Confidently claiming to beat the Apple M1 chip, what is Qualcomm’s secret weapon?

At the end of 2020, Apple introduced its biggest breakthrough in years in the field of PCs – the M1 processor they designed themselves. Based on the ARM architecture, the M1 processor delivers speed and power efficiency so high that no other company can match it at the moment – ​​including heavyweights like Intel or Qualcomm.

However, the new CEO of Qualcomm, Cristiano Amon, is ready to change that. Not only confident that he can keep up with competitors’ advances, Mr. Amon also thinks that Qualcomm can also beat many parameters of Apple M1 chip. That means the speed and power efficiency of a Windows laptop or PC with a Qualcomm chip will be comparable to that of a Mac with an Apple M1.

Given the current disparity between Qualcomm and Apple processors in mobile devices, this seems impossible. But Qualcomm has a secret weapon to do just that. Instead of waiting for ARM to come up with new chip architectures that can beat the M1, Qualcomm recruited a group of former engineers who once worked on chip design for Apple to do it.

” We need to be at the forefront of performance on battery-powered devices .” Mr. Amon said. ” If ARM, which has worked with us for many years, can develop a better CPU than we can make on our own, that will be another option for us. ”

To capture these valuable employees, Qualcomm recently acquired a company called Nuvia. These engineers all worked on Apple’s M1 chip development project before founding Nuvia. Qualcomm said it plans to sell new processors based on Nuvia’s design in 2022.

Interestingly, Apple did the same thing in 1996 when it bought the computer company NeXT, mainly to bring Steve Jobs back to lead the company, rather than to add to its product portfolio. . Steve Jobs brought Apple back to the glory it is today, whether Qualcomm can repeat that success or not, wait and see.

Refer to Android Authority