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1.45Gbps LTE requires 6-carrier aggregation. Qualcomm's 5G x50 modem has a theoretical peak of 5Gbps with 8 carriers, so the current 1Gpbs real-world performance is probably only dual-carrier. Plenty more headroom to exploit down the road.

This is LPDDR; Intel and AMD don’t support it. Intel announced support in CannonLake that was supposed to ship in 2016... and still isn’t available to consumers.

LPDDR4 has been standard on ARM devices(phones/tablets) for quite a few years.

4266 is the highest rated LPDDR4 chips in the LPDDR4 spec. Even the Galaxy S9 only uses LPDDR4-3732 (1866MHz). https://www.qualcomm.com/produ...

Maybe Apple’s new iPads use LPDDR-4266.

Hell the whole thing was revocable. I worked on a system in 1996 that did almost word for word that exact patent (yes I did read it).

https://www.qualcomm.com/news/...

Seems to have been written (or edited) by someone without a semiconductor background. The biggest question I had was what processor architecture were they building around, something the Bloomberg piece never seemed to answer.

If they mean this it's 48 cores and based on ARMv8. Potentially interesting, but the piece lacks all the technical detail about how Qualcomm intended to position the chip technically against Intel, and what advantages it might have over competing ARM-based offerings.

But "ARM" never even appears in the Bloomberg article...

There's is no indication that the A7 was selected for power efficiency rather than, oh, cost.

Cost is a theory you pulled out of your ass, with zero support. Snapdragon Wear 3100 is based on a new ultra-low power hierarchical system architecture approach. More than sufficient evidence that the primary goal of Qualcomm's new SoC is power efficiency. And they passed up the A35 for that. Blow smoke all you want, it happened.

Other than the Qualcomm 3100 data point, there is not a whole lot of evidence as this point in time about which system architecture is ultimately the most power efficient for a watch. Samsung with go with a v8 part in their next smartwatch, then everybody will be able to get head-to-head real life power efficiency data. Until then you're sounding, well, a bit strident. Just a bit. Maybe go for a walk or something.

A citation for you.

The six patents, U.S. Patent No. 8,633,936, U.S. Patent No. 8,698,558, U.S. Patent No. 8,487,658, U.S. Patent No. 8,838,949, U.S. Patent No. 9,535,490, and U.S. Patent No. 9,608,675 enable high performance in a smartphone while extending battery life. Each of the patents does so in a different way for different popular smartphone features; https://www.qualcomm.com/iphon... While the technologies covered by the patents are central to the performance of the iPhone, the six asserted patents are not essential to practice any standards in a mobile device or subject to a commitment to offer to license such patents.

These are not in the general patent common license pool, are not of any standards required for mobile devices, but Apple wants them anyway and is using them without paying for them.

How is Apple "using them without paying for them" in a device that uses a LICENSED Qualcomm chip?

A citation for you.

The six patents, U.S. Patent No. 8,633,936, U.S. Patent No. 8,698,558, U.S. Patent No. 8,487,658, U.S. Patent No. 8,838,949, U.S. Patent No. 9,535,490, and U.S. Patent No. 9,608,675 enable high performance in a smartphone while extending battery life. Each of the patents does so in a different way for different popular smartphone features; https://www.qualcomm.com/iphon... While the technologies covered by the patents are central to the performance of the iPhone, the six asserted patents are not essential to practice any standards in a mobile device or subject to a commitment to offer to license such patents.

These are not in the general patent common license pool, are not of any standards required for mobile devices, but Apple wants them anyway and is using them without paying for them.

How is Apple "using them without paying for them" in a device that uses a LICENSED Qualcomm chip?

No the patents in question are listed for the world to see. They all relate to ICs and firmware. Apple - like all other vendors - can of course develop their own firmware to load on the ICs, but given it would take man-decades, most people just license up for the firmware and options they want. Except Apple. And thus the lawsuit. Only one of us is talking out our ass...

A citation for you.

