Kind: captions
Language: en
talking about an exciting thing for an
engineer
the same snapdragon that goes to a phone
and it can go to a galaxy phone for
example samsung the same not a special
one
went all the way to mars
you expect
to have a full day of battery life
but then you wanted to not be
sending data into
10 or 100 megabits you want gigabits you
wanted to be able to have
eight core processors you want to have a
gpu with ray tracing you want to have
all of those things that you can only
get
into
sometimes a desktop pc
to do all of that in your phone is an
incredible thing some people raise
concerns about there not being enough
studies about the effects of 5g on the
human body
is 5g safe
the following is a conversation with
cristiano amman the ceo of qualcomm
the company that's one of the leaders in
the world in the space of mobile
communication and computation
that's 2g 3g 4g and 5g that connects
billions of phones
and the snapdragon processor and system
on a chip that is the brain of most of
the premium android phones in the world
this is a lex friedman podcast to
support it please check out our sponsors
in the description and now dear friends
here's cristiano amman
you are originally from brazil so let me
ask
the most important question the most
profound question the biggest question
who's the greatest
football soccer player of all time look
everybody's going to say pele and
actually uh i was born at the during the
game of brazil and italy that play
gave to brazil the championship actually
it was
my dad tells me that
the doctor had a tv on at the delivery
room
but so everybody will say play but i
really like ronaldo the first um
oh the first ronaldo i really like him
that's my favorite player by the way not
everybody would say pillay yes but we
should we shall leave that on the table
and uh agreed to disagree brazilians
will say billy yes
there's other countries uh around that
region absolutely disagree a little bit
very aware
qualcomm is largely responsible for 5g
and
some of the greatest processors in our
smartphones ever built so we got
communication and computation tech
that impacts probably billions of people
so if you zoom out
use a human we look at humans on earth
in general
does it blow your mind
that
we have these billions of smartphones
communicating and each of them have the
computational power
you know you talk about 10 billion
transistors
that's a million times more than 50
years ago in the best computers in the
world like if you just zoom out
as a human
does that blow your mind absolutely
look one of the reasons i think i love
this company is the we know that the
technology would develop can change the
world and i'll tell you one more thing
beyond the amount of processing power
that you have now in the palm of your
hands and being everyone in the world is
connected with broadband technology the
smartphone is also mankind largest
development platform there's nothing
like it
so you respect both the hardware and the
software both
both
if aliens were observing earth over the
past 50 to 70 years how do you think
they would describe
this particular
uh turmoil
fun things going on on the surface of
this particular little planet
we live in interesting times uh
at in one time we see incredible
development of technology for mankind
just what happened in the last
century uh you know the night from 1900
to the uh 2000 it was incredible
development just look
2012 years ago
how far we're coming and where are we
going with technology it's incredible
what do you think they would notice
so there's road networks there's all
kinds of networks there's uh there's
lights that keep popping up cities
bringing up like from an alien
perspective you're observing what i'm
going to tell you is you have this
contrast of incredible
development of technology but then you
see some of the things that are
happening right now which is probably
you would not expect them to happen uh
on the 21st century just what happened
in in ukraine so i think uh that that
will be a more puzzling question for the
aliens i would imagine the new
technology is kind of impressive
actually that might not be so puzzling
because that's just human nature
revealing itself as it has throughout
human history that's correct
let's talk about wireless communication
so qualcomm was instrumental in
developing 5g now you were with qualcomm
since the early days the good old 90s
with the 2g
but what is 5g including sub 6 gigahertz
5g and millimeter wave 5g how does it
work and
maybe the most important question is how
will it change the world in the coming
years
when we set ourselves to develop 5g and
you know we look at this every
generation of technology had a problem
to be solved right so you mentioned 2g
to g challenge the challenge of cdma was
can we give every person on earth a cell
phone that was can you get to a
technology that you can
basically allow everyone to have a
mobile phone
3g was about the ability to connect that
to the internet i think 4g was broadband
and with 4g was about have the ability
for you to have a computer in the palm
of your hand we just talked about that
5g the challenge was a little bit
different is how do we build a
technology for a society that is going
to be 100 connected to the cloud how do
we provide the technology that is going
to be the last mile connectivity for
everything
so 5g has it's basically been designed
to eliminate all issues with data
congestion whether you are in into
stadium we talk about soccer you're in a
stadium and everyone should be ability
to have access to broadband so deal with
congestion deal with the fact that not
only people but billions of things need
to be connected
create a technology that for the first
time in wireless you could deliver
mission critical services
wireless used to
up to 4g is its best effort in 5g it can
guarantee that you're connected with the
cloud and then the last point
of that
is provide this fabric that will allow
us as a society
to look at things that are not connected
and say that's the exception that's why
we made uh comparison in the early days
of 5g that that's going to be like
electricity right now you don't have a
discussion about what is the use cases
for electricity you don't talk about
that anymore you just assume it's there
and that's how we're thinking about
everything connected to the cloud that's
what 5g is and that's the role of 5g
so first of all everything connected to
the cloud is interesting because the
space of everything is constantly
increasing that isn't correct you know i
don't think the refrigerator over there
it looks kind of smart but i don't think
it's connected yet
uh to the cloud so this includes
internet of things
what is the full space of everything
the full space of everything is it's uh
maybe going back to
where you start defining qualcomm
qualcomm is about communications and
advanced computers for low power devices
and can we make everything smart you
know it can range from
the robot you have right now on the
floor
to your refrigerator to to a camera
to
uh
you know machines in manufacturing uh
to retail
etc i i can give you some examples when
when we think of something as simple as
going to
to the grocery shop we see technology
now
with
something that's the stuff we've been
working with companies like walmart
electronic shelf labels the ability for
you to have smart cameras they can look
at shelves and can the camera is smart
enough to say some product needs to be
replenished ability to see with stress
so it's about really providing processor
connectivity artificial intelligence
to everything and
i think that's one of the largest
addressable markets we have for
technology because you can't really
define everything
right exactly it's a nice market because
it keeps growing potentially
exponentially in speed um
what about coverage so how are we doing
on the everything part so you know there
is like i mentioned sub six gigahertz 5g
and there's a millimeter wave 5g so not
