January 22, 2025 • 9 mins
neXt Curve's Leonard Lee had a chance to catch up with Chris Patrick, SVP and GM of Mobile Handset at Qualcomm at Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked 2025 event which took place at the SAP Center in San Jose, CA.
Leonard and Chris discuss:
- CPUs are hot again. Why is it important in heterogeneous computing for AI broadly and then more specifically specifically for GenAI?
- NPU for mobile is different than the AI PC. Leonard and Chris talk about the legacy of the mobile NPU and where it is going.
- The smartphone is still a mobile device. Connectivity matters. What is the evolving role and new requirements of connectivity as these AI requirement evolve?
- What are the highlights of how Qualcomm is enabling Samsung’s Galaxy S25 family with the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy?
Make sure to follow Leonard on LinkedIn and hit that 🔔 at the top of his profile for a constant diet of the tech and industry insights that matter.
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Chris Patrick (00:07):
Hey,
Leonard Lee (00:10):
everybody.
This is Leonard Lee, ExecutiveAnalyst at NextCurve.
And I'm here in San Jose at the,uh, SAP Center for Samsung's
Galaxy Unpacked 2025.
And, uh, I'm here with ChrisPatrick, Big.
Island.
(00:30):
That's what I'm known as.
It's my show.
So we're gonna call you BigIsland.
Why don't you introduceyourself,
Chris Patrick (00:35):
sir?
Okay, we'll do it.
So yeah, I'm Chris Patrick fromQualcomm.
I lead really the handsetbusiness at Qualcomm.
So I mean, smartphone chips andsoftware, as well as wearables,
Some of the technologies alreadythat are very personal to you.
I lead those businesses atQualcomm.
Leonard Lee (00:50):
Awesome.
So, you know, it's good to seeyou here.
Great to be here.
What are you doing here?
Chris Patrick (00:55):
We were a little curious, about this new
platform.
Yeah, just
Leonard Lee (00:59):
maybe a little bit, right?
A little curious.
Yeah, yeah.
So we'll, let's talk about whatyou guys are doing.
with in all the announcementsthat came out here from the
event today.
But before that, just wanted totalk to you about something that
I noticed at CES, actuallyrunning up into 2025, which is
(01:19):
lately there's a lot ofattention on the CPU.
And I think even withsmartphones now, last year,
there was a lot of focus on MPU.
I don't know.
It sounds like CPU is back.
So I wanted to get yourperspective.
What's going on?
Okay,
Chris Patrick (01:36):
that's fair.
Um, I think CPU has always beenthe center.
It always has been, of course.
I think, really the introductionof low power NPUs as complements
to the CPU, I think weretransformational.
Yeah?
Just incredible.
Uh, but in the end, thatapplication runs on the CPU.
The heart of it does.
So, in the end.
Yeah.
(01:56):
You have an incredible game.
Yeah.
So the details are calculatedfirst on the CPU and then
rendered on the GPU.
You know, so in the end, it'sreally heterogeneous processing.
We need strength across each ofthese processors for it to all
get fused together.
the CPU is always going to bethat orchestrator, the architect
of the overall system.
And so we need a lot of strengththere, a lot of horsepower.
Leonard Lee (02:15):
Right.
And so what's new this year interms of smartphones and CPU?
Okay.
Yeah, I know the answer, but I'mtesting you.
I'll give you a chance to get itright.
Chris Patrick (02:26):
So we, we humbly are very proud of, of the custom
CPU, called, code name Orion,right?
That we introduced to thesmartphone ecosystem, this year.
So we believe it's the fastestCPU in mobile ever.
just incredible leap inperformance, not just compared
to kind of welcome products, butreally compared to anything
anybody can do in the industry.
yeah.
And yeah, that's turned, youknow, what used to be
(02:47):
challenging use cases,challenging workloads into
effortless use cases, that justflow very easily.
And so you feel fluidity in theUI.
You feel that game just performsincredibly well, without heating
up the device, that AI overallwork, a use case and workload,
now runs very smoothly.
So anyway, we're very proud ofwhat we brought and, the
partnership with Samsung tobring the That's you to market
(03:10):
is just a great opportunity.
Leonard Lee (03:11):
Yeah.
And this year is kind of apivotal year for the Snapdragon
lineup, right?