The six patents, U.S. Patent No. 8,633,936, U.S. Patent No. 8,698,558, U.S. Patent No. 8,487,658, U.S. Patent No. 8,838,949, U.S. Patent No. 9,535,490, and U.S. Patent No. 9,608,675 enable high performance in a smartphone while extending battery life. Each of the patents does so in a different way for different popular smartphone features; https://www.qualcomm.com/iphon... While the technologies covered by the patents are central to the performance of the iPhone, the six asserted patents are not essential to practice any standards in a mobile device or subject to a commitment to offer to license such patents.

These are not in the general patent common license pool, are not of any standards required for mobile devices, but Apple wants them anyway and is using them without paying for them.

A citation for you.

The six patents, U.S. Patent No. 8,633,936, U.S. Patent No. 8,698,558, U.S. Patent No. 8,487,658, U.S. Patent No. 8,838,949, U.S. Patent No. 9,535,490, and U.S. Patent No. 9,608,675 enable high performance in a smartphone while extending battery life. Each of the patents does so in a different way for different popular smartphone features; https://www.qualcomm.com/iphon... While the technologies covered by the patents are central to the performance of the iPhone, the six asserted patents are not essential to practice any standards in a mobile device or subject to a commitment to offer to license such patents.

These are not in the general patent common license pool, are not of any standards required for mobile devices, but Apple wants them anyway and is using them without paying for them.

Do you understand that these are LTE Snapdragon modems, not ARM processors? And that they are a Qualcomm product?

Qualcom's LTE Direct

That's a copresence a.k.a. ads and spying scheme, not a mesh scheme.
  - it doesn't work without an LTE base station signal present for timing
  - it doesn't transmit data, just nearby device "identifiers," because there is no reason. The LTE base signal must be there, so just round-trip through it.
  - it uses the same licensed spectrum as the infrastructure LTE

It's a replacement for the ultrasonic cookies.

And a dozen other mesh strategies. Qualcom's LTE Direct

An idle network with dedicated spectrum is wasted spectrum. It's handy in edge cases like this, but only until everyone else figures out your secret. Then it gets instantly bogged down and the carrier is just squandering valuable spectrum.

This is a stupid argument. Shutting down 3G for LTE makes sense. Shutting down 2G for LTE mostly doesn't. why?

There's a bin-packing problem. The 2G slices, "channels," are only 200kHz, but UMTS is 5MHz so only two fit into the license of some carriers. This can argue either way.

  - if you have exactly 10MHz, your alternatives are 1 UMTS channel and waste half your bandwidth on GSM, or 2 UMTS channels and no GSM. If you have 10.4MHz, no problem. but auctions didn't come that way. :p The alternative is cowboy mode: just cram the GSM over the UMTS channel, blocking part of it, expect it to work around the "noise" with coding gain or something. this does work.
  - as you have fewer users, reduce the number of channels. Once you get to one channel. there is not much point in saving 200kHz. All the base stations include GSM software for free. You may as well keep GSM up since it only costs ops overhead.

However, repeat the same arguments on "we should shut down UMTS and run more LTE." It's a no-brainer. You can only shrink UMTS in 5MHz chunks which is like half your spectrum. Shrinking it from 1 channel to 0 channels is huge.

Most modern mid-to-high end phones and tablets have hardware h.265 already. See the SnapDragon video specs.

Even my older phone, a galaxy s5, has h.265 support.

Most modern mid-to-high end phones and tablets have hardware h.265 already. See the SnapDragon video specs.

For more than a decade I've been waiting for the "interferometric modulator" (iMod) display to be perfected enough for mass production. Quallcomm bought the technology and has had difficulties with the yield quality of its production runs. I keep thinking that if I wait long enough, the bugs will get ironed out, and then finally someone will be making a smartphone I would actually want to own.

They really tout the Snapdragon as an IoT device? Well, seems so:

https://developer.qualcomm.com...