all 5g is made the same so there's a
speed there's a bandwidth thing
and then there's coverage how many
people get to enjoy
today and how does the progress in the
next 5 10 20 30 50 years you think looks
like in terms of coverage great topic
conversation so let's talk about this
when i meet with regulators
across the globe
i i tell them
resistance is futile allocate every
spectrum to wireless every spectrum
needs to be allocated to wireless the
reality is when we start moving from
cdma to ofdma
we knew that
there's this industry has done a lot to
get more bits per hertz but the reality
is
uh the massive amount of improvements
that is required
in capacity and in speed uh you need
more spectrum you know there's there's
not so much we can rely on more bits per
hertz you just need more spectrum and if
you look for example what carriers since
the 2g
era they participate in different
license and auctions and every spectrum
they accumulated from 2g or 3g or 4g
all of that you may be able to get one
or two channels max of sub six uh which
is a channel is about 100 megahertz or
200 megahertz and that's it so
we we need more spectrum so 5g has been
designed to work across every spectrum
from the low frequency bands that's we
call the sub six
but you needed more you needed to go to
the millimeter wave so that's why
five 5g is a technology that you can
deploy from 450 megahertz as an example
or 600 or 700
all the way to in the 42
gigahertz
and that's where millimeter wave comes
into the picture now
let's now connect this to your question
about coverage uh of 5g
the easiest thing to do uh
is to deploy
5g in the new spectrum you can get uh
which is uh in the sub 6 you see bands
being auctioned across the globe into
3.5 gigahertz
there's nothing special about the band
is this the only one that was available
because everything else being used for
4g
and you can deploy on that go into
existing cell towers and just put a new
equipment without having to build new
towers but when we go to technology such
as millimeter wave then you have to
build more dense networks you need to
build more stations because the
deployment in that case look like a
wi-fi deployment it's almost like wi-fi
access points when you need to build
more stations you need permits you need
to build
fiber so it takes more time to densify
so what you see happening is coverage
has been built fast with subjects uh
across the globe now the united states
also have the sub-six
uh so that gets you the coverage very
fast
but millimeter wave it's moving and uh
if you i will say for example verizon
the united states has had a leadership
uh in building millimeter wave it takes
time i'll say cities like
chicago
manhattan starting to get coverage
it will be a process over a number of
years as you build
those different access points type
networks but it's inevitable
there there's not enough spectrum so
every 5g operators just a matter of time
we'll have millimeter wave as well
resistance is futile okay so uh for
millimeter wave we need density of
access points
and
what's the biggest resistance
for qualcomm
for human civilization
is it uh politicians regulators federal
regulators
is it uh individual humans
is it's not enough money from the
consumer perspective like what who is
the biggest pain in the butt
from a qualcomm standpoint but answering
the question about what it takes to
build all this technology
i think regulators across the board
understood the importance of 5g i have
not met a regulator that said it's
really important to be late on 5g i
don't think anybody wants to be late on
5g and as a result we've seen enormous
amount of progress in getting spectrum
allocated to 5g i think the real issue
is the time that it takes to build
infrastructure you know investment in 5g
infrastructure special millimeter wave
is like building roads and ports it's
critical infrastructure and those things
take time like one of the number one
obstacle you're going to hear from
operators is psy permit
you know sometimes they have to
negotiate municipality by municipality
about permits to get new cell sites but
you know the networks will be densified
and
and you're going to need all of the
capacity for the promise of the fully
immersive augmented reality that will
replace phones and everything being
connected 100 of the time this would not
be a conversation with the ceo if i did
not ask
questions that make you nervous
some people raise concerns about there
not being enough studies about the
effects of 5g on the human body
is 5g safe
look uh i have a very simple answer uh
to to to this question
as we built
new capabilities such as 5g power is
going down
especially when you think about reducing
the number of base stations the
network's becoming more dense
so as you do that the the power
becomes lower if you're radiated from
power radiated from the phone and from
the tower as you get closer to the tower
you don't need that much power to reach
the tower so as
as we move from 4g to 5g i think we see
a reduction in the amount of powers
required to close the radio link now
also you have a number of organizations
the fcc for example has rigorous
programs which they do a lot of tests uh
to validate uh you know the safety of
those devices and i think we have
has been a model for other countries
also to adopt the same things
uh cellular has been around for a number
of decades now uh i think smartphone is
our most beloved device uh today
and i i would argue
how it's difficult to answer those
questions because you yeah but i'll
argue that the data to date have we seen
in 3g and 4g
you know has
shown that
a lot of the initial concerns we're not
valid
we look at 5g even though it's new it's
just less power so we look at from
from a physics standpoint so from a
physics from a biology perspective
there's a lot of evidence there's
studies
that show that it's not
dangerous that it is in fact safe
however the concern that people have is
when you scale technology exponentially
how would that change human civilization
i mean that doesn't apply to 5g that
applies to every technology how you said
smartphone is the most beloved device
but love
sometimes hurts
that's uh the impact on society we don't
know and there's a little bit of fear
there's both excitement and fear
it's a great topic a conversation
actually so so let me give you my
perspective on this and you started to
see something exactly happening right
now so let me step back
and let's talk about the fact that we
are in a fully interconnected society
that when
when uh when you look of the situation
today we talk about smartphones uh
largest uh development platform uh so
much now of our life uh
we are connected to the smartphone and
as a result and we are all connected and
we're connected
and then we're building digital twins of
everything right so so when you look at
that picture when you look at the
picture of this connected society
you started to have
the following thoughts which i think are
very healthy which means in the same way
that in the physical world
you're entitled to some rights you have
obligations and there's a lot of uh
things that protect your your integrity
i think as a rule we're gonna see the
society evolving so those things extend
to your digital being
of people and things and i think just
natural it's just natural
it's just a natural path and you started
to see things like that for example the
europeans has done
a lot in this area i'll say the
europeans probably ahead in the united
states and thinking about privacy laws
digital privacy's law most recent the
dma the digital markets act which i
think is a great thing i think we're
we believe there's incredible uh thought
in to enable
ability to regulate the digital markets
so that there's innovation and
competitions and not not a single
company uh can control all the data and
then decide you know uh
how things gonna be work on the digital
realm and even if we think about the
potential of things like the meta versus
we're connecting physical and digital