That's right.
with the Orion cores, you havethe eight Elite Snapdragon,
eight Elite, and coincidentally,it's powering the Samsung
devices this year, verycoincidentally flagship devices,
so, that's right.
In terms of power efficiency,the MPU offload is great.
(03:33):
It's still boils down to CPU.
And there's more and more talkabout it across the different
categories.
Right.
Which I thought was veryinteresting, but let's talk
about MPU for a while.
Sure.
Smart.
Phones are probably the firstpersonal devices that actually
embraced, neural processingoffload, right?
and really brought the NPU orwhat we now know as the NPU onto
(03:57):
device to do all these,wonderful things, with AI.
So maybe give us someperspective on where are we
going?
Where are we going with the NPU?
I guess it's not new.
for the smartphone.
Not new.
Chris Patrick (04:11):
Not new.
Yeah.
I get the smartphone business isone that's very interesting.
There's a reason why so manytechnologies are kind of born in
smartphones.
Yeah.
Because again, it's anincredible device.
when you rely on every momentalmost of your day, but if you
leave this here by mistake andgo to the restroom, you're going
to be panicked.
You're going to run back andcome and get it.
Right.
Because you know, this is your,maybe how you pay for things.
(04:31):
This is how you, You know, yourcalendar, this is how you reach
your family, right?
It's so critical to your life,but it's this incredibly small
form factor, Despite theincredible horsepower here.
So smartphones are often theplaces where the whole industry
has to invest first in figuringout how to make things low
power, how to make things lowmemory so they can fit in even
in a kind of relatively smalldevice in every footbridge,
(04:54):
right?
So it is this sort of crucible,Where technologies evolve and
grow up and then go to othertechnologies.
So that's What happened withinQualcomm is we built so many of
our AI technologies focusedfirst on the smartphone, the
incredibly challenging formfactor here.
And then we've taken thattechnologies to PC and to server
and to all kinds of otherbusinesses.
Leonard Lee (05:12):
Yeah.
That all that, all part of thatdiversification strategy, the
one technology roadmap.
Yeah.
Chris Patrick (05:19):
I get it.
And now moving forward, reallylike we're continuing to make
that incredible new, performancelevels, power efficiency levels,
and then move to moresophisticated.
It's a combination ofalgorithms.
Multi modal AI is a big themethis year.
You heard Samsung and the Googleteam talk about the ways that
you can combine the differentmodalities to create these new
experiences.
So that's very exciting.
(05:40):
and yeah, we'll see even morediversity of models,
combinations of models.
that produce all kinds ofincredible new experiences.
Leonard Lee (05:46):
Let's talk about connectivity.
Chris Patrick (05:48):
Yes.
Leonard Lee (05:49):
You know, 5G, Wi Fi, you know, things that don't
get loved these days, right?
We still have them.
Because you know what?
The smartphone is still a mobiledevice, right?
It is.
And, connectivity is absolutelyessential.
I mean, I had some connectivityissues here today.
I will tell you, I would havepaid for a network slice.
Chris Patrick (06:08):
Okay, there you go.
A little millimeter wave wouldhave solved the problem.
Leonard Lee (06:12):
connectivity because if we're talking about
edge AI, distributed AI, we needto be talking about
connectivity, especially whenwe're talking about these
devices that are mobile.
Chris Patrick (06:23):
That's right.
Leonard Lee (06:24):
And that we're carrying around without being
tethered, right?
That's right.
Yeah, where
Chris Patrick (06:29):
are
Leonard Lee (06:29):
we?
Chris Patrick (06:30):
Where are we?
What are we doing?
I think we're continuing toevolve.
At, Qualcomm, we, uh, continueto love our connectivity
technologies and we know howimportant they are to the end
user because I guess AI reallyis hybrid ai, right?
That's the way we talk about itat Qualcomm distributed ai,
because we've learned, it's justnot practical.
many use cases really cannot runusing AI completely on the
(06:50):
cloud, right?
We will have to have AI on the.
But there is content on thecloud we have to reach out to.
There's some types of AIprocessing that have to go on
the cloud.
So really, the system is evenmore tightly integrated between
device and cloud, than it oncewas.
So we need low latency, we needlow power, we need really
ubiquitous connectivity.
so that's why I think wecontinue to invest in Wi Fi 7,
even further generationalupgrades beyond that.