I think these people need to realise that either;

(a) Your idiot - sorry "IoT" - device is a simple, locked down fairly "dumb" thing that is secured by design, or
(b) It's a fully-functional computer with a sophisticated OS that presents the same attack surface as a Mac, Windows or Linux box but, unfortunately, without the same knowledge base. i.e. You're going to have to throw serious resources at the thing to make it "secure".
For a device that will retail for a few bucks....
Google struggle to do it for Android; what's the betting that these things will continue to be buggy and insecure as hell?

I think there's a different profile that supports 20V @ 3A (60W), probably a copy and paste issue.
Here's a press release straight from QC

Quick Charge 2.0 offers four charging voltages at 5V, 9V, 12V and 20V, Quick Charge 3.0 provides flexibility with 200mV increments from 3.6V to 20V

If the linked article can't even get basic math right -- 12V * 3A = 36W, not 60W -- I'm not sure how much I should trust the rest of its unsourced numbers.

It looks like QuickCharge 3.0 will support voltages up to 20V, but I don't know when that'll become available in commercial products.

I think there may be more concern about electrolytically-accellerated corrosion. That can happen even at very low voltages and leakage currents.

Here we go with the stupid caveman gun solution.

Guns have one purpose--shot organisms--they move slow.

Drones are going to have wide view, mid-speed cameras such that in a few years, high speed cameras for stuff like SLAM will be on these things, and they can be used for projectile tracking--and be fast enough to avoid the stupid guns shots. They'll be robots, they wil dodge bullets.

Pandora's box for skynet is open folks.

1080p HD video playback and capture with H.264 (AVC)
720p playback with H.265 (HEVC)
DASH is supported

Most of the major Chinese semiconductor design companies already produce mid-range SoCs capable of decoding 4K HEVC.

I thought Qualcomm only made chips for CDMA digital voice. I didn't know that Qualcomm made data chips for 4G LTE as well.

They make chips for CDMA2000 EV-DO, the "DO" indicating that they're most definitely for data, not just voice. Realizing that cdmaONE/CDMA2000 has no future, they're also making W-CDMA/HSPA and LTE chips.

I thought Qualcomm only made chips for CDMA digital voice. I didn't know that Qualcomm made data chips for 4G LTE as well.

They make chips for CDMA2000 EV-DO, the "DO" indicating that they're most definitely for data, not just voice. Realizing that cdmaONE/CDMA2000 has no future, they're also making W-CDMA/HSPA and LTE chips.

I thought Qualcomm only made chips for CDMA digital voice. I didn't know that Qualcomm made data chips for 4G LTE as well.

They make chips for CDMA2000 EV-DO, the "DO" indicating that they're most definitely for data, not just voice. Realizing that cdmaONE/CDMA2000 has no future, they're also making W-CDMA/HSPA and LTE chips.

No, it doesn't use bluetooth. If it was using bluetooth there would be no need for the carriers to be involved at all. https://www.qualcomm.com/media...

We have gps, gyro's , accelerometers, magnetometers in our Cell phones.

It would seem anyone serious would use GPU in conjuction with Inertial sensors and also include maybe a 180 Sky view to check the sun or stars positions and LORAN, VAR and VOR as well as shortwave, commercial terrestrial TV and Radio broadcast strength, phase, call signs which could also provide decent navigation information.

In addition there are navigation units that combine GPS and GLONASS the Russian version to gain better accuracy and reliability.
http://www.qualcomm.com/media/blog/2011/12/15/gps-and-glonass-dual-core-location-your-phone

There is also IRNSS: India, Galileo: EU and Compass: China.

Lastly if on land, I think Google is also using Wifi MAC addresses which should in theory be unique although some low end vendors reuse them or just make them up.

The problem is that PHP and web programmers are quite common. Even so, places like Facebook are looking for PHP developers and SQL engineers. Trying to find decent C programmers, especially those capable of working on embedded systems or the Linux kernel or device drivers are much harder to find. As for college, good luck getting started in the industry without a degree unless you've managed to make a name for yourself without it on some well known project.