spaces so i think it's a natural
evolution of course regulate regulation
and laws always follow technology but
but the fact that we're uh moving to our
interconnected society there's there's
no going back uh we are a fully
interconnected society but there is
opportunity uh to think about how the
digital to win uh
should peop people and government should
think about it so that we get the best
of a technology we doubt that any
downside yeah so when you say digital
twin that's one of the other things
you're excited about which is the
metaverse are basically building worlds
in the in the digital space and you have
to start to think about all the basic
human rights
that
transfer from our physical meat vehicles
out to the digital copies of ourselves
representations of ourselves it's really
important to think about the thing you
mentioned about regulators that has been
this is me speaking frustrating is like
you said
they follow technology so sometimes they
don't get the technology at all
so they're very clumsy in writing laws
that
censor that technology in interesting
ways they mean good but they can do a
lot of unintended damage now
both it's a dance it's a beautiful dance
but i just wish governments were better
dance partners i just see what they're
kind of writing now about regulating
social media and
platforms like youtube and it's just
really really clumsy they don't
understand how machine learning works
how recommender systems work and i just
wish they kind of caught up a little
more because it's really important to be
great
at regulation
but also it's important to let companies
flourish and embrace this new wave of
technology that that weird dance i am
more and more learning looking at public
public policy how much positive
government can do and how much clumsy
negative it can do unintentionally just
out of sheer incompetence or lack of
curiosity about tech that's my rant
about regulators
i think it's a valid point
as i said before i think the europeans
probably have a very good framework but
you know the way the way i'll oh think
about it we we depend on have the
ability to innovate we depend on the
free markets we depend on the ability to
create uh you know technology that uh
that would be disruptive
but at some time i think the tech
companies probably should spend time
helping governments understand helping
understand ahead of time so that they
can be better prepared
let's talk about one of my favorite
topics
snapdragon
so snapdragon is a system on a chip
this processor has probably powered
billions of smartphones
over its pretty long history now a
decade and a half maybe
so it's constantly iterating there's
constantly just like a turmoil of
beautiful innovations happening so last
year was snapdragon 88 was the main one
with the 5 nanometer and this year it's
snapdragon 8
gen
1. it's a new naming scheme
okay what's the sexiest most beautiful
idea or concept to you about snapdragon
start there the way i would describe it
and i think the reason we have been uh
successful with it
is to really understand
uh how how to build a platform a single
chip like a single chip
uh
that will have every single capability
if you want to make this
smartphone in the palm of your hand
you know uh something that has all of
their computing needs and it was the
ability to get from an engineering
standpoint
ability to get into a single chip
of not only
all possible connectivity technology
from cell alert wi-fi to bluetooth to
every single constellation
of satellite for position location but
at the same time you know a very power
efficient uh you know single thread and
multi-threaded cpu
a gpu for your uh
all of your graphic demands gaming
fastest growing segment for gaming
is uh mobile gaming
an artificial intelligence processor
which we call the neural processor unit
and then a video engine uh and a
multimedia engine for every single
application audio
everything so it's a single
chip
that has every single computing
technology you need in the phone and
what's exciting about it
is what we already knew for example when
you think about camera or computer
vision
you see that advancements in this
technology now happens in the smartphone
first versus traditional camera so the
beauty about the snapdragon is we always
have this thing with within qualcomm
the phone
it's small you have to be able to hold
it you're going to touch your face so
you cannot be hot
uh you have to manage thermals you
expect
to have a full day of battery life
but then you want it to not be sending
data into uh 10 or 100 megabits you want
gigabits you wanted to be able to have
eight core processors you want to have a
gpu with ray tracing you want to have
all those things that you can only get
into
sometimes a desktop pc
and to do all of that in your phone and
be able to be
in the leadership position generation
after generation is an incredible thing
and we're very proud of that at qualcomm
yeah so you have to do the wi-fi 5g all
the and you have to be good to everyone
all of those technologies pack it all in
and
there's also pressure to make the thing
faster and faster and faster and then
there's more and more applications
you're supposed to be effortlessly
using and then you you mentioned the npu
gpu cpu they have to also dance together
somehow
they have to communicate well share
memory or not depending on what the
application is and your battery has to
last all day
[Laughter]
so think about that from a company
qualcomm we have to be good and each and
every one of those technology we can
just say oh we're a cpu company or a gpu
company or we're ai company we have to
do everything
what does it take to design a great
processor so design this system on a
chip that you mentioned is there some
insight you can provide in this chaos of
engineers
designers
leaders
uh you know the people that think about
how much this is all gonna cost all the
whole mess of it i'm of course very
partial about it i've been in this
company for probably more than 26 years
but um i
argued that there are a couple things
that are ingredients for the success
so we talk about the fact that you have
all those different technologies they
evolve at their own pace and you have to
be good in each one of them and you need
to then to make them working together so
so you need to have an engineering
organization that
with a
incredible collaboration culture because
everybody has to be working the train is
going to leave the station every car it
needs to be there right when it leaves
the station it needs to live on time
especially in the phone business you can
change
christmas you cannot change black friday
you cannot change all of the selling
season so the phones are going to launch
on time and every technology needs to be
there the engineer needs to work as one
and we do have that at qualcomm the
other thing you have to have incredible
discipline
because
you know those are very complex systems
so
in one way you have to design with
quality uh
because in many cases
we're going to be ramping production and
even before we have the silicon back and
you have to rely
on on runner simulation models and you
have to rely
on on the fact that you design uh for
commercial applications that takes
that takes a while to build and uh and
you know it's probably been the
history of a semiconductor business at
qualcomm so you mean like the framework
of how many people can use simulation
software and all that kind of stuff to
build the thing with a hard deadline
that you might not even get back from
like manufacture
before
you're not allowed to have any mistakes
no wonder our name is quality
communications oh i never even thought
about the qual part quality so quality
and there's a bar that's high and you're
not allowed to mess up i mean to me as
an engineer that's exciting hard
deadlines
no room for mistakes i love it super
stressful but i love it
so there's a couple of other small
companies
called google and apple
so google is now using its own chip for
the pixel 6.