(07:12):
We continue to partner with eachof the carriers on providing
higher bandwidth, higherreliability, lower latency,
cellular connectivity.
As you mentioned, if we hadmillimeter wave, coverage here,
we would have had no problem.
Leonard Lee (07:24):
One last thing.
I mean, we're here at a Samsungevent.
Yes.
This is their galaxy, unpacked2025 events.
so give us some highlights.
I mean, how's.
Qualcomm, making some of thesegreat announcements is really
compelling announcementspossible.
I mean, what are the things thatreally are top of mind and, you
(07:44):
think that the audience shouldtake notice of?
Chris Patrick (07:47):
Yeah.
We're very proud of this.
Decades long partnership withSamsung.
And so this really is one of thehigh points of that partnership,
we're very proud to have beenselected, for every model of the
Galaxy S25 globally, with theAtaleaks.
Leonard Lee (07:59):
this year, right?
Chris Patrick (08:00):
And yeah, as we discussed, you know, this is
when we're introducing a new CPUand really a whole new
performance there.
And to be recognized by Samsungand selected by Samsung, is
thrilling.
And we really felt that,Throughout the presentation
today, they talked about thegaming technologies we worked on
together.
They talked about, for example,nitrography, their low light, a
video framework, which issomething we worked on very
closely with them.
(08:20):
something called spatialtemporal filters.
of course they talked aboutNPUs, uh, throughout a new AI
experiences, that audio AI kindof, use case where they can edit
the audio levels.
I think it's something we coulduse right now.
Which is what we're going touse.
Exactly.
It's going to be great.
You can count on
Leonard Lee (08:35):
it.
Chris Patrick (08:36):
Yeah.
Real time translation, but thenreally the, one of the best
examples we've seen of trueagentic AI, really this fluid
user experience interactingnaturally with your device.
So I'm very excited to try that,use case.
Leonard Lee (08:51):
Wonderful.
Cool.
Well, Hey, Thanks for, uh,jumping on my podcast here.
I really appreciate it.
Chris Patrick (08:56):
seeing you.
It was good to see you.
Yeah.
Leonard Lee (08:58):
Everyone, thanks for tuning in.
Yes.
This is Leonard Lee with ChrisPatrick of Qualcomm coming at
you.
Live.
Remember to follow Next Curve,atte, www.next-curve.com for the
tech and industry, insights thatmatter.
And we'll see you next time.
Chris Patrick (09:17):
Okay.
Check out the Galaxy S 25.
Leonard Lee (09:19):
Yeah.
Hey,
Leonard Lee (00:10):
everybody.
This is Leonard Lee, ExecutiveAnalyst at NextCurve.
And I'm here in San Jose at the,uh, SAP Center for Samsung's
Galaxy Unpacked 2025.
And, uh, I'm here with ChrisPatrick, Big.
Island.
(00:30):
That's what I'm known as.
It's my show.
So we're gonna call you BigIsland.
Why don't you introduceyourself,
Chris Patrick (00:35):
sir?
Okay, we'll do it.
So yeah, I'm Chris Patrick fromQualcomm.
I lead really the handsetbusiness at Qualcomm.
So I mean, smartphone chips andsoftware, as well as wearables,
Some of the technologies alreadythat are very personal to you.
I lead those businesses atQualcomm.
Leonard Lee (00:50):
Awesome.
So, you know, it's good to seeyou here.
Great to be here.
What are you doing here?
Chris Patrick (00:55):
We were a little curious, about this new
platform.
Yeah, just
Leonard Lee (00:59):
maybe a little bit, right?
A little curious.
Yeah, yeah.
So we'll, let's talk about whatyou guys are doing.
with in all the announcementsthat came out here from the
event today.
But before that, just wanted totalk to you about something that
I noticed at CES, actuallyrunning up into 2025, which is
(01:19):
lately there's a lot ofattention on the CPU.
And I think even withsmartphones now, last year,
there was a lot of focus on MPU.
I don't know.
It sounds like CPU is back.
So I wanted to get yourperspective.
What's going on?
Okay,
Chris Patrick (01:36):
that's fair.
Um, I think CPU has always beenthe center.
It always has been, of course.
