Today Qualcomm is saying that the corporate has accomplished the acquisition of NUVIA, a start-up firm consisting of business veterans who have been behind the creation of Apple’s high-performance CPU cores, and who have been aiming to disrupt the server market with a brand new high-performance core known as “Phoenix”.
The acquisition had been introduced solely a number of weeks in the past in mid-January, so the entire course of has been extraordinarily speedy by way of timeline.
“Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ: QCOM) today announced that its subsidiary, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., has completed its acquisition of the world-class CPU and technology design company, NUVIA for $1.4 billion before working capital and other adjustments.”
Today Qualcomm even went so far as put out a concrete roadmap for brand spanking new SoCs utilizing the newly acquired IP from Nuvia:
“The first Qualcomm Snapdragon platforms to function Qualcomm’s new internally designed CPUs are anticipated to pattern within the second half of 2022 and will probably be designed for top efficiency ultraportable laptops. “
Sampling in late 2022 would require a tape-out in early 2022, and a design-in primarily as quickly as potential following the acquisition at present. The complete course of appears extraordinarily quick and aggressive by way of timing, stating that Qualcomm is placing plenty of emphasis on the challenge.
Qualcomm had proven plenty of optimistic response to Apple M1, I quote our interview with Alex Katouzian from again in December by way of their response to the competitor design:
“[…] the laptops as of late are actually shifting in the direction of cellular. The digicam is tremendous vital. The audio is tremendous vital. The battery life is tremendous vital. Not having a fan is tremendous vital. Portability, thinness, connectivity, always-on always-connected, all these traits of cellular are shifting to the PC.
And folks say, imitation is the very best type of flattery. Look at look what occurred with the [Apple] M1. Their product pitch is sort of a replica of what we have been saying for the previous two or three years.”
NUVIA’s immediate acquisition and instant disclosure of plans to sort out the high-performance ultraportable laptop computer market could possibly be seen as Qualcomm’s direct response to the brand new Apple M1 powered laptops and to compete with their high-performance CPU cores.
Article Update:
We had the chance to have a name with Qualcomm’s Keith Kressin, SVP and GM, Edge Cloud and Computing, answering a number of questions as for firm’s present plans for the NUVIA workforce. Qualcomm views the acquisition as an vital strategic addition to the corporate’s design capabilities, filling a spot in IP design the place the corporate for a number of years now had been counting on exterior IP corresponding to Arm’s Cortex cores. Keith made vital observe of this skill to have complete in-house design management over each IP block in an SoC, permitting the corporate higher flexibility to reply to market calls for and creating aggressive merchandise.
The instant targets for the NUVIA workforce will probably be implementing customized CPU cores into laptop-class Snapdragon SoCs operating Windows, and allow the corporate to supply increased efficiency CPUs than would have been in any other case potential. When requested about plans for different product stacks and the potential of utilizing each in-house CPUs in addition to persevering with to make use of Arm Cortex CPU IP for decrease segments, it was acknowledged that Qualcomm will proceed to guage each metric and select the very best becoming design that makes probably the most sense for that product class.
We requested the workforce if Qualcomm would proceed to take a position into NUVIA’s authentic plans to enter the server and enterprise market, with a response that this wasn’t the primary purpose or motivation of the acquisition, that Qualcomm nevertheless would very a lot maintain that as an open…