apple using is its own
how does qualcomm out-compete
google
and apple how does it beat them we don't
have to out compete google actually if
you look at our mobile strategy today
and then one thing i was very clear when
i became ceo i think there's a lot of
confusion on the market our mobile
strategy is very clear
we are focused of making snapdragon
synonymous with premium android
experience
that's what snapdragon is android the
phone of the people yes
i just have a love for android no i'm
constantly talking trash to iphone
people sorry go ahead premium android
experiences so
we do pre we do produce snapdragon
multiple tier for every price point but
you know every year you mentioned the
hn1
and every year we provide you know the
flagship product and then
and then the other series that is trying
to get the best of every possible
technology at that time and it's really
focused on enabling the android
ecosystem so i'll give an example so you
ask me the question how to compete with
google it's not about competing with
google we're the number one enabler of
the google android ecosystem
and uh the largest
largest the number one customer there is
actually samsung and if you look what
happened to samsung samsung
um
i always had
since i i began my began my relationship
with them that because they always had
their own chip they always had their own
chip and um and if you'll just look at
what happened right now with the galaxy
s22 that just launched you know they
used to balance their their business
about 50 qualcomm they will get the most
advanced markets like the united states
and china and japan and korea they will
sign a qualcomm and then they have their
own chip for the markets that they would
will be like more emerging markets open
markets markets that they have a control
on the channel because they sell a lot
of appliances and other things if you
look what happened right now gs22 uh 75
uh
is qualcomm
and uh and then the next
large oems and android system are the
chinese ones companies like xiaomi
one of the fastest growing uh it was
number one in europe at some point last
year then followed by oppo and oneplus
and vivo so those are some of the
largest qualcon customers and uh and
they actually drive
the android ecosystem and that's our
mobile strategy and fully align with
google and uh
and it's working and i was you know i'm
not to get into a lot of the uh investor
conversation but
we're also happy we became
in a beneficiary of the shifts that we
saw in the marketplace as huawei
became a smaller oem as a result of the
sanctions
we saw the rise of a lot of the other
oems from china especially for china
domestic market xiaomi oppo vivo they
moved to the premium category and
they're all doing that with qualcomm so
we're actually very fortunate and happy
with the position we are in mobile
business we do have an apple
relationship we provide modem technology
to apple
to multi-year relationship apple has
been very public that they are uh
investing to develop their own modem uh
but the qualcomm strategy has has been
clear you know we really focus on
snapdragon you know not our mobile
strategy is not defined
by providing a cellular modem to apple
or mobile strategies this that we just
talked about it is about the unique
thing of snapdragon that has every
single technology integrated into a
single soc
and uh it provides a premium experience
and that's what we're doing and uh
focusing on the android ecosystem
i don't know
if i can ask you this kind of question
it's like picking your children or
something like this but
what smartphone with the snapdragon you
mentioned samsung galaxy s22 oneplus
those are phones i personally really
enjoy what phone do you currently use or
do you have multiple phones you just i
do have multiple phones but i do use uh
galaxy s22 that's your favorite one all
right well you heard it here first folks
okay so excellent can qualcomm also
let's take a brief step away from mobile
and take on intel and apple
and other such companies in the laptop
and desktop space so
the nature of what a computer is seems
to be changing it's like smartphones
like merging it's all being a smartphone
just with a bigger screen or something
like this so what does the future of
that look like
before i answer that question let me
just step back a little bit because and
i'm sure we can we can talk more about
those things but the
the reality is qualcomm is changing a
lot and we use i know we spend a lot of
time talking about 5g and smartphone and
snapdragon and i think that has been
what had defined qualcomm for many years
but the reality is even consistent with
that 5g conversation which is a
technology to connect everything
qualcomm is also changing our technology
that was in many cases designed for
phones and
we said at the beginning connectivity
and processing
is going to virtually every industry and
as a result qualcomm is really changing
with it and expanding to a number of
different addressable markets
some of those markets
is
is the pc as you talk about it
the the conversions of mobile and pc
and the reason i'm excited about this
because you see a lot of things
happening that bring this right front
and center when you think about the
future technology so
what we learn with the pandemic
is that the number one use case
of personal computers
is communications
it is interesting when you think about
that that's the number one use case on a
pc today is communications it's actually
funny because in the cellular industry
actually i'll say let me step back in
the telecom industry
we've been chasing this killer
application of video telephony for
decades right i remember
back then in the wire line uh even
before the internet and ip isdn you
remember those uh att desk phones with a
little screen and they said you can do
video telephony we don't watch that uh
in uh back to the future too then when
we started developing 3g said people
said what's the application for having
data to cell phone all video telephony
then we started doing 4g
and in the beginning people said well
why do you need all this broadband oh
vega telephony
but it took a pandemic to make video
telephony the killer application and
that's now the number one
uh use case on a pc so now think about
that for a second
personal computers now their
technologies that people when they're
going to buy a pc they didn't care much
about it now they do camera
camera how good is the camera the audio
is they connected how good is the
connectivity do you have the latest and
greatest wi-fi in cellular what's the
battery life because you're going to be
working from anywhere sometimes you near
that sometimes you're not
so all those things what's the
portability like so those things started
to change
how we should think about the pc but i
won't stop there let me talk about
another trend so and it and all come as
a result of what we saw the pandemic
let's say that you are you're an
engineer in the computer aided design
you you have advanced
uh desktop
computer or workstation in your office