For example:

(Facebook) https://www.facebook.com/careers/search?q=&location=menlo-park
(Google) https://www.google.com/about/jobs/search/
(Apple) http://www.apple.com/jobs/us/corporate.html
(Tesla) http://tbe.taleo.net/CH07/ats/careers/jobSearch.jsp?org=TESLA&cws=1
(Cavium) http://www.cavium.com/careers.html
(Amazon Lab 126) http://www.lab126.com/careers.htm
(Yahoo) http://us.careers.yahoo.com/
(Xilinx) https://xapps9.xilinx.com/OA_HTML/RF.jsp?function_id=12325&resp_id=23350&resp_appl_id=800&security_group_id=0&lang_code=US&params=mCsTre-AToe2wnIXflPtqsZZTnVM9.N1OyhNnBv5KuqbLKT.chxR3de6DRGMEkZb&oas=suuh5UdozJuyoXGEIHQclw..
(Altera) http://ch.tbe.taleo.net/CH03/ats/careers/jobSearch.jsp?org=ALTERA&cws=1
(Intel) http://jobs.intel.com/
(Qualcomm) https://jobs.qualcomm.com/public/jobSearch.xhtml#messages

I am certainly not lying nor a shill. These are just off the top of my head. Many of these sites have pages of openings as well as openings for new college graduates.

Sorry. I forgot this link.

http://www.qualcomm.com/chipsets/gobi#specs

Damn near every chipset now couples the radio with GPS as a single baseband processor.

There are supposedly mirasol products available, but it looks like they are limited to the Chinese market at this point. Hopefully they will gain wider traction, as I would love a decent Android based tablet with a high-quality reflective display. Add an active digitizer and it would be about perfect.

It is really annoying how manufacturers have pigeonholed tablets as media consumption devices.

There are paperlike color screens capable of playing video. They are so fast they actually alternate between colors to display more colors like Plasma TVs do. Check out Mirosol displays. I don't know why these aren't popular in the US yet. http://www.qualcomm.com/mirasol

I saw a demo of one by the original e-ink company running a cartoon at about 15fps. It was also a touch screen. Pretty impressive, but apparently they lose their power advantage over LCDs when they are running at high frame rates. Since it is possible to refresh these screens at 66msec or better, I'd guess that the weak link in the e-ink nook and kindle must be the cpu. Again, this is probably for power reasons.

There are paperlike color screens capable of playing video. They are so fast they actually alternate between colors to display more colors like Plasma TVs do.

Check out Mirosol displays. I don't know why these aren't popular in the US yet. http://www.qualcomm.com/mirasol

Do you know which one of those two Qualcomm does?

I don't know for certain, but, from Qualcomm's Snapdragon page, the reference to "ARM Cortex A5" in the description of the Snapdragon S4 Play, I infer that they licensed a core from ARM.

The other Snapdragons have a "Krait" processor, and, from this Qualcomm press release, which speaks of another Snapdragon "[featuring] a 1.5GHz quad-core CPU—based on Qualcomm’s Krait micro-architecture", I infer that Krait may be a Qualcomm design rather than an ARM design. Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 white paper also seems to suggest that it's an ARM processor core designed by Qualcomm.

So I think the one-word answer is "both".

Do you know which one of those two Qualcomm does?

I don't know for certain, but, from Qualcomm's Snapdragon page, the reference to "ARM Cortex A5" in the description of the Snapdragon S4 Play, I infer that they licensed a core from ARM.

The other Snapdragons have a "Krait" processor, and, from this Qualcomm press release, which speaks of another Snapdragon "[featuring] a 1.5GHz quad-core CPU—based on Qualcomm’s Krait micro-architecture", I infer that Krait may be a Qualcomm design rather than an ARM design. Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 white paper also seems to suggest that it's an ARM processor core designed by Qualcomm.

So I think the one-word answer is "both".

Do you know which one of those two Qualcomm does?

I don't know for certain, but, from Qualcomm's Snapdragon page, the reference to "ARM Cortex A5" in the description of the Snapdragon S4 Play, I infer that they licensed a core from ARM.

The other Snapdragons have a "Krait" processor, and, from this Qualcomm press release, which speaks of another Snapdragon "[featuring] a 1.5GHz quad-core CPU—based on Qualcomm’s Krait micro-architecture", I infer that Krait may be a Qualcomm design rather than an ARM design. Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 white paper also seems to suggest that it's an ARM processor core designed by Qualcomm.

