Snapdragon at Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2025 (with Chris Patrick)

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?

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Transcript

Chris Patrick: 0:07

Hey,

Leonard Lee: 0:10

everybody. This is Leonard Lee, Executive Analyst 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 Chris Patrick, Big. Island. That's what I'm known as. It's my show. So we're gonna call you Big Island. Why don't you introduce yourself,

Chris Patrick: 0:35

sir? Okay, we'll do it. So yeah, I'm Chris Patrick from Qualcomm. I lead really the handset business at Qualcomm. So I mean, smartphone chips and software, as well as wearables, Some of the technologies already that are very personal to you. I lead those businesses at Qualcomm.

Leonard Lee: 0:50

Awesome. So, you know, it's good to see you here. Great to be here. What are you doing here?

Chris Patrick: 0:55

We were a little curious, about this new platform. Yeah, just

Leonard Lee: 0:59

maybe a little bit, right? A little curious. Yeah, yeah. So we'll, let's talk about what you guys are doing. with in all the announcements that came out here from the event today. But before that, just wanted to talk to you about something that I noticed at CES, actually running up into 2025, which is lately there's a lot of attention on the CPU. And I think even with smartphones 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 your perspective. What's going on? Okay,

Chris Patrick: 1:36

that's fair. Um, I think CPU has always been the center. It always has been, of course. I think, really the introduction of low power NPUs as complements to the CPU, I think were transformational. Yeah? Just incredible. Uh, but in the end, that application runs on the CPU. The heart of it does. So, in the end. Yeah. You have an incredible game. Yeah. So the details are calculated first on the CPU and then rendered on the GPU. You know, so in the end, it's really heterogeneous processing. We need strength across each of these processors for it to all get fused together. the CPU is always going to be that orchestrator, the architect of the overall system. And so we need a lot of strength there, a lot of horsepower.

Leonard Lee: 2:15

Right. And so what's new this year in terms of smartphones and CPU? Okay. Yeah, I know the answer, but I'm testing you. I'll give you a chance to get it right.

Chris Patrick: 2:26

So we, we humbly are very proud of, of the custom CPU, called, code name Orion, right? That we introduced to the smartphone ecosystem, this year. So we believe it's the fastest CPU in mobile ever. just incredible leap in performance, not just compared to kind of welcome products, but really compared to anything anybody can do in the industry. yeah. And yeah, that's turned, you know, what used to be challenging use cases, challenging workloads into effortless use cases, that just flow very easily. And so you feel fluidity in the UI. You feel that game just performs incredibly well, without heating up the device, that AI overall work, a use case and workload, now runs very smoothly. So anyway, we're very proud of what we brought and, the partnership with Samsung to bring the That's you to market is just a great opportunity.

Leonard Lee: 3:11

Yeah. And this year is kind of a pivotal year for the Snapdragon lineup, right? That's right. with the Orion cores, you have the eight Elite Snapdragon, eight Elite, and coincidentally, it's powering the Samsung devices this year, very coincidentally flagship devices, so, that's right. In terms of power efficiency, the MPU offload is great. It's still boils down to CPU. And there's more and more talk about it across the different categories. Right. Which I thought was very interesting, but let's talk about MPU for a while. Sure. Smart. Phones are probably the first personal devices that actually embraced, neural processing offload, right? and really brought the NPU or what we now know as the NPU onto device to do all these, wonderful things, with AI. So maybe give us some perspective 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: 4:11

Not new. Yeah. I get the smartphone business is one that's very interesting. There's a reason why so many technologies are kind of born in smartphones. Yeah. Because again, it's an incredible device. when you rely on every moment almost of your day, but if you leave this here by mistake and go to the restroom, you're going to be panicked. You're going to run back and come and get it. Right. Because you know, this is your, maybe how you pay for things. This is how you, You know, your calendar, this is how you reach your family, right? It's so critical to your life, but it's this incredibly small form factor, Despite the incredible horsepower here. So smartphones are often the places where the whole industry has to invest first in figuring out how to make things low power, how to make things low memory so they can fit in even in a kind of relatively small device in every footbridge, right? So it is this sort of crucible, Where technologies evolve and grow up and then go to other technologies. So that's What happened within Qualcomm is we built so many of our AI technologies focused first on the smartphone, the incredibly challenging form factor here. And then we've taken that technologies to PC and to server and to all kinds of other businesses.

