I've been following this news regarding Nuvia with interest. I remember
@MC🐠 speculating a while ago about his theory that Qualcomm could have acquired Nuvia as a smokescreen to hide the fact they're using our IP. For a while now I've tried (largely unsuccessfully) to drill down on the Nuvia technology but I haven't discovered anything much other than these statements from other articles.
Statement 1
"However, the company has high hopes for chips developed as part of its acquisition of Nuvia, which specialised in high-performance chips based on the Arm architecture, which powers everything from smartphones to iPads. Amon stated that the Nuvia chips will differentiate themselves from the company existing Snapdragon processors by focusing on high-performance computations powering CPUs, GPUs, and neural processing for artificial intelligence".
Statement 2
"NUVIA Inc. promises to deliver only the best performance and "re-imagine silicon" as they say. Today, we got some bold claims from the company regarding the performance of their upcoming Phoenix SoC. Using Geekbench 5, the company has provided some simulated results of how the Phoenix SoC will perform. Being that it runs on Arm ISA, the SoC can run at very low power and achieve good performance. NUVIA has run some simulations and it expects its Phoenix SoC to be 40-50% faster in single-threaded performance than Zen 2/Sunny Cove at just a third of the power, 33% of the percent of power to be precise. In the graph below, NUVIA has placed its SoC only in 5 W range, however, the company said that they have left the upper curve to be disclosed at later date, meaning that the SoC will likely compete in high-performance markets and at higher power targets. While these claims are to be taken with a grain of salt, it is now a waiting game to see how NUVIA realizes its plans."
Statement 3
View attachment 21490
Without meaning to add to the speculation, I must admit I think it's really interesting that Rob Telson "liked" Leedert Van Doorn's post in which he stated he would be working with Nuvia. It makes me wonder why Rob would "like" it, especially if Nuvia was a competitor to BrainChip?
Just wanted to release that thought bubble into the stratosphere.
Qualcomm's Nuvia-based PC chips are showing positive signs, earning design wins
By
Sean Endicott
published 2 days ago
Qualcomm expects its Nuvia-based chips to make their way to PCs in 2024.
(Image credit: Qualcomm)
What you need to know
- Qualcomm recently discussed its upcoming chips for Snapdragon PCs during an investor call.
- Those chips are set to be Nuvia-based designs that rely on technology from Qualcomm's acquisition of Nuvia, which was announced in 2021.
- Earlier this year, Qualcomm delayed its plans to ship Nuvia-based chips to commercial devices until 2024.
It could be up to two years before we see a Nuvia-based chip from Qualcomm in a consumer PC, but things are progressing well, according to the company. In a recent investor call, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon explained that the chipmaker has seen several design wins lately in relation to Snapdragon PCs (via
Tom's Hardware).
"We expect to see an inflection point in Windows on Snapdragon PCs in 2024 based on a significant number of design wins to date," said Amon.
A "design win" is when a company makes a reference design of a component, in this case a chip, that results in a planned number of sales. For example, Qualcomm could show a Nuvia-based reference design to an OEM and then that manufacturer could include a subsequent chip based on the reference design in its long-term plans.
While Qualcomm's design wins are good news for the company, it has delayed its plans for its Nuvia-based chips. The sampling process was initially planned for August 2022 with processors becoming available in 2023. Plans were pushed back to have sampling start in 2023 follow by chips becoming commercially available in 2024 (via
Tom's Hardware).
When they do launch, Qualcomm's Nuvia-based processors are meant to rival Apple silicon, such as the M1 and M2.
That is, of course, if the designs do indeed ship.
Arm Ltd sued Qualcomm regarding chip designs based on Nuvia tech earlier this year. That lawsuit is ongoing and claims that Qualcomm breached license agreements with Arm and committed trademark infringement. Arm called for the destruction of Nuvia designs.
Qualcomm's current efforts were also discussed during the investor call. Amon highlighted AI features that were recently shown off at Microsoft Ignite. "The game-changing AI capabilities of our Snapdragon compute platform recently demonstrated at Microsoft Ignite 2022 developer conference will redefine user experiences on Windows 11."