So I think the one-word answer is "both".

> how would this merger work? Tmobile is GSM whereas MetroPCS is CDMA.

The difference isn't as big as you think.

The difference between legacy TDMA-based 2G GSM/GPRS/EDGE and WCDMA-based 3G UMTS/HSPA+ is HUGE. Night and day. Literally, nothing in common besides a subset of the SIM card and the battery.

The difference between CDMA2000 voice/1xRTT data and EVDO is almost as big as the difference between 2G GSM and 3G UMTS/HSPA+.

The difference between CDMA2000 voice/1xRTT data and UMTS/HSPA+ is basically the presence of a SIM card, wider channels, and some evolutionary refinements. A tri-band (1700/1900/2100MHz) phone that does "everything" would cost about the same to make as a HSPA-only or CDMA2000-only phone that has to support 850 and 1900Mhz. Mode support is mainly a matter of IP licensing and firmware. What really drives up the cost is having to support 5 or more bands spread across the upper UHF and lower microwave spectrum.

Food for thought: the ONLY thing that prevents an AT&T iPhone 4S or Galaxy S2/S3 from working on Sprint or Verizon is radio firmware, FCC certification, and business policy. Google MDM6600 or MSM8960 sometime, or just read THIS for some gory details.

Like this? http://www.qualcomm.com/solutions/wireless-charging/qualcomm-halo

Indeed.

If the merchants were on the ball they would have real people wandering around their stores helping customers. Then they wouldn't need technology to bombard us with ads. If a sales person points out a special to me, or brings another product to my attention, I won't mind.

I did a lot of work a few years ago with assisted GPS, that used both GPS and the cellphone network to determine location. I did one test where I was driving around a parkade in downtown Seattle. The assisted cellphone fixes were spot on. The GPS fixes were - literally - all over the map. The I drove along the nastiest urban canyon I could find (under the monorail), and out the I-90 bridge/tunnel, with all the big underpasses and things that confused every other GPS.

Our stuff basically worked, but our marketing person still managed to bankrupt the company. That was another matter. It was fun while it lasted.

...laura

Intel was the top contributor to Linux 3.0 (by lines) (source)

IBM is in there, too at #8

Google pushed the Linux kernel and WebKit into an uncountable number of handhelds

Apple deploys Webkit, too, on a smaller number of handhelds

Amazon deploys Android, too (just without Market support), and they use Linux in their cloud offerings.

If you hate Microsoft, give in to your anger and join Oracle (there are a lot of angry JCP and OpenSolaris fans but hey, they made that Linux list, too!)

Remember those handhelds that run the Linux kernel and/or WebKit?

• Broadcom
• Atheros (are they are part of Qualcomm now? You can check out Qualcomm, part of "Qualdroid")
• Marvell

all made the top Linux contributor list, too.

I'll assume that other posters will cover the Red Hat and Novell bases.

Intel was the top contributor to Linux 3.0 (by lines) (source)

IBM is in there, too at #8

Google pushed the Linux kernel and WebKit into an uncountable number of handhelds

Apple deploys Webkit, too, on a smaller number of handhelds

Amazon deploys Android, too (just without Market support), and they use Linux in their cloud offerings.

If you hate Microsoft, give in to your anger and join Oracle (there are a lot of angry JCP and OpenSolaris fans but hey, they made that Linux list, too!)

Remember those handhelds that run the Linux kernel and/or WebKit?

• Broadcom
• Atheros (are they are part of Qualcomm now? You can check out Qualcomm, part of "Qualdroid")
• Marvell

all made the top Linux contributor list, too.

I'll assume that other posters will cover the Red Hat and Novell bases.

No, this chipset will bring 4G phones back to normal power usage: http://www.qualcomm.com/media/releases/2011/11/15/qualcomm-announces-commercial-availability-gobi-4000-platform-4g-lte-conne

Apple's been waiting for the aforementioned integrated radio to deploy LTE on their handsets.

