
Qualcomm’s NXP Deal Is a $47B Wager on Computers You Drive - walterbell
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-27/qualcomm-s-nxp-deal-is-47-billion-wager-on-computers-you-drive
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frik
"Qualcomm stated that it will not provide support for Android Nougat on any
device using the Snapdragon 801 or 800 chipsets. The Adreno 330 GPU does not
support the Vulkan or OpenGL ES 3.1 graphics APIs, which must be present in
order to meet Google certification requirements for 7.0"

I would have hoped that someone bought Qualcomm and burn the brand for good. I
hate them ever since they don't release updates for the two year old
Snapdragon 801.

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tdkl
To be fair, the BS is on the Google part too. Nougat runs on old binaries on a
2011 Galaxy Nexus just fine.

Vulkan or OpenGL ES 3.1 graphics ? Yeah, I really need those for checking my
email and browsing the web on the phone.

Imagine MS blocking Windows $version because your GPU doesn't support newest
DirectX to render some obscure animation. How about just not rendering it on
older hardware and doing it on new ones ?

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extropy
It's more to do with the Google daydream support.

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tdkl
Which is non existing on devices without high enough resolution anyway. My
device isn't usable without Google Daydream?

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wjnc
There's a little uprising going on in the Netherlands about the price and
rewards to the CEO. He stands to gain about $.5B through this deal. This,
while the KKR deal in 06 was made possible partly through government subsidies
in the years that followed. (Not really my type of politics btw). If the
government wanted equity they should have asked.

But it's impressive that the turnaround of NXP took 10 years and built $30B in
value.

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mankash666
They keep saying NXP fabs cannot be used for manufacturing Qualcomm chips. All
the RF and analog front end components could probably be moved over to NXP
fabs. And the digital products of NXP could be manufactured by 3rd party fabs,
giving Qualcomm better pricing per unit.

However, I fail to see a marriage made in heaven between sensors (from NXP)
and processing(from Qualcomm) pricing complete solutions for automotives.

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petra
Sure, there is going to be a lot of new silicon content in a car(but less, or
much less cars ), but most of that silicon content would be in new areas - AI
and machine learning, LIDAR, Radar ? , Vision - areas where nxp doesn't have
any advantage, on the opposite - where startups and other companies like
Google and Nvidia beat it.

To get those capabilities, wouldn't it be better for Quallcom to invest in R&D
or buy startups ?

Another skill NXP has(via Freescale), is knowing how to build failure proof
chips(via redundancy, etc). But my guess is that isn't that terribly hard
skill to ackuire, and if not ackuire , there are already probably 3 companies
with that skill(TI, NXP/Freescle, Renesas), and at least on startup - so
enough people to partner or hire. And in any case , that knowledge is just the
start , applying it to the complexities of AI is the real challenge.

And the third skill is of course - access to the automotive sales channel,
possibilities of cross selling , etc. But will that be a big issue for the new
tech ?

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bisrig
I would be careful of trivializing the last point that you made. Things like
extremely long design cycles, environmental requirements, expectations of
value-add engineering services, product lifetimes etc. make the auto market
different in significant ways from consumer electronics. If you're a company
like NXP, these are core competencies. If you are oriented towards consumer
market, these are annoyances as best and serious cultural challenges at worst.

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user5994461
Please... the automotive market is a joke.

They have the experience and the product lines vetted for military and
aerospace. That's a different league entirely.

