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0 pointswyldfire5y ago0 comments

Qualcomm used to design their own cores up until the last generation or two, but you're right they use the reference designs now.

EDIT: correction, make that the last generation or four (oops, time flies)

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kllrnohj5y ago

Qualcomm hasn't used an in-house core design since 2015 with the original Kryo. Everything Kryo 2xx and newer are based on Cortex.

awill5y ago

That was a really sad time honestly. QCOMM went from leading the pack to basically using reference designs (which they still arrogantly brand as Kryo despite essentially being a tweak of a reference design.

It all happened because Apple came out with the first 64-bit design, and QCOMM wasn't ready. Rather than deliver 32-bit for 1 more year, they used an off the shelf ARM 64-bit design (A57) in their SoC called the Snapdragon 810, and boy was it terrible.

himinlomax5y ago

From what I gathered, they made at least _some_ risky architecture choices in their custom architecture that turned out not to be sustainable over the next generations. Also note that their Cortex core is indeed customized to a significant extent.

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