News - Lenovo plans to design its own mobile processors

[HEXUS]

Company is readying tenfold expansion of its IC R&D team.

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[kingpotnoodle]

Perhaps this is the sort of reason why TI got out of the SOC market, if all the major device manufacturers turn to implementing their own SOCs with ARM's designs then it will squeeze the market for 3rd party chip designers like Qualcomm, NVidia and Intel etc.

Presumably the device manufacturers find cost advantage in doing this otherwise why would they? Its very hard to differentiate your ARM based SOC if you simply implement the same off the shelf core designs and have TSMC or GlobalFoundries fab it for you. Qualcomm are one of the few to make real changes, Apple do too but only for internal use. NVidia have the Icera software defined modems which look pretty neat and the GeForce graphics brand and developer relations. Intel have the x86 compatibility juggernaut and advanced fab technology.