but you want to work from home someday
so you're not going to move that to your
home so what do you need to do you're
going to have to rely on that
you're going to run that on the cloud
and you're going to run out of the cloud
you need high bandwidth because you
almost wanted the cloud to be
the same as your computer for that use
case that's the 5g on demand computing
use case the us5g is almost a link
between two computers
but then you know cios are saying well
my workforce is going home for certain
days i want all the data to be in the
cloud you look at for example microsoft
onedrive or the ability to collaborate
you need the bandwidth
so
that when you put all of those things
together you start thinking about what
is the next generation pc
and that's the opportunity for qualcomm
i'll just give an example uh back in uh
mobile congress uh recently lenovo
they have a line of uh
of uh
enterprise laptops called the thinkpad
i'm sure you're familiar with it so they
announced the thinkpad based on
snapdragon
with 5g on
28 hours of battery life oh wow so
so that's next generation it's just a
nice screen with extremely high
nice screen and keyboard
uh and extremely high connectivity to
maybe an even more like a more powerful
machine in the cloud something more of
the data connecting to the data
containing compute all that kind of
stuff you have the camera capabilities
and let me go uh one step more microsoft
talking about some of the features
they're doing now
using on windows 11
using snapdragon remember we talked
about a snapdragon has an ai processor
inside there so one of the cool features
microsoft's talking about it is you can
be on a teams call
and you can make sure your eyes are
looking at the camera uh 100 of the time
well that's an interesting so they can
be talking
with ai yes that's really tricky to pull
off for example the reason i'm a huge
stickler for doing these in person these
conversations in person it's really
tough to get right but it's a worthy
challenge so that's where the metaverse
hopes to so like i just because you said
the importance of this telephony of
humans connecting teleporting themselves
getting that right is really difficult
because a lot of people hate zoom
meetings but that doesn't mean you can't
improve that experience and get rid of
the hate a lot of people hate talking to
their car too because the voice
the natural language processing is
terrible but when it's not it's a
beautiful thing so getting that right is
this is an opportunity this is an
opportunity think about it it starts
with the pc making
the pc giving you a better experience
for teams but then it goes right back
into
this trend of connecting physical and
digital spaces and all the work we're
doing with the metaverse and virtual
reality materiality in the future is
why not
call somebody or connect with somebody
with a hologram it's possible and also
to mention some
increasing amount of intelligence in our
cars
so semi-autonomous autonomous cars and
the interactivity between human and
and car which are for me things are
really exciting let me ask you a big
question so when when aliens again now
on the other side
right and humans destroy themselves
through nuclear war centuries from now
let's hope not let's hope not but in
case you know there's just hypothetical
thought experiment and they write a
history of humanity in the 21st century
uh
what would they remember qualcomm
in the 21st century as a company would
be a car company would it be like think
of all the crazy pivots that might
happen the next like 50 years because
you're thinking you said qualcomm
enables all of these things with 5g and
there'll be probably other g's it keeps
increasing so basically connectivity and
computation and everything becomes
connected and everything is capable of
computation
might you be become a robotics and car
company
um i will argue we're already an
automotive uh company today and uh but
let me tell what i what i would like
qualcomm to be remember recognized for
i think everyone
that knows qualcomm immediately
you know connect us pun intended
to connectivity and wireless but the
reality is we're being actually the
company providing intelligence and and
processing to everything on the edge
everything outside the data center
that we're doing those billions of
devices they're going to be connected
and and that's kind of explained when we
talk about the connected intelligent
edge the beyond phones cars pcs and all
of those and the broader iot as we talk
about everything will be connected and
intelligent and that's what we want
qualcomm to be recognized for so by the
way for people who are not familiar
there's some technical jargon but people
use the word edge like edge computing
it's
by the way that's probably changing what
that even means but it's basically
everything that's not a giant thing
that's making a lot of noise in a
building somewhere so it's mobile
devices and the uh mobile devices of all
kinds of well refrigerators not mobile
but it would be edge so it's it's like
what's a sandwich that kind of
discussion
um
but basically edge computing
is is uh the edge of that expanding
space that you mentioned
that qualcomm is trying to
connect and enable with computation
here's a simple way to describe what the
edge is in edge computing is i think as
we think about the evolution of the data
center
you need to bring the computational
closer to where the device is
also when you put the computation
together with the connectivity at the
same time you're going to see a lot of
advancement of artificial intelligence
happening closer to or at the device
look it's a very i i have a simple way
to describe it remember
in the beginning of this conversation we
talk about in the 4g era
broadband and mobile computing evolve
side by side if you're going to have
broadband you might as well have a
computer in the palm of your hand so we
needed to invest in those two
technologies
in 5g
ai develops side by side you're
connected to the cloud 100 of the time
you have a high bandwidth and you have
now a smart and intelligent thing that
can make decision in real time
provide context information to the cloud
to make the models more accurate and as
well compare and contrast with the cloud
so there's going to be an exponential
development ai happening with
all the edge devices the devices that
are outside the data center and
computation is going to go alongside
that and a great example that's the car
um
the car you know uh we haven't talked
much about the car but you know qualcomm
is now
uh you could argue with as much as an
automotive company as wireless company
working 26 global brands
and it's easy to see
if you look at our mobile heritage and
we talk about
form factors thermal
battery life you're not going to put a
server in the trunk of a car but you
need as much computational capabilities
and that's we see qualcomm
providing you know as the car become a
connected computer on wheels we provide
the computational and all the sensors
for you to do assist the driving for the
new digital cockpit experience
