Intel bares its teeth at Qualcomm over Snapdragon-powered PCs

Intel might have a lot of patents on their x86 architecture, but experts doubt Qualcomm would take such a risk if they were liable. (Source: Intel)

Intel has suggested it views Qualcomm's x86 emulation technology as a serious threat and potentially a violation of its intellectual property rights. Whether Qualcomm's technology (which allows Snapdragon CPUs to run full Windows 10) actually does infringe on Intel's IP remains to be proved.

Douglas Black, Published 06/09/2017

Intel is mad as hell, and they're not going to take it anymore — at least, that's the impression they're trying to give Qualcomm. After all but abandoning the PC market for the past couple of years, not only did AMD get the drop on Intel with Threadripper and Ryzen, but Qualcomm became an unlikely competitor due to their new x86 emulation technology. Now, months after Qualcomm's demonstration of Windows 10 running on a Snapdragon 835, Intel is making noises about potential infringement of their patents.

In a blog post celebrating the 40th anniversarry of the x86 chip architecture yesterday, lawyer Steven Rodgers and Intel exec Richard Uhlig made some very thinly veiled aggressions towards Qualcomm: "We do not welcome unlawful infringement of our parents, and we fully expect other companies to continue to respect Intel's intellectual property rights", read a line. The post continued by asserting, "Intel carefully protects its x86 innovations, and we do not widely license others to use them".

While that may be true, engadget points out that a company Qualcomm's size would certainly not steer their ship into litigious waters. Given Intel's recent slippage from PC industry leader, it seems more likely that this is just a reeling company trying to make noise and reassert itself among suddenly serious competition.