Qualcomm announced in March that its subsidiary has completed the acquisition of Nuvia, a world-class CPU design company, for $1.4 billion (about 10.108 billion yuan), with the first product expected to be launched in 2024.
According to a new report from The Information, Google, Microsoft, and Intel were also considering acquiring Nuvia, with Qualcomm eventually picking up the chip talent.
Nuvia was founded by former Google and Apple employees, including the “chief architect” who was most recently responsible for Apple’s M1. According to a person familiar with the matter, Nuvia eventually became the target of acquisitions by Google, Microsoft, Intel and Qualcomm, all of which were considering acquiring the company.
In addition, reports say Apple was so upset about chip employees being poached by Nuvia that it sued the company’s executives in August 2019. And Reuters reports that Apple denied the suit. People familiar with the company say the lawsuit inadvertently elevated Nuvia’s standing, signaling to venture capitalists and potential employees that it is a solid semiconductor startup.
Nuvia was unveiled as a Qualcomm Oryon CPU along with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 back in November 2022. The CPU will be available first on PCs, and then on “smartphones, digital cockpits, advanced driver assistance systems, extended reality and infrastructure networking solutions”. The “new custom CPU core” is said to “unleash new levels of performance” in 2023, with more details provided.
It’s worth noting that according to Qualcomm’s countersuit against Arm, external GPUs, NPUs or ISPs will no longer be allowed in SOCs based on Arm’s public CPUs after 2024. if Qualcomm can’t resolve this issue, their Snapdragon and Nuvia chips are likely to be deeply affected.