You have no idea what you're talking about. There are literally two big squares on the motherboard where the cell radios reside. One square has the radios necessary for voice and 3G, and the other has LTE. Even when you're using LTE, the voice cell radio constantly has to be powered and connected/communicating with networks. This chipset will integrate the 4G radio: http://www.qualcomm.com/media/releases/2011/11/15/qualcomm-announces-commercial-availability-gobi-4000-platform-4g-lte-conne

Battery life will improve tremendously.

Uh... no. The reason is the 4G radio is separate and must be powered at the same time as the 3G/cell radio. You can see it in pictures of a 4G phone's motherboard on Anandtech. New chipsets from Qualcomm will integrate the 4G radio: http://www.qualcomm.com/media/releases/2011/11/15/qualcomm-announces-commercial-availability-gobi-4000-platform-4g-lte-conne

This will dramatically improve battery life. And this chipset is exactly what Apple's been waiting for. Not that complicated.

Look the article's stupid. The reason is because the 4G radio is separate from the other radios, so the phone has to power both radios at the same time. Once the 4G radio is integrated into the chipset (like here: http://www.qualcomm.com/media/releases/2011/11/15/qualcomm-announces-commercial-availability-gobi-4000-platform-4g-lte-conne ) then the battery drain will drop off dramatically.

Keep in mind that in the US and in Canada the dominant cellular system for many decades was CDMA. GSM is a fairly recent development and it makes inroads slowly.

~15 years ago is "fairly recent?" A few seconds' googling turned up this:

Digital systems arrived in the U.S. in the early '90s, with the first U.S. TDMA system launching in 1993 and the first U.S. GSM systems in 1995. In 1996, the first [CDMA] systems were launched.

I'd hesitate to call any of these dominant at any time in the present or past. TDMA is no longer with us, but GSM is supported by two of the four major carriers and CDMA is supported by the other two carriers. If any system had market dominance at any point, I'd have to say it was AMPS, which was the only game in town from the '80s through the mid-to-late-'90s.

Wow, I came to this conclusion within minutes of owning a Kindle DX and I strongly suspected it before it even arrived. Yes, textbook models are largely becoming obsolete. Only crazy ppl in California think that every student just needs pdfs of the textbooks for e-learning. sigh...

On a related note, check out the Entourage Edge concept. I don't know that they've got everything right yet, but this is on a better track than the Kindle DX.

Here is an excellent blog post by Qualcomm's VP of Education Technology on the 21st century textbook.

I haven't seen much talk about this, but it seems pretty potentially ground shaking to me that they could use something like this GSM/CDMA chip that has been in testing since 1998. Even though some articles suggest availability of the Qualcomm chip wont be until 2011, do any of you think this shines light on the possibility of Apple pulling something like this off early?

What will really be big news is when someone (probably Google or Apple) introduces a phone with something like the Gobi chip, now being used in some netbooks. It's a "carrier-neutral" chip, so you can activate the device on whatever carrier you like - GSM or CDMA.

The only reason people buy phones from carriers is to get financing (which is what carriers' phone subsidies really are - rolling the payments into your plan and sneakily continuing them forever). If people are willing to pay up front, or if the manufacturer will finance the handset, you can buy a phone and pick your own carrier, or even activate the same device on multiple carriers. This would be a real game-changer, and would push the carriers further towards being dumb pipes.

I think this would be ideal: make carriers compete on network quality alone, and make handset makers compete cross-carrier on handset quality alone.

But Qualcomm's Gobi chipset purportedly supports EV-DO and HSPA in a single chipset, thus it's at least technically possible that they have done exactly as they say. It even includes GPS... so long as you have room for all the antennae (dead space behind the screen for example) then it should be a non-issue to make it into a truly "multi-radio" machine.

Hmm... wonder if Apple's been talking to Qualcomm for the next gen iPhone... ;)

Sharks?

That's so Meme 1.0.

Get with the 2.0 picture, man... it's all about sharkfalcons.

Crocoeagles still scare the crap out of me, though.