back to article Qualcomm axes staff, winds down data center processor efforts ... while China takes the blueprints and runs

Qualcomm is laying off 269 folk in America as it gradually wakes up from its dream of filling data centers worldwide with its own Arm-based server processors. Although the axed employees are said to work in divisions across the chip design giant, the cuts are largely due to Qualcomm winding down its plan to personally invade …

  1. CAPS LOCK

    Meanwhile at Intel...

    ....Suit #1: Well, that's another one gone, we'll soon be able to put up the price of Xeons so much we'll be able to hear the screaming from space. Lol, trebles all round!

    Suit #2: What about this Chinese thingy?

    Suit #1: I think our guy in The Whitehouse will see to that.

    1. NoneSuch Silver badge
      Facepalm

      CPU Back Doors For National Snooping...

      Jesus wept.

      Let's hope Anonymous gets into these Chinese chips before the US / UK / Oz governments have the same moronic idea.

      1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

        Re: CPU Back Doors For National Snooping...

        Would you trust the Intel random number generation instruction?

        Would you trust there are not already undocumented op-codes, even hidden in plain sight such as said random value, that recover part or all of previously used AES instruction's keys in some obfuscated form?

    2. steviebuk Silver badge

      Re: Meanwhile at Intel...

      "trebles all round!"

      I spy someone reading Private Eye

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You shouldn't trust Google Translate too much

    "Thang Long" is very odd. The proper transcription of "昇龙" is "Sheng Long", meaning "Rising Dragon". And quite obviously from the big banner on the picture in the press release, it is actually called the "StarDragon" in English, so no need for some new funky and confusing transliteration.

    1. S4qFBxkFFg

      Re: You shouldn't trust Google Translate too much

      Blame Mr. Finbarr Saunders, who apparently appears in HXT's staff directory.

    2. Mayday
      Alert

      Re: You shouldn't trust Google Translate too much

      "The proper transcription of "昇龙" is "Sheng Long", meaning "Rising Dragon"."

      You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance.

  3. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

    Still, they got one over on Apple

    In China and in relation to resizing a photo on an iDevice. Apparently Tim Cook and Co violated a QC Patent in IOS 11. I guess that the order making QC tell patent licencees exactly what patents they are actually licensing has something to do with this.

    Also AFAIK, it only applies in China to phones running IOS 11 and is an injunction banning the import of infringing phones. Still, how this can be inforced when all those iDevices are made in China...? {Mind boggles on that point}

    1. Mark 85

      Re: Still, they got one over on Apple

      Perhaps they have to load them into a crate, put them on a ship and cruise out past the 3 mile limit before returning? Politics and national laws sometimes require bizarre solutions.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Still, they got one over on Apple

      Since Apple sells zero iPhones running iOS 11 (everything that supported it supports 12) this won't affect them. Though if iOS 12 infringes on the same patents they can probably get it added to the injunction eventually.

      Given the timing of this ruling, one wonders if this is China's first salvo in retaliation for the arrest of Huawei's CFO? Because China has in the past shown little interest in banning import of ANY products due to patents held by US companies, only doing so when a patent is held by a Chinese company.

      Banning sales of the only US based smartphone vendor operating in China is even better than a tariff, because it is not really possible for the US to retaliate for via tariffs, which seems to be the only tool Trump thinks there is in a trade war. The stakes are getting more serious now. If there are any similar lawsuits pending against Ford or IBM or other major US companies operating in China, I would guess they are going to start moving through the courts very quickly.

  4. Phil Endecott

    Meanwhile, Amazon...

    Meanwhile, AWS actually launched their ARM servers and anyone can use them.

    I would really love to know what the uptake is like, but since the announcement there has been almost no news anywhere (good or bad). For example, searching the AWS developer forum for “ARM” finds nothing.

  5. The MOTO

    China will be running everything it can on their own built ARM CPUs faster than you can say "F&*! Intel and AMD". This is not retaliation but rather long term strategy to be self sufficient which has always been a Chinese way of thinking.

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