Qualcomm Embraces Linux, ARM vs x86 & The Fight for Tech Independence | Software Sundays

So first up, Qualcomm has announced that their next line of Snapdragon chips is going to be fully supported by Linux operating systems.

So for people that don't know, Linux is one of the most popular operating systems in the world.

It's used by developers, it's used by businesses, and even gamers that are looking for an OS that's not Mac or Windows.

The Snapdragon chip is a ARM architecture-based chip that has been, I think this is the second generation of those chips or the second of the X line of those chips, that has been gaining more popularity with different use cases, right? So Qualcomm traditionally has developed, uh, their chips for mobile devices, and these Snapdragon chips are some of the fastest and most power-efficient chips that you could get.

And so they're being used a lot inside of laptops, and that's where the opportunity is.

But the problem with their first line of Snapdragon X chips, X1 chips, was that although you could run the Linux operating systems with that chip or on those chips, they wouldn't run the same way they-- or they wouldn't run at the same efficiency as you would expect of them.

And a lot of the development that had to go into making them integrate with the newest Linux operating systems was a lot of, like, open source work.

Like, developers were just finding bugs and fixing them, and it wasn't really, like a concerted effort from Qualcomm to fix those bugs.

What they're saying today is that they're going to-- and not even they're going to, they have been making an effort to actually get Linux support directly into the main Linux branches or the main Linux operating systems by actually creating pull requests from the main repositories for Linux.

So this is something that's going to be super helpful for developers that are looking to continue upgrading their hardware, right? To get the newest Snapdragon chips and the newest CPUs, but also having those CPUs support and work with their development style.

And so it's going to be a very good change for most developers.

Anyone else, it is pretty good too.

It makes it easier for you to switch between operating systems that you're kind of familiar with to an operating system that kind of gives you more control and more flexibility that you might not be used to.

So it's very cool there.

One of the most interesting parts about the story was that-- well, I guess the-- to me, was that Qualcomm is going in a direction that they hadn't actually gone in before, and these chips are part of that new wave of innovation that Qualcomm is trying to get behind.

They're not building GPUs and the CPUs that are, like, for everyone.

They're building very specialty chips.

So these Snapdragons are great for mobile devices, for laptops, and they're also building chips for IoT, for, say, robots, electric cars, all of those things like... or self-driving cars.

They're kind of expanding where and what they put their chips into.

Traditionally, they had been one of the main designers and of, of chips for the Apple and other companies like that.

But that window kind of closed when Apple started building their own chips.

So now their partnership with Windows and the other-- well, Windows, but really HP, uh, Dell, all of these manufacturers of the actual computers.

That partnership is something that they're leaning more into so that they can get into more devices, larger devices, and devices that are closer to everyday users.

So it's something I'm keeping an eye on.

I had previously invested in Qualcomm because of the, the, the IoT angle and, like, where their chips were gonna go, and I do see an opportunity in the, like, the automobile industry and, like, just what they can do with cars with these newer chips.