get access to TSMC's services.

I assumed as much - sad as they were clearly pretty good at SoC design, they even released moderately affordable HiKey SBCs based on recent Kirin up to the 960/970 generation.

If not for the sanction hammer they probably would have fielded a followup 980+ based HiKey model years before any RK3588 based SBCs turned up.

 

[Doug S]

Huawei/HiSilicon/Kirin are essentially dead since they no longer get access to TSMC's services.

They aren't dead for phones sold in China, which is a pretty large market with a lot of it in lower pricing bands where leading edge processes wouldn't be used even if they were available.

 

[hemedans]

They aren't dead for phones sold in China, which is a pretty large market with a lot of it in lower pricing bands where leading edge processes wouldn't be used even if they were available.

Even new Kirin use A76 and its 4G only, Huawei now use Qualcomm Soc but without 5G.

And Chinese market use leading edge processor but they price them lower, its normal there to see phone with flagship soc for around $300-400 and top midrange soc under $300.

 

[moinmoin]

They aren't dead for phones sold in China, which is a pretty large market with a lot of it in lower pricing bands where leading edge processes wouldn't be used even if they were available.

They are shadows of their former selves. Before the sanctions by Q2 2020 Huawei surpassed Samsung as the biggest smartphone seller in the world, HiSilicon was a major customer of TSMC, and Kirin was a very competent leading edge SoC. All of that came to a full stop.

 

[soresu]

They are shadows of their former selves. Before the sanctions by Q2 2020 Huawei surpassed Samsung as the biggest smartphone seller in the world, HiSilicon was a major customer of TSMC, and Kirin was a very competent leading edge SoC. All of that came to a full stop.

Something like 13% of TSMC's revenue I think at the time the sanction hammer dropped.

Ironically I think that this may well have put the impetus on TSMC/Taiwan to reinvest in domestic infrastructure to match what they are currently importing in their supply chain ala wafers and lithography equipment.