I always knew Broadcom as "that company that makes WiFi+BT chipsets that are a pain to use under Linux", vs Qualcomm "the company that dominates the Android ARM SoC market".
Android ARM SoCs are a tiny part of Qualcomm. What you should actually know Qualcomm as is: "The company that developed or acquired all of modern wireless comms tech, and thus gets paid very high license fees for everything that includes anything that talks to anything else over the air."
Although I think they are building up the ARM SoC business because some of their key patents are about to expire?
>The company that developed or acquired all of modern wireless comms tech, and thus gets paid very high license fees for everything that includes anything that talks to anything else over the air.
This isn't a great summary of Qualcomm. Their cell modems are the best in the business. Apple has been working on developing their own, and were rumored to try using them in their phones this year, but it's sounding like this still won't happen because they're not up to snuff yet. One needs to only read /r/GooglePixel to find out how well Samsung's modems work, and the news there isn't good. This is true even for 5G, which Qualcomm don't have locked down in patents so well as LTE.
>Although I think they are building up the ARM SoC business because some of their key patents are about to expire?
What? Their ARM SoC business has been on the same steady path for a decade now. Apple's SoCs are better, but no one gets to buy those. Everyone who has a choice uses Qualcomm SoCs, except again, Google Pixel, which use Samsung SoCs. Not even Samsung uses Samsung SoCs in their phones anymore.
I interviewed at qualcomm once, and when entering the building you are greeted by a reception desk flanked by two prominant walls on either side. Those walls are covered, top to bottom left to right, in golden embossed plaques of all their patents.
> The company that developed or acquired all of modern wireless comms tech, and thus gets paid very high license fees for everything that includes anything that talks to anything else over the air.
Apple tried. Recall the huge IP licensing battle from a year or two ago where Apple challenged Qualcomm on base price for royalties and what was considered FRAND given some of the patents were incorporated into the communication protocol standards.
Regulated for what? For spending the highest amount of R&D per Revenue to further improve an insanely complicated field of technology, much more so than CPU or GPU but no one understand, not being talked about, not hyped up, and no media knows anything about?
It is worth pointing out Qualcomm isn't just sitting here doing nothing and collecting money. That is the narrative Apple's PR spend years trying to put a spin on. When it was Steve Jobs himself who first put a high value on Qualcomm's patent. May be preciously because he understand the value Qualcomm has to offer. And even at the time Tim Cook was unhappy about putting another $7 on COGS.
For monopolizing the technology that became standardized, and thus required, for all of modern communications.
"Boo hoo, they spent good money for all those patents to make sure they were the only ones you could turn to to make these things!"
They've been wiping their tears away with the stacks of money they charge every single hardware manufacturer for access to that technology for far too long now, including very clearly breaching the spirit of FRAND at least in their dealings with Apple, based on the hard facts that came out with that case.
>For monopolizing the technology that became standardized, and thus required, for all of modern communications.
In that case every single one of the patents holding are "monopolizing" the technology. ( No that is not monopolizing means ). That is including Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung and LG. I am not even counting ZTE and Huawei here.
> based on the hard facts that came out with that case.
Hard facts? You mean charging Apple double the amount of the next total six patent holder?
>gets paid very high license fees for everything that includes anything that talks to anything else over the air
And I think this is the major reason why they have stagnated and have not come out with any ARM SoC's capable of matching what Apple has. They can just rest on their laurels collecting rent from all their license fees while releasing an unimpressive new SoC every once in a while
I really hope one of the big x86 chip makers decides to dip their toes into ARM at some point
Honestly the only reason Qualcomm develops ARM SoCs is so that they can bundle their modems into them and give customers that one chip solution they are looking for.
The current Broadcom is actually a spin-off from HP. This spin-off (Avago) has been on a massive mergers and acquisitions spree over the last decade. This culminated with Avago buying Broadcom and renaming itself to Broadcom.
Some of the crappy Wifi+BT chipsets that were sold under broadcom were actually sold off to another company, Cypress Semiconductor.
Oh, well this deal will definitely help with the openness issue!
(I like a lot of things about Apple but their lack of interest in documenting hardware is one of this things I don’t. It’s ironic given that without Burrell Smith and his doc there would have been no Macintosh).
They have their hardware repair documentation online as part of their self service repair program, although I don't think they have finished adding all their products to the program.
> Read the repair manual for your iPhone, Mac laptop, Mac desktop or Apple display model to familiarize yourself with the steps required and the parts, tools, and materials needed for your model and repair type.
I’m sure it was part of their calculus, providing a crucial part for this kind of hobbyist/introductory device can’t hurt business. Sort of like giving away free academic software.
As I understand, the bulk of single board computers are now being used by manuf.s for assembly line automation. That is the reason why they were so hard to source for hobbyists in the last 2 years. That said, when it started, I doubt Broadcom execs were thinking about manuf.s.
Because outside of F500 and legacy tech, VMware is largely irrelevant now. It's an interesting footnote, nothing to get excited over as for most of us it makes no difference.
Is that still true? My home built router and my server are both running Broadcom 10G ethernet cards I didn't have do so anything outside of enabling with ifconfig.
For the record, the OS's I tried this on were ClearOS and Nixos, but I have no reason to think it wouldn't work with other Linuxes.
They used to require installing a proprietary driver, IIRC, which meant you'd have a bootstrapping problem with your new laptop if you didn't have an Ethernet port handy.
For that reason I'd usually replace the WiFi chip in my Linux laptops with an Intel 7265 or later, as those had in-kernel support.
The drivers have a penchant to break with routine updates too, which is irritating to say the least. There's been a few times where on a machine with Broadcom wifi I've found myself without a connection after updating and no ethernet connection handy, forcing me to tether from my phone to get wifi working again.
I'm happy that Intel WiFi+BT chipsets have been popular in recent years. Those work great basically everywhere and don't randomly break.
yep. i will forever get a sick feeling at any mention of broadcom. they could cure a disease or something and i’d still be like “grumblegrumblegrumblebroadcomsucksgrumblegrumble”.
i sometimes wonder if my great grandchildren will have inherited some dna trait to hate broadcom lol.
i just can’t ever forgive them for the way them and their products treated linux.