connecting the car to the cloud and it's
all that's happening at the end does
qualcomm want to be the brain of a lot
of autonomous vehicles in the future of
different you said brands like
mercedes-benz i don't know whatever just
whatever car you know cars have the the
sexy thing they do and then it defines
their brand and so so on and then
there's the brain that doesn't need to
have branding supposed you know so does
qualcomm see that or will i be able to
buy a qualcomm car like literally no
you're not going to be able to buy a
qualcomm car but
we already we're already uh on our way
to become you know the brains of the car
the way you should think about qualcomm
automotive strategy is
the car companies
realize they need to become technology
companies you just look for example of
the market cap of some of the new uh
electrical comers and compare them with
with the legacy uh car companies which
one is that i i heard of this
well let's just use like one of them
lives in austin let's say rivien right
uh rivien oh that one too yes you know
the car companies are not going away
it's actually a mistake not to bet in
the car companies huh the core companies
need a technology partner uh they will
provide the digital chassis for them and
that's what we're doing so if you look
at qualcomm we talk about a snapdragon
digital chassis so
we
want to be the preferred technology
partner
of
the car companies and i think it's
working strategy is working right now so
basically helping companies the car
companies accelerating to this into
becoming technology companies connecting
the car to the cloud redesign the
interior of the digital cockpit
experience and provide the computation
and sensor capabilities for autonomy and
assisted driving
on the topic of robots when millions or
billions of robots roam the earth in the
future among us humans and i am
for one
concerned
in a small percentage but largely i'm
excited about that future will
qualcomm be
uh
the thing that powers their brain
we have an in our iot business which has
been one of the fastest growing business
for us
um a number of robotics engagement so
i'll give you some example
and
if you look of the amazon astro you
familiar with that there's two uh
there's two snapdragon in there um there
is this is really exciting they're
supposed to ship it to me where is it
okay but anyway that's really cool i
didn't know it was snapdragons yeah we
we're working with robotics in
industrial uh
of course drones you know we're getting
uh
more and more traction for robotics
started to interrupt industrial robotics
too you said that's true uh
especially when you think about um
what's going to happen
with the factory of the future the
industrial side of the future the
warehouse of the future when you bring
5g for example to it and you have a
number of different use cases and
in
and and then you see a lot of robotics
application
and and of course drones
and
the most famous uh i will consider that
a robot the most famous uh robot in the
world right now it's powered by
snapdragon which is the mars ingenuity
helicopter
the whole helicopter the cameras and
everything is powered by snapdragon and
talking about an exciting thing for an
engineer
the same snapdragon that goes to a phone
and it can go to a galaxy phone for
example samsung the same not a special
one
went all the way to mars
is exploring other planets looking for
alien life and maybe he gets to meet him
wouldn't that be interesting if a
snapdragon is the thing that first sees
an alien it's like what the hell we did
not program this in the computer vision
i want to use the example to go back to
the conversation we had about quality
uh as an engineer you need to make sure
it works can you imagine if it gets over
there in mars and it doesn't work listen
this is very stressful
what what nasa with spacex what all
those companies are doing is extremely
stressful the room for mistakes is is
tiny but that's super exciting for an
engineer once again um
there's been a global semiconductor chip
shortage so from your perspective just
to be interesting to get your expert
analysis of the situation what do you
think are the main reasons and how is
qualcomm being affected and how can it
help
in this in in the future things like it
okay that's a that's a
a big topic of conversation and we only
have five minutes so i'll try i'll try
to be as objective as i can
so first let's talk about what caused it
and and i you know you hear a lot of
different things i will try to put it
within the right context the first thing
that caused it really
is the acceleration of digital
transformation of pretty much everything
in every industry
uh every industry has been digitally
transformed and as such the amount of
semiconductors that are required it's
much larger
just to give you a practical example if
you think about the automotive as an
example
the cars that are you there's cars there
launch a new model launching today the
new model launching today most likely
has 10x the amount of chips off the
prior model and the model is people
working on this coming in next probably
10x that one so you see the amount of
silicon and then billions of things
become smart
more and more data goes to the cloud the
data center grows so the floor for
semiconductor consumptions went up by a
lot then you have things that aggravated
this
the pandemic aggravated this there's a
couple trends from the pandemic the
enterprise transformation of the home
the home became an enterprise massive
amount
of upgrades on broadband and iot
the office uh has changed to the way we
work now uh in including the ability to
support collaboration tools and video
then you have uh
the
higher demand
for for products doing the pandemic
because people wanted to be connected
people bought new phones and new tablets
and new computers uh new gaming so all
of those things came on top of that as
the aggravated issue but they're not the
main issue the main issue is it's
actually a a long-term growth
of digital so what i'm hearing you say
is
the pandemic was not the cause it was an
aggravation it's an aggravation so
is there a way
we can support as a human civilization
in terms of manufacture in terms of
supply the kind of growth that you're
talking about in devices and so on is
there
high level ideas you can say of what
that's required there
yes and i think that's uh the second
part of the answer so what's happening
now how are we going to get out of this
so
we see a lot of capacity investments put
into place by the industry
you know we had invested a lot with our
suppliers a lot of the suppliers uh had
made uh plans about you know increasing
the capacity the industry is planning to
double its total semiconductor
manufacturing capacity within the next
uh five years an example so that's
already happening and then you see
things which are actually good they're
good
uh the initiatives such as the united
states chips act
and now the european chips act the
united states uh chip sacks about uh 52
billion dollars the europeans about 43.
