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.”