Leonard Lee: 5:12

Yeah. That all that, all part of that diversification strategy, the one technology roadmap. Yeah.

Chris Patrick: 5:19

I get it. And now moving forward, really like we're continuing to make that incredible new, performance levels, power efficiency levels, and then move to more sophisticated. It's a combination of algorithms. Multi modal AI is a big theme this year. You heard Samsung and the Google team talk about the ways that you can combine the different modalities to create these new experiences. So that's very exciting. and yeah, we'll see even more diversity of models, combinations of models. that produce all kinds of incredible new experiences.

Leonard Lee: 5:46

Let's talk about connectivity.

Chris Patrick: 5:48

Yes.

Leonard Lee: 5:49

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 mobile device, right? It is. And, connectivity is absolutely essential. I mean, I had some connectivity issues here today. I will tell you, I would have paid for a network slice.

Chris Patrick: 6:08

Okay, there you go. A little millimeter wave would have solved the problem.

Leonard Lee: 6:12

connectivity because if we're talking about edge AI, distributed AI, we need to be talking about connectivity, especially when we're talking about these devices that are mobile.

Chris Patrick: 6:23

That's right.

Leonard Lee: 6:24

And that we're carrying around without being tethered, right? That's right. Yeah, where

Chris Patrick: 6:29

are

Leonard Lee: 6:29

we?

Chris Patrick: 6:30

Where are we? What are we doing? I think we're continuing to evolve. At, Qualcomm, we, uh, continue to love our connectivity technologies and we know how important they are to the end user because I guess AI really is hybrid ai, right? That's the way we talk about it at Qualcomm distributed ai, because we've learned, it's just not practical. many use cases really cannot run using AI completely on the cloud, right? We will have to have AI on the. But there is content on the cloud we have to reach out to. There's some types of AI processing that have to go on the cloud. So really, the system is even more tightly integrated between device and cloud, than it once was. So we need low latency, we need low power, we need really ubiquitous connectivity. so that's why I think we continue to invest in Wi Fi 7, even further generational upgrades beyond that. We continue to partner with each of the carriers on providing higher bandwidth, higher reliability, lower latency, cellular connectivity. As you mentioned, if we had millimeter wave, coverage here, we would have had no problem.

Leonard Lee: 7:24

One last thing. I mean, we're here at a Samsung event. Yes. This is their galaxy, unpacked 2025 events. so give us some highlights. I mean, how's. Qualcomm, making some of these great announcements is really compelling announcements possible. I mean, what are the things that really are top of mind and, you think that the audience should take notice of?

Chris Patrick: 7:47

Yeah. We're very proud of this. Decades long partnership with Samsung. And so this really is one of the high points of that partnership, we're very proud to have been selected, for every model of the Galaxy S25 globally, with the Ataleaks.

Leonard Lee: 7:59

this year, right?

Chris Patrick: 8:00

And yeah, as we discussed, you know, this is when we're introducing a new CPU and really a whole new performance there. And to be recognized by Samsung and selected by Samsung, is thrilling. And we really felt that, Throughout the presentation today, they talked about the gaming technologies we worked on together. They talked about, for example, nitrography, their low light, a video framework, which is something we worked on very closely with them. something called spatial temporal filters. of course they talked about NPUs, uh, throughout a new AI experiences, that audio AI kind of, use case where they can edit the audio levels. I think it's something we could use right now. Which is what we're going to use. Exactly. It's going to be great. You can count on

Leonard Lee: 8:35

it.

Chris Patrick: 8:36

Yeah. Real time translation, but then really the, one of the best examples we've seen of true agentic AI, really this fluid user experience interacting naturally with your device. So I'm very excited to try that, use case.

Leonard Lee: 8:51

Wonderful. Cool. Well, Hey, Thanks for, uh, jumping on my podcast here. I really appreciate it.

Chris Patrick: 8:56

seeing you. It was good to see you. Yeah.

Leonard Lee: 8:58

Everyone, thanks for tuning in. Yes. This is Leonard Lee with Chris Patrick of Qualcomm coming at you. Live. Remember to follow Next Curve, atte, www.next-curve.com for the tech and industry, insights that matter. And we'll see you next time.

Chris Patrick: 9:17

Okay. Check out the Galaxy S 25.

Leonard Lee: 9:19

Yeah.