Qualcomm and AMD announced a surprise partnership today that will make Ryzen-powered laptops always-connected machines.
While we already knew Ryzen processors were making their way to laptops next year, Qualcomm’s involvement will turn the AMD’s mobile platform into an always-connected one. In this team up Qualcomm plans to integrate its Snapdragon LTE modems into AMD’s next line of mobile APUs.
This would effectively make Ryzen-powered machines an always-connected system capable of Gigabit LTE speeds while being able to take advantage of Qualcomm’s low-energy connectivity technology.
It’s an unprecedented partnership, but one that makes absolute sense.
Between this and Qualcomm’s own Snapdragon 835 chips designed for laptops, this would leave Intel as the odd man (or processor brand) out as the only notebook processor choice that doesn’t come with an LTE modem built into the chipset. Rather, users currently must elect for the optional connectivity package at an added expense.
On the other hand, Qualcomm benefits from this by being able to license out its connectivity package to another computing platform. All the while the Snapdragon LTE modems, allow the brand to put its stamp (albeit, less directly) on a processor line far more capable and on par in performance to that of Intel.
Of course, the biggest caveat of this is users will likely need to extend their data service to their mobile computing device. We also have yet to know if AMD will work with Qualcomm to integrate LTE radios on every single mobile-based Ryzen processor.
- We’re sure to hear more at CES 2018, stay tuned for our extensive coverage
