Qualcomm will release laptop chips with cores designed by Nuvia next year

Qualcomm has completed the acquisition of Nuvia. In the second half of 2022, Snapdragon socs with CPU cores that use the design of that start-up will appear. According to Qualcomm, these are socs for lightweight, but powerful laptops.

With the acquisition of Nuvia, Qualcomm is bringing Nuvia’s chip design and design team in-house. That start-up consists of ex-Apple chip designers, who have been working on their own Arm processor since 2019. When announcing the acquisition in January, Qualcomm already announced that it intends to integrate the technology into Snapdragon socs. Now that the acquisition has been completed, Qualcomm has provided a little more detail on that.

The results of the acquisition should be visible for the first time in the second half of 2022. Snapdragon socs appear for lightweight powerful laptops, with Nuvia’s CPU technology on board. Current Snapdragon socs also use Arm cores, but Nuvia’s own design should perform better.

Qualcomm also wants to integrate the new cores into Snapdragon-socs for other products. Such as socs for smartphones, digital cockpits, automotive hardware that assists in driving and network products. When that will happen is not yet known.

Qualcomm reiterates that the acquisition has broad support from the tech industry. At the original announcement, 18 companies expressed support for the acquisition, including Microsoft, Samsung, Google, LG, Xiaomi and more. It was striking at the time that eighteen prominent companies made a statement about the takeover. That seems to indicate that Qualcomm has already extensively discussed its plans for using Nuvia cores with its customers.

Nuvia was founded in 2019 by chip designer Gerard Williams III, who previously worked at Apple. Analysts believe he likely worked on the foundation of the M1 soc, which Apple is now putting in its Macs. The well-known chip designers Manu Gulati and John Bruno now also come to Qualcomm via Nuvia.