Qualcomm today outlined its plans for its next-generation chips designed for PCs. The Snapdragon X series is set to come out in 2024, and Qualcomm claims that it will mark an "inflection point for the PC industry" thanks to the "next-level performance" brought by the new chips. Snapdragon X chips will use the Qualcomm Oryon CPU, which is built on the chip technology that it got when it purchased Nuvia. Founded by ex-Apple chip designers, Nuvia designed custom Arm-based chips that are expected to bring Apple silicon-like performance to PCs with improved power and efficiency. In addition to improved efficiency, Qualcomm's upcoming PC chips include on-device AI processing and 5G connectivity. As noted by The Verge, Arm has sued Qualcomm…

iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus Apple’s iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro Max all sport Qualcomm’s new X70 modem for improved 5G performance. iFixit’s Shahram Mokhtari via X: ‎ A lot of people have asked whether the iPhone 15 and 15 Plus are still using last years Qualcomm X65 modem or the new X70 seen in the 15 Pro’s. Here’s your answer. Apple didn’t just throw last years Pro logic boards into this years baseline models. They upgraded them too. If the 15 Pro benchmarks are any indication, the X70 should provide a notable improvement in power consumption and signal acquisition over long distances. https://speedsmart.net/blog/post/2005/iPhone-15-Pro-up-to-24-Faster-5G-Download-Speeds It also shows that Apple’s baseline models aren’t…

Insanely great, Apple’s multi-year project to build its own modem is not; other than at incinerating untold billions of dollars, that is. Aaron Tilley and Yang Jie for The Wall Street Journal: The 2018 marching orders from Apple increase; green up pointing triangle Chief Executive Tim Cook to design and build a modem chip—a part that connects iPhones to wireless carriers—led to the hiring of thousands of engineers. The goal was to sever Apple’s grudging dependence on Qualcomm, a longtime chip supplier that dominates the modem market. The obstacles to finishing the chip were largely of Apple’s own making, according to former company engineers and executives familiar with the project… Apple executives who didn’t have experience with wireless chips set…

Insanely great, Apple’s multi-year project to build its own modem is not; other than at incinerating untold billions of dollars, that is. Aaron Tilley and Yang Jie for The Wall Street Journal: The 2018 marching orders from Apple increase; green up pointing triangle Chief Executive Tim Cook to design and build a modem chip—a part that connects iPhones to wireless carriers—led to the hiring of thousands of engineers. The goal was to sever Apple’s grudging dependence on Qualcomm, a longtime chip supplier that dominates the modem market. The obstacles to finishing the chip were largely of Apple’s own making, according to former company engineers and executives familiar with the project… Apple executives who didn’t have experience with wireless chips set…

In the last few years, Apple has spent billions of dollars attempting to develop its own modem chip to replace the Qualcomm modem chips that it uses in iPhones, but a new paywalled Wall Street Journal report suggests Apple's approach to the project has been dogged by unrealistic goals, a poor understanding of the challenges involved, and completely unusable prototypes. Apple's plan to design its own in-house modem led to the hiring of thousands of engineers: Apple acquired the majority of Intel's smartphone modem business in 2019, and as it filled the project's ranks with Intel engineers and others hired from Qualcomm, company executives set a goal to have the modem chip ready for fall 2023. The modem chip project…

Apple, the world’s most valuable company has more than $166 billion in the bank and produces over $100 billion in annual free cash flow. The company has, for many years, also been working to develop its own modem chip, seemingly to no immediate avail. Dan Gallagher for The Wall Street Journal: [D]esigning the complex chips is apparently far easier said than done. Qualcomm, Apple’s current supplier of modem processors, said Monday morning that the two companies have extended their current chip-supply deal to cover iPhones launched from 2024-2026. That’s two years past the point when Qualcomm last told investors that its iPhone business would peter out, and three years beyond the company’s first projection for the end of that business…