their goal combined is to get at least
50 percent of the consumption uh
with manufacturing installed within the
us and european geographies and that's
also very good that's yet another uh
incentive for more manufacturing
capacity to be built and to be built
with a geographic distributed way which
that's how you play in supply chain so
those those i think are good things so
if anything we learn
through the crisis
is the semiconductor
uh it's important my conductor companies
are important and we need to invest in
semiconductors
returning to the grilling of the ceo
with the hard questions
this is almost for my own education of
the space you mentioned regulators
qualcomm paid out and received payment
of billions of dollars in settlement and
fines
uh there seems to be a lot of huge
lawsuits in this space how do you
explain that uh does
uh does this get in the way of
innovation or does it promote it
i will rephrase it by saying they used
to be
a lot of lawsuits in the space
in addition of
of what we do in semiconductors you know
our processors and our modems the
snapdragon platform
we also have a licensing business which
has been a part of the company since the
beginning
as the largest
uh inventors of the essential technology
in
2g cdma 3g 4g and 5g
uh you know and qualcomm contribute that
to the standards so we always had this
model that
rather than invent the technology and be
the only one producing the products we
licensed so everyone can produce it
and uh and as such we receive
intellectual property uh
for these standard essential patents
um
as part of our past
dispute with apple that's behind us now
you're friends now they're they're
they're my customers um and and uh as
part of that i think the the licensing
model got tested in i think in every
geography
and uh we succeeded in every single
geography to validate
the
pro-competitiveness of this model i
think the uh the fair reasonable
non-discriminatory aspect of this model
and i would argue that besides being the
most successful licensing business to
date in the industry
probably the one that's been battle
tested and that's most stable because
there's not a single jurisdiction that
we have not
had to validate that model so it's part
of our past and what it creates is
probably create a lot of stability in
our licensing business but having said
that the growth of the company is in the
semiconductor space and the
semiconductor so licensing is you come
up with a pretty good idea you have a
bunch of smart people coming up with
cool ideas
and then once you come up with that idea
you sell that idea to others they get to
use it that's essentially a license the
license revenue we have is is for the
what we call the scp standard essential
patents
that are part of
uh the 2g 3g 4g and 5g standards so if
you want to build anything with 5g
you need to get a license from qualcomm
because users qualcomm
essential technology is part of the
standard and a slightly different model
or a lot different model the
semiconductor is you design
you inject a bunch of fascinating ideas
how to build the snapdragon and then
there's
because it's a fabulous company you have
somebody build
the the the chip and it goes into a
phone with the branding and all that
kind of stuff and and that has less kind
of players involved it's not a license
we sell the product in the semi we don't
license semiconductor technology we
build products and we sell products
this is your first year as a ceo no not
one year yet not one year yet yeah
let's hope it'll be in june it'll be one
year okay
this is a
a company that's involved
with a lot of fascinating technologies
and it's touching the lives of billions
of people
a lot of complicated stuff because like
i said licensing technologies you have
to collaborate
with manufacturers you have to then work
with however many you said car companies
and all these clients and so on and you
have to uh you know with with tech
companies uh apple and so on
what's that like what lessons have you
learned about leadership and maybe about
yourself as a human being from this
first
uh almost a year soon to be a year as a
ceo of this incredible this complex this
large company oh that's a loaded
question let me let me answer in reverse
order um
first thing that i learned
and i i think is probably common uh
across ceos especially uh in our
industry is it will be great if i had
more time
i think there's
especially because we're growing so many
areas and there's so many things to
learn so many uh relationships to build
um time to spend with a number of
different technologies and
and but it kind of reflects really the
size of the opportunity that exist for
qualcomm qualcomm it is really growing
in a number of different directions all
at the same time
and uh so it did got busier um and uh
part of this is because i'm spending a
lot of time understanding the new
industries we're going in and building
uh
relationships second thing which is a
lot to do with how i think about things
and a little bit of my personality
at the end of the day
business partnership is really done by
people
and i think the importance of having
trusted relationships for the long term
uh is extremely important and i've been
dedicated to do that as ceo we're not a
company that plays for the short term we
don't and when we build new partnerships
we expect that to be for decades and uh
so i i spend time doing that and i think
that's important for qualcomm the other
part of
your question is
we do have a lot of opportunities in all
different areas what we like
and i've been fortunate enough to become
ceo at a time
that a lot of the trends are pointing to
our technology we talk about some of
them we talk about merger of physical
and digital spaces we talk about the
transformation the automobile we talk
about the merge of computing
and mobile
the enterprise transformation of the
home there are many of those trends and
those trends create opportunities for
qualcomm uh to be
uh
providing technology first
and as such we're in a hurry
so i'm in a little bit of a hurry
because i think the opportunity is
incredible for technology but uh
but having fun and and enjoying the job
is there a burden because of so much
what you said is uh partnerships and
you know almost like friendships
connections with other human beings
uh me as an introvert that has a lot of
social anxiety
that seems extremely stressful so is
there that burden on your shoulders you
have to wake up every day
and talk to
friends you've had for many years
it could be you know and then convince
them
and make partnerships with them
talk with them describe to them the
future sell them an idea and then
yourself grow because you don't know
what the heck the future is going to be
like you have to project both confidence
and humility all those kinds of things
is that exhausting
um
it is exhausting but it's something i i
do like to do and it's not only with
partners really it's also internally to
your employees i think
to get alignment on the vision and uh
and faith and the vision and execute and
at the end of the day we're very
fortunate we have a lot of smart people
so people when if they're aligned with
the vision they know what to do
and and then of course as ceo you have
to convince your investors that's the
that's the right idea as well
if you can put on your
wise sage hat i do you have a device for
young people in high school and college
you yourself
started from the humble beginnings in
brazil
maybe a bit of a wild risky decision to
go to japan and now are at the head of
one of the biggest most successful most
impactful companies in the world
given that story can you give advice to
young people today that
you know how they can have a career or
just the life they can be proud of
i think the first thing and i'm and of
course all of those answers are kind of
relate
to my own experience right
the first thing is
it always work for me to have
to have a plan even if the plan is just
what i'm gonna do within the next two
years but what do i want to do where do
i want to go
and uh and i think it's important for
people especially young people um
is
is to really you know have a dream and
go pursue it i mean have dreams not go
back to bed to sleep it's really what
what do you want to accomplish and then
what it's going to take to do that and
uh and then believe in yourself um you
know i
like i said i joined qualcomm as an
engineer
and uh
i didn't have any plans when i joined uh
to be ceo but i do want to as an
engineer what do i wanted to do what i
where when what where i want to
contribute what i wanted to work on and
then and then
keep evolving from that point in time
the other thing is
this is an advice it's more of like
career advice that i got
i got early in my career was extremely
helpful for me and i will give that
advice to everyone that is interesting
um
spend time understanding what are what
are the things you're good at and what
are things you're not
like what is that real border between
your area of competence in your area of
incompetence and once you see that once
you see that you know exactly what you
have to work on and you can say i can if
i that's where i want to go next this is
the gap i need to do it and it's it's
it's faster when you can identify
yourself before other people can tell
you
then it leads to automatically the next
step
surround yourself the people that are
very good at the things that you're not
[Laughter]
so you have to be radically honest about
the things that you're not good at but
given what you're passionate about you
need to get good at or you would like to
get good at and surround yourself by
those people how often did the plans you
make actually work out
you said it's important to make plans
you didn't say anything about uh it's
important to execute on this more than
fifty percent yeah
right try to keep it above 50.
