Cristiano Amon: Qualcomm CEO | Lex Fridman Podcast #280

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.