I think, really the introductionof low power NPUs as complements
to the CPU, I think weretransformational.
Yeah?
Just incredible.
Uh, but in the end, thatapplication runs on the CPU.
The heart of it does.
So, in the end.
Yeah.
(01:56):
You have an incredible game.
Yeah.
So the details are calculatedfirst on the CPU and then
rendered on the GPU.
You know, so in the end, it'sreally heterogeneous processing.
We need strength across each ofthese processors for it to all
get fused together.
the CPU is always going to bethat orchestrator, the architect
of the overall system.
And so we need a lot of strengththere, a lot of horsepower.
Leonard Lee (02:15):
Right.
And so what's new this year interms of smartphones and CPU?
Okay.
Yeah, I know the answer, but I'mtesting you.
I'll give you a chance to get itright.
Chris Patrick (02:26):
So we, we humbly are very proud of, of the custom
CPU, called, code name Orion,right?
That we introduced to thesmartphone ecosystem, this year.
So we believe it's the fastestCPU in mobile ever.
just incredible leap inperformance, not just compared
to kind of welcome products, butreally compared to anything
anybody can do in the industry.
yeah.
And yeah, that's turned, youknow, what used to be
(02:47):
challenging use cases,challenging workloads into
effortless use cases, that justflow very easily.
And so you feel fluidity in theUI.
You feel that game just performsincredibly well, without heating
up the device, that AI overallwork, a use case and workload,
now runs very smoothly.
So anyway, we're very proud ofwhat we brought and, the
partnership with Samsung tobring the That's you to market
(03:10):
is just a great opportunity.
Leonard Lee (03:11):
Yeah.
And this year is kind of apivotal year for the Snapdragon
lineup, right?
That's right.
with the Orion cores, you havethe eight Elite Snapdragon,
eight Elite, and coincidentally,it's powering the Samsung
devices this year, verycoincidentally flagship devices,
so, that's right.
In terms of power efficiency,the MPU offload is great.
(03:33):
It's still boils down to CPU.
And there's more and more talkabout it across the different
categories.
Right.
Which I thought was veryinteresting, but let's talk
about MPU for a while.
Sure.
Smart.
Phones are probably the firstpersonal devices that actually
embraced, neural processingoffload, right?
and really brought the NPU orwhat we now know as the NPU onto
(03:57):
device to do all these,wonderful things, with AI.
So maybe give us someperspective on where are we
going?
Where are we going with the NPU?
I guess it's not new.
for the smartphone.
Not new.
Chris Patrick (04:11):
Not new.
Yeah.
I get the smartphone business isone that's very interesting.
There's a reason why so manytechnologies are kind of born in
smartphones.
Yeah.
Because again, it's anincredible device.
when you rely on every momentalmost of your day, but if you
leave this here by mistake andgo to the restroom, you're going
to be panicked.
You're going to run back andcome and get it.
Right.
Because you know, this is your,maybe how you pay for things.
(04:31):
This is how you, You know, yourcalendar, this is how you reach
your family, right?
It's so critical to your life,but it's this incredibly small
form factor, Despite theincredible horsepower here.
So smartphones are often theplaces where the whole industry
has to invest first in figuringout how to make things low
power, how to make things lowmemory so they can fit in even
in a kind of relatively smalldevice in every footbridge,
(04:54):
right?
So it is this sort of crucible,Where technologies evolve and
grow up and then go to othertechnologies.
So that's What happened withinQualcomm is we built so many of
our AI technologies focusedfirst on the smartphone, the
incredibly challenging formfactor here.
And then we've taken thattechnologies to PC and to server
and to all kinds of otherbusinesses.
Leonard Lee (05:12):
Yeah.
That all that, all part of thatdiversification strategy, the
one technology roadmap.
Yeah.
Chris Patrick (05:19):
I get it.
And now moving forward, reallylike we're continuing to make
that incredible new, performancelevels, power efficiency levels,
and then move to moresophisticated.
It's a combination ofalgorithms.
Multi modal AI is a big themethis year.
You heard Samsung and the Googleteam talk about the ways that
you can combine the differentmodalities to create these new
experiences.
So that's very exciting.
(05:40):
and yeah, we'll see even morediversity of models,
combinations of models.
that produce all kinds ofincredible new experiences.