uh what was the whole why did you end up
in japan
you know i've been uh fortunate enough
to work in cellular and wireless my
entire career so i i always like
communications
when i went to engineering school uh my
dad was an electrical engineer but he
worked with the utility company he
wanted to me to graduate in traditional
electrical engineering like hi in energy
generation distribution um
and but i like electronics communication
so i end up doing both
and
and i always like communication was
fascinated by wireless communication so
my first job at a college i started
working for a japanese company down in
brazil
uh was nec and within about a year in
they transferred me to
tokyo asked me to go to the headquarters
and
it was the first time i left brazil and
a little bit different from brazil
cultural different uh
is in the other side of the planet
and
and that's how it started you said your
father's an electrical engineer
uh do you think what you're doing now
makes your father proud
i think he's very proud i think uh
especially you know um
he tells me that uh you know i'm still
the same person that never changed and
uh does he still does he give you advice
does he criticize what you're doing no
how to improve my my mom and dad still
give me advice today i'm very fortunate
for that but uh
uh but uh uh his
his proud also proud because they're
very few brazilians uh
uh they have you know achieve a position
as ceo of uh
of a company the size of qualcomm and i
and i do know that that also i carry a
burden i you know i
especially for the latino community to
be an inspiration for them and make sure
i set a good example
so not just your your mom and dad but
um the culture the people that uh were
originally your home
do you uh you know life is finite
do you think about your own mortality
look i'm uh i'm a
devout christian and uh so i'm a big
believer that there's
uh this is just a transition
and uh but um don't spend a lot of time
thinking about that i'm
i am uh
somebody good better and different that
try as much as possible to leave the
present and that's what i do
and try to make the present better on
this on this place here on earth
absolutely and that some of these
technologies some of these ideas are
kind of a different kind of immortality
as well because they they propagate
through time and have impact on people
in the best possible way so technology
can be scary can technology can be
destructive but it seems like in the end
it can be
it can do a lot of good more people
there's more good than bad
what do you think is the meaning of this
whole thing i asked you about aliens
observing us
what what's the meaning of life
cristiano
what's the meaning of life
easy questions that's not an easy
question at all uh i think that's uh
that's the question at least for me you
have to answer individually uh
but uh i do believe we're all here for
purpose
you know i
i
you know in my prayers i always ask that
you know i i stay on track whatever my
purpose is
but i do believe we're here for purpose
and we need to do the best we can during
the time we have on this earth
so that means
create beautiful things for you as an
engineer yes and create beautiful things
yes what about love
what's the role of love in the human
condition
love's very important and uh it's an
essential part of
being human it comes in the package
and i think if you look at the situation
what's happening right now i think uh
look at the situation with some of the
underprivileged uh communities look at
the homeless situation i think we all
need more love
yeah and i think people that build
incredible technology sometimes forget
the love part like those are all it's
all integrated
there's no
thinking about humanity
is really important when you build tools
that empower that humanity because
there's i think i at least i personally
believe we're all capable of both evil
and good
and we have to build technology build
societies build governments build
communities that
um inspire us to
to connect with the good part within all
of us i'm a big believer that technology
is at the end the force for good and if
just look if you just look you know not
trying to
move away from a deep discussion to a
more
uh specific technical one but
if
we started a conversation talking about
smartphones
and uh smartphones really the first time
that you could say that everybody in the
world was able to connect to the
internet and connect to each other and i
think what uh
that empowerment that that provided it's
an incredible force for good
well
the company you lead
the the technology you've created one of
them that i'm especially excited about
which is snapdragon the whole line of
processors there currently i would say
at about
10 billion transistors
if you think about the human brain it's
about 100 billion neurons
so i think uh 11
samsung galaxy 22s s22s are already
smarter than me and that's being nice
to me
i'm really honored that you spent your
extremely valuable time with me
uh even though you said pele is the
favorite player um
beyond all of that uh i think you're an
incredible person an incredible leader
and you lead an incredible engineering
company so thank you for doing that oh
thank you so much thanks for the kind
words really a pleasure having this
conversation i really had a lot of fun
doing it and uh thank you for having me
in the podcast
thanks for listening to this
conversation with cristiano ahman to
support this podcast please check out
our sponsors in the description and now
let me leave you with some words from
stephen hawking
for millions of years
mankind lived just like the animals
then something happened which unleashed
the power of our imagination
we learn to talk and learn to listen
speech has allowed the communication of
ideas
enabling human beings to work together
to build the impossible
mankind's greatest achievements have
come about by talking
and its greatest failures by not talking
it doesn't have to be like this our
greatest hopes could become reality in
the future
with the technology at our disposal the
possibilities are unbounded
all we need to do is make sure we keep
talking
thank you for listening and hope to see
you next time
you