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How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

arstechnica.com

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Re: How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

#191

Post by godzillabrennus »

protomyth wrote: post #69
guardiangod wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't get into details, but basically I agree with you. The Storm...was a product of many compromises. But it's only the start of a series of decisions that...

I dearly wish someone would explain the whole idea of why Blackberry built the Playbook. It seems like a product that was so forced with such a confusing development story.

I worked with a VAR when that shipped. They gave us some to try and encourage sales. It was a terribly slow device with poor battery life compared to iPad.

I still use the well made power adapter (Micro USB) that came with it to charge devices to this day. Kinda sad seeing that blackberry logo and knowing the tablet was horrible.

Re: How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

#192

Post by School-Cotton »

makapuf wrote: post #175
School-Cotton wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the moving pieces in Intel x86-to-RISC decoding (instruction decoder, μop cache, Microcode Sequencer ROM...) use up a non-trivial amount of silicon and power.

I'm not sure. If that were the case why wouldn't intel expose a native, better fit to uops instruction set in addition to the legacy, difficult to decode one and let the apps use the newer ones (or the subset of existing ones which do map well)?

My guess is (1) inertia, and (2) not wanting to commit to a specific instruction set because they tweak the internal μop set with every release.

And (3), this would add complexity, because, even though one is much simpler, now you need two completely separate decoding pipelines and mechanisms for switching between them.

Re: How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

#193

Post by aey »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #149
aey wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea. For sure. Apple should be encouraged to spend their 200b in cash on an alternative instead of lawyers.

I’m sure they would love to. The billions they’ve paid in licensing fees is more than it would cost to actually make themselves. This is the problem with mandatory standards and patents that cover those standards.

If it cost apple less to build improvement into 5G that would have been licensed to everyone they would have done so.

Standards require all participants to license at a FRAND rate. If apple developed 5G IP they would have effectively received a rebate based on the relative impact of their contribution.

Qualcomm actually has great execution. You realize 5G is going to put a 1 gigabit network in the palm of your hand? I can’t even get that out of cable.

Re: How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

#194

Post by Uptrenda »

The strangle hold is extremely bad for security, too. All of those Qualcomm chips are designed as black boxes. Nobody knows what kind of horrible flaws are inside them because trying to get at the code is like trying to rob the federal reserve.

We need open source 3/4/5G chips, but the R & D cost would be astronomical. If you ever think that TCP/IP is complicated check out the mobile system specs some time! They span 1000s of pages... It's amazing to me how much complexity is there. Those phone engineers deserve way more money, IMO.

Re: How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

#197

Post by forrestthewoods »

aey wrote: post #193
forrestthewoods wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure they would love to. The billions they’ve paid in licensing fees is more than it would cost to actually make themselves. This is the problem with mandatory standards and patents that cover those standards.

If it cost apple less to build improvement into 5G that would have been licensed to everyone they would have done so. Standards require all participants to license at a FRAND rate. If apple developed 5G IP they would have effectively received a rebate based on the relative impact of their contribution. Qualcomm actually has great execution. You realize 5G is going to put a 1 gigabit network in the palm of your hand?…

> Standards require all participants to license at a FRAND rate.

Clearly you didn’t read the article. There’s an entire section about Qualcomm not issuing FRAND licenses.

Re: How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

#199

Post by vasachi »

aey wrote: post #193
forrestthewoods wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure they would love to. The billions they’ve paid in licensing fees is more than it would cost to actually make themselves. This is the problem with mandatory standards and patents that cover those standards.

If it cost apple less to build improvement into 5G that would have been licensed to everyone they would have done so. Standards require all participants to license at a FRAND rate. If apple developed 5G IP they would have effectively received a rebate based on the relative impact of their contribution. Qualcomm actually has great execution. You realize 5G is going to put a 1 gigabit network in the palm of your hand?…

Meh, 1Gbps over cable is nothing, really. Switches with 10g uplink ports cost almost nothing now. Problem is that most software and hardware on user’s side can’t deal with that speed :) 5G smartphones probably won’t be able to give you 1Ggps either.

Re: How Qualcomm shook down the cell phone industry for almost 20 years

#200

Post by [deleted] »

aey wrote: post #193
forrestthewoods wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure they would love to. The billions they’ve paid in licensing fees is more than it would cost to actually make themselves. This is the problem with mandatory standards and patents that cover those standards.

If it cost apple less to build improvement into 5G that would have been licensed to everyone they would have done so. Standards require all participants to license at a FRAND rate. If apple developed 5G IP they would have effectively received a rebate based on the relative impact of their contribution. Qualcomm actually has great execution. You realize 5G is going to put a 1 gigabit network in the palm of your hand?…

[deleted]
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