Chicken (Premium)

In January 2021, Qualcomm announced it would acquire Nuvia for $1.4 billion because the smaller firm was developing "step-function improvements in CPU performance and power efficiency to meet the demands of next-generation 5G computing."

Qualcomm didn't mention the terms Windows 11 on Arm or PC in this announcement, but it did note that the acquisition would "accelerate successful partnerships with OS providers for next-generation computing devices." And the quotes from Microsoft, Acer, ASUS, HP, and Lenovo made it clear that Qualcomm's integration of Nuvia technologies into its Snapdragon family of offerings would include the chips it made for Windows PCs. (Quotes from various phone makers indicated that these innovations would come to mobile chips as well.)

Indeed, the first quote was from Microsoft, notably. And that quote does mention Windows.

"It's exciting to see Nuvia join the Qualcomm team. Our partnership with Qualcomm has always been about providing great experiences on our products. Moving forward, we have an incredible opportunity to empower our customers across the Windows ecosystem."

At the time of the announcement, Qualcomm had delivered several "flagship" class system on a chip (SoC) solutions for PCs--it's confusing enough without including its pointless mid-tier chips too--and all of them were duds. Microsoft and Qualcomm had together overcome the single biggest pain point with the original implementation of Windows on Arm, called Windows RT, by adding x86 emulation capabilities. But in doing so, they had introduced an equally painful new problem. The performance was terrible.

Qualcomm announced its first chip for PCs, the Snapdragon 835 Mobile PC Platform, in December 5, 2017. This was a warmed over version of the Snapdragon 835 chip for mobile devices, and it didn't ship in new PCs until mid-2018. Qualcomm then revved the chip throughout 2018 and 2019, releasing in turn the Snapdragon 850 and Snapdragon 8cx. There were promises--I assume everyone remembers the vague claims of "Core i5 level performance"--but those promises were never met.

Microsoft's never explicitly aired its frustration with this problem, but it was clear the software giant was not happy that its bet on Qualcomm, for the chipmaker demanded an exclusivity window that is still not fully understood, was not paying off. PC makers largely ignored Windows on Arm, in part because of these issues, and in part because Intel engaged in its decades-old "pay to play" strategy to ensure loyalty and keep Qualcomm and Arm locked into the fringes of the industry. And so Microsoft did what it could to erase the software limitations, improving the platform dramatically and easing the developer migration process.

The software giant's use of Microsoft-branded chips--the SQ1 line that debuted in late 2019--was notable, however, and an implicit acknowledgement that the work Qualcomm was producing on its own wasn't good enough. The SQ1 was developed in...