Qualcomm CEO Amon: I'm too hard, and now chips are full of pits

Today's Qualcomm should be full of scenery, but Qualcomm's new CEO Amon said in a recent interview: I am too difficult! In addition to the supply chain problems exposed by the global chip shortage, NVIDIA's acquisition of Arm will disrupt healthy competition in the industry and pose a potentially huge threat to Qualcomm, and the chip industry is full of pits that keep him up all night.

Qualcomm CEO Amon: I'm too hard

Speaking about chip shortages, Amon said the supply chain problems exposed by the semiconductor industry this time put him under a lot of pressure. The main reason for this chip shortage is the sudden rise in demand for high-tech products, but the supply chain has not grown with it, and he expects this chip shortage to continue until the second half of 2021 or even longer.

Why is there a global chip shortage? Amon believes that last year the new crown pneumonia epidemic people stayed at home, factories closed, chip orders decreased. But soon, with the recovery of the automobile market, remote work becoming the norm, and mobile phone manufacturers grabbing the market gap left by Huawei, chip demand rebounded rapidly, and the supply chain was not prepared at all.

So, the point is that Qualcomm does not have its own fab, so Smart seeks TSMC and Samsung for OEM, which makes the supply source of chips relatively single. Although Amon did not say it, but associated with qualcomm last year's release of the Snapdragon 888 has not been widely sold in the market, and then made up the release of snapdragon 870, it can be seen that Qualcomm is not happy under the chip hunger.

In addition, in terms of product strategy, Amon said that Qualcomm's next main task will be to occupy the emerging 5G market. "5G will be the first, second and third priority for (Qualcomm!) Because 5G is one of the biggest opportunities in our company's history. "With the popularity of 5G and mobile chips, consumers and businesses are increasingly demanding chip performance such as extended battery life. Chip design is gradually becoming the focus.

Qualcomm's goal is not only mobile phone chips, 5G is an unprecedented opportunity. To that end, Qualcomm previously acquired Nucia, a chip startup founded by former Apple executives, for $1.4 billion. Qualcomm plans to use Nuvia's CPUs in a variety of products, including smartphone chips, laptop processors and automotive components, which will improve the performance of Qualcomm chip products and attract more customers for Qualcomm. Qualcomm's existing chip solutions are far from enough to meet market demand.

Qualcomm and Nuvia both use arm architecture, and although Qualcomm has licensed the Arm and Nuvia cores, reducing its dependence on the Arm architecture, for Qualcomm, NVIDIA's acquisition of Arm is still not good news. Amon said in an interview that Arm's strength lies in its independence. If Arm is acquired, its architecture will not be in Qualcomm's next-generation chip blueprint, and Qualcomm will develop a new backup plan to transition.

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