{"id":560723,"date":"2026-05-01T15:03:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T15:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/560723\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T15:03:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T15:03:11","slug":"qualcomm-teases-agentic-cpus-and-smartphones-the-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/560723\/","title":{"rendered":"Qualcomm teases agentic CPUs and smartphones \u2022 The Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

Qualcomm has quietly entered the market for custom hyperscale silicon, and datacenter CPUs<\/p>\n

Speaking on the company\u2019s Q2 earnings call, CEO Cristiano Amon said the company will provide custom product to \u201ca leading hyperscaler,\u201d expects shipments \u201cin the December quarter\u201d and is \u201cthinking about a multi-generation engagement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pressed on the details, Amon said Qualcomm is already working on a data center CPU and high-performance AI inference accelerators, and gained the ability to create custom ASICs by acquiring Alphawave<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He also revealed that Qualcomm has built what he described as \u201ca dedicated CPU for agentic experiences in the data center.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Amon\u2019s telling, AI kicked off with GPUs for training, dedicated inferencing hardware was the next necessity, but the market is now entering a new phase in which it is important to \u201cgenerate demand for tokens\u201d to power agentic AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think when you think about agents, CPU becomes very important,\u201d he said, so Qualcomm has built one.<\/p>\n

The company will stage an investor day in June at which it will reveal more about its plans.<\/p>\n

The CEO also teased the advent of what he calls \u201cagentic smartphones,\u201d and cited recent products from Chinese handset-makers as examples. He mentioned a ZTE phone that includes the Doubao personal assistant developed by ByteDance, and Xiaomi\u2019s miclaw<\/a> \u2013 an AI-powered assistant that\u2019s integrated with the OS kernel and divines smartphone users\u2019 intent and then drives third-party tools to make it happen.<\/p>\n

Asked what agentic smartphones will mean, Amon said \u201cWe see interesting associations now starting to form between smartphones and AI companies. We’re starting to see some very interesting dynamics there, which is changing the nature of designs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those dynamics mean smartphone designs are \u201cmoving towards products [that] have much more capable CPU.\u201d They may also need more memory, which is currently in short supply. Amon said \u201cwe see new memory players coming and building capacity. So we’re going to have to monitor the situation and see what happens in 2027.\u201d<\/p>\n

The CEO is already keenly aware of the memory shortage, because it\u2019s hurting Qualcomm as smartphone manufacturers \u2013 especially Chinese companies \u2013 decide to build fewer units.<\/p>\n

Amon and CFO Akash Palkhiwala both predicted demand will bottom out in Q3, then rebound.<\/p>\n

The CEO also revealed that Qualcomm expects to win 70 percent of Samsung\u2019s SoC business this year and next, up from its usual 50 percent. Samsung is trying to improve its Exynos SoCs, and make more of them. Clearly the Korean giant isn\u2019t yet ready to stand on its own two feet.<\/p>\n

The company won $10.6 billion of revenue for the quarter, down three percent year-over-year. Net income shot up by 162 percent, to $7.37 billion.<\/p>\n

Amon said Qualcomm will highlight its plans to diversify at its June investor event, and emphasized how the company\u2019s automotive business means it is already heading down the road to more sources of revenue and growth.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Q2, we exceeded $5 billion in annualized revenues for the first time, and we expect to exit fiscal ’26 at a run rate above $6 billion,\u201d he said, before pointing out that over one million cars now offer advanced driver assistance and automated driving powered by Qualcomm processors.<\/p>\n

He also offered one more tease: \u201cBy the end of the fiscal year, we will begin commercial shipments of our fifth-generation Snapdragon Digital Chassis platform.\u201d<\/p>\n

That hardware will come with three times higher CPU throughput, a threefold increase in GPU capability, and 12 times higher NPU performance. And because it\u2019s 2026, the silicon will also support what Amon described as \u201cin-vehicle agents and processing for Level 3 and Level 4 autonomous driving.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s PC chips were deemed worthy of just a few fleeting mentions. \u00ae<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Qualcomm has quietly entered the market for custom hyperscale silicon, and datacenter CPUs Speaking on the company\u2019s Q2…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560724,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-560723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}