Let’s Discuss: The Chipsets.
With the introduction of the brand-new M1 chips by Apple for the latest Macs, the average tech-enthusiast’s interest in the upcoming chipsets — for mobiles, and PCs, both — has skyrocketed. Brands such as Samsung are now trying even harder to generate a processor which can compete with, or even outperform the almost contemporarily universal providers of mobile and PC chipsets: Qualcomm, and Intel. This stunning rise of competition among companies to bring about a processor which is better than ever before leads us to ask one question: what is the current, and upcoming scenario of all these chipsets?
There are multiple takes on answering this specific question. But the one overshadowing all the others is that all the capable brands will eventually separate and create processors for their respective devices themselves. This has been an excellent strategy and Apple is the perfect example to demonstrate so. From its beginning, Apple has had a great control over the experience it provides through its devices by changing everything — ranging from the hardware to the software, and even the app store. Apple created a device, and implemented an extremely well integrated software for the same device to provide maximum power using, all while using hardware that falls behind all other brands in terms of sheer numbers. Apple opened doors for themselves to have absolute monopoly and little interference from middlemen. This is also the exact reason Apple switched to ARM based self-built Apple Silicon chipsets from the previous Intel chips. This even offered major benefits: the new ARM Macs absolutely demolish any other computer featuring Intel or AMD chipsets. Rather, they were restricted by Intel to introduce updates for the macs. This structure of being self-sufficient has recently become popular among multiple brands — Samsung being the most notable of them. Samsung introduced their own series of chips called ‘Exynos,’ which, to say the least, did not fare well as compared to their Qualcomm counterparts initially. But with changing time, improvements are being made. Within the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S21 series phones, Samsung is incorporating the latest iteration of their chips: the Exynos 2100. The specs of this chip are baffling. Along with the new architecture consisting of an ARM X1 Prime @2.91GHz core, it also consists of 4x Cortex-A78 @2.81GHz cores, and a cluster of 4x Cortex-A55 @2.21GHz cores. During the preliminary benchmarks, this chip has seemingly caught up with, or even surpassed the performance of the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 888. This can be considered as a major win for Samsung, considering the previous Exynos chips were highly criticised for providing poor performance. The only thing that might be restricting Samsung from basically becoming a second Apple in the mobile industry is software. All of Samsung’s phones run on the Android operating system, made by Google. Having good ties with Google, it is highly unlikely that an OS from Samsung would appear in the near future. But aiming to provide a unique experience to the end user, Samsung has made its own User Interface (UI) called the OneUI, which seems to be doing decent. In terms of PC chipsets, though, no big plans from Samsung. While it is reported that Samsung is making an Exynos chip for Windows PCs, it is a long shot for now. The only worrying competition that Intel and AMD have to face as the major manufacturers of processors is from Apple as the M1 Macs are being immensely appreciated.
Talking about a company which had to move to their own architecture rather forcefully, we come to the case of the Chinese brand Huawei. Just like any other brand in the market, Huawei used chipsets from Qualcomm for their midrange devices. But due to trade restrictions against Chinese firms imposed by the U.S. government, Qualcomm could no longer associate with Huawei. Due to this unfortunate restriction, Huawei moved to their Kirin chips, which were already being used in their flagship devices. But this is not the end of Huawei’s peril. The larger blow was that this amendment also meant that even Google could no longer partner with Huawei. Therefore, devices from Huawei feature a separate OS, and do have applications from Google, a necessity for most people. Hence, Huawei faced a major downfall in the international market.
Some wonder what would happen to native chipset manufacturers such as Qualcomm, Intel and AMD when all the corporates move to their own chips. Some say that it’s a huge danger for them, while others disagree. With some firms like Qualcomm entering the mobile phone market by creating their own gaming phone in association with Asus, it seems that they would do alright. But then again, forming alliances with other brands is also essential for companies as it helps in sharing the loads and increases the overall power. For the time being, one may only assume what the future holds as more and more companies achieve ground-breaking results from trying different permutations of companies involved in creating a device.