Leonard Lee (05:46):
Let's talk about connectivity.
Chris Patrick (05:48):
Yes.
Leonard Lee (05:49):
You know, 5G, Wi Fi, you know, things that don't
get loved these days, right?
We still have them.
Because you know what?
The smartphone is still a mobiledevice, right?
It is.
And, connectivity is absolutelyessential.
I mean, I had some connectivityissues here today.
I will tell you, I would havepaid for a network slice.
Chris Patrick (06:08):
Okay, there you go.
A little millimeter wave wouldhave solved the problem.
Leonard Lee (06:12):
connectivity because if we're talking about
edge AI, distributed AI, we needto be talking about
connectivity, especially whenwe're talking about these
devices that are mobile.
Chris Patrick (06:23):
That's right.
Leonard Lee (06:24):
And that we're carrying around without being
tethered, right?
That's right.
Yeah, where
Chris Patrick (06:29):
are
Leonard Lee (06:29):
we?
Chris Patrick (06:30):
Where are we?
What are we doing?
I think we're continuing toevolve.
At, Qualcomm, we, uh, continueto love our connectivity
technologies and we know howimportant they are to the end
user because I guess AI reallyis hybrid ai, right?
That's the way we talk about itat Qualcomm distributed ai,
because we've learned, it's justnot practical.
many use cases really cannot runusing AI completely on the
(06:50):
cloud, right?
We will have to have AI on the.
But there is content on thecloud we have to reach out to.
There's some types of AIprocessing that have to go on
the cloud.
So really, the system is evenmore tightly integrated between
device and cloud, than it oncewas.
So we need low latency, we needlow power, we need really
ubiquitous connectivity.
so that's why I think wecontinue to invest in Wi Fi 7,
even further generationalupgrades beyond that.
(07:12):
We continue to partner with eachof the carriers on providing
higher bandwidth, higherreliability, lower latency,
cellular connectivity.
As you mentioned, if we hadmillimeter wave, coverage here,
we would have had no problem.
Leonard Lee (07:24):
One last thing.
I mean, we're here at a Samsungevent.
Yes.
This is their galaxy, unpacked2025 events.
so give us some highlights.
I mean, how's.
Qualcomm, making some of thesegreat announcements is really
compelling announcementspossible.
I mean, what are the things thatreally are top of mind and, you
(07:44):
think that the audience shouldtake notice of?
Chris Patrick (07:47):
Yeah.
We're very proud of this.
Decades long partnership withSamsung.
And so this really is one of thehigh points of that partnership,
we're very proud to have beenselected, for every model of the
Galaxy S25 globally, with theAtaleaks.
Leonard Lee (07:59):
this year, right?
Chris Patrick (08:00):
And yeah, as we discussed, you know, this is
when we're introducing a new CPUand really a whole new
performance there.
And to be recognized by Samsungand selected by Samsung, is
thrilling.
And we really felt that,Throughout the presentation
today, they talked about thegaming technologies we worked on
together.
They talked about, for example,nitrography, their low light, a
video framework, which issomething we worked on very
closely with them.
(08:20):
something called spatialtemporal filters.
of course they talked aboutNPUs, uh, throughout a new AI
experiences, that audio AI kindof, use case where they can edit
the audio levels.
I think it's something we coulduse right now.
Which is what we're going touse.
Exactly.
It's going to be great.
You can count on
Leonard Lee (08:35):
it.
Chris Patrick (08:36):
Yeah.
Real time translation, but thenreally the, one of the best
examples we've seen of trueagentic AI, really this fluid
user experience interactingnaturally with your device.
So I'm very excited to try that,use case.
Leonard Lee (08:51):
Wonderful.
Cool.
Well, Hey, Thanks for, uh,jumping on my podcast here.
I really appreciate it.
Chris Patrick (08:56):
seeing you.
It was good to see you.
Yeah.
Leonard Lee (08:58):
Everyone, thanks for tuning in.
Yes.
This is Leonard Lee with ChrisPatrick of Qualcomm coming at
you.
Live.
Remember to follow Next Curve,atte, www.next-curve.com for the
tech and industry, insights thatmatter.
And we'll see you next time.
Chris Patrick (09:17):
Okay.
Check out the Galaxy S 25.
Leonard Lee (09:19):
Yeah.
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