Google, Qualcomm and cloud gaming services. Integration success?

The Story of Compromise

Last year brought us plans for Google to release laptops based on Qualcomm’s ARM solutions with the Windows operating system. Most met this
The solution is pretty cool. And besides, the information has recently been revealed that this will be sufficiently curtailed in the functionality of the system, which in general was understandable earlier.

About any support did not speak in Microsoft, for full implementation alien architecture for Win a lot of time is required. Probably a seditious thought crept into every person who understands this. Why would they even release it at all if these are all half measures and compromises? Is that for a narrow circle of people, perhaps even for education - in general, why not. But all this is very far from being able to move from a full-fledged platform seriously, and not for occasional use, to such decisions.

And how can you even seriously consider top ARM solutions even on the same laptops? Neither does the technical specifications of the GPU, which last year’s Snapdragon 835 (Adreno 540) gave out at a peak of just over 560Gflops (the flops is a unit of measurement of computing power of computers in floating point operations), do not inspire confidence. Yes, and the most recent SoC, only presented at the Mobile World Congress in a particular device - Samsung Galaxy S9 / S9 Plus, and in the near future in all Android flagships of this year, according to estimates, it will be up to 30%. For mobile solutions, this is definitely a lot of moderately several features, but with an increase in the screen, a different work philosophy ...

But all this is solved. It's so good, when the processor occupies the minimum space, it has a great variety of modules built in itself, which in many conventional processors stand out as separate devices. Of course, they may not be as powerful. But as a manufacturer you get the highest degree of integration on a very small platform. And what about the TDP. It is predictably small. And then there is a great opportunity to almost complete, close to the ideal heat dissipation.

The reason is simple - you have more opportunities as a manufacturer for this compared to the same smartphones. No, coolers are certainly not needed here. But passive dispersion can be brought to incredible performance. Consequently, there is no need for a large number of elementary bases. Yes, and motherboards obviously dry up. But we understand certain disadvantages in this regard. But what if they can be eliminated?
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Indeed, there is such an opportunity. And it is represented by cloud gaming services. They have been working not for the first year, there are not so many of them, but there are still problems
okay The main ones are in a consistently high Internet connection, which is not yet within the framework of not only the world, but specific countries and cities. And certainly not in the most
debugged work schemes for the presentation of the video stream. The Russian company Playkey - one of the leaders in this industry, does not work as perfectly as it was wanted. On the other hand, this is due to the implementation of decentralized control systems with the use of the same blockchain.

How to arrange everyone?

Foreign services that provide such services, too, often "fall". But that's not the point. First of all, these services provide a video stream of games, and that’s it. Of course the game - one of the most important articles of demand of the average user. And what about something else? Suppose you have a laptop on an ARM solution, but it cannot work in specialized programs. And all - on this full cross. You have to keep the laptop only for unnecessarily trivial work, and it will gradually turn into a “tablet” for you. Yes, this is a hint towards the very boring trends in the market for these devices.

And what if the responsible for all of this, Google, having incredible resources, would implement the same service, only taking into account the improvements and for all proprietary software? Then everything would heal with new colors. In fact, the following would turn out - for $ 200-370 (Approximately such a price will be for the upcoming laptops with SoC Snapdragon (the most successful platform on the market of processors for smartphones, the only one that can fully with the A series chips from the company from Cupertino) provides You have a hardware-enhanced terminal for working with almost any serious software for a subscription fee of a few dollars. Yes, without the ability to work offline. But is offline now something that can become a serious obstacle?

- Such systems have 3G / 4G modems. The top crystals that will be embedded in laptops must be equipped with separate SIM cards to receive Internet traffic. Another source of profit for mobile operators. If earlier you paid for the mobile Internet only on a smartphone, now you can also on a laptop.

If you strongly need to - you can leave the functions of voice calls on GPRS. In large cities, LTE works stably, and X18 / X21 modems in top Snapdragon allow in theory to accept up to 1.2 Gb / s. We do not have such speeds, but this is a reserve for the future. And if demand goes, upgrades and even greater heights in data transfer speeds cannot be avoided. Smart phones are not one thing consuming, but cloud services for providing software that are not “pulling” these systems are another thing. Why not? A couple of years and 5G solutions will arrive. Although they have already announced the same Qualcomm, Samsung. This is already for the future, in about five years, you can forget about the problem of mobile Internet.

- Do not forget about Wi-Fi. Especially about the plans of Ilona Mask and the world-wide Wi-Fi over the whole world. It sounds damn ambitious, but skepticism is enough

- No one refuses a wired connection. Stable, inflexible, good. The theme of today, the average provides already familiar 100MB / s in the CIS countries.

- Now about the "license fee" and the pitfalls in providing services in a cloudy way. We make an assumption - say, Google has implemented such a system. To the extent of attracting the client base, such a service can, and, most likely, if only they do not make it a privilege for the owners of these mobile PCs, it is also available for the owners of all devices. There are many outdated systems in the world. The necessary, or rather, sufficient level of the Internet is in most densely populated regions.

Therefore, for many users, paying several dollars for using heavy software solutions that were previously unavailable to them will be more attractive than fully or partially updating PC components, taking into account recent trends in price increases and shortages for some components. And the most pleasant thing for the creators of software - all users in such conditions must acquire a license. How exactly - right away or monthly, or this cost will be integrated with the monthly fee to the cloud access provider - this will be decided later.

- Concerning data storage. Everything is prosaic here. EMMC type drives (obsolete), UFS (2.0 / 2.1) will be implemented and will serve with not very strong use of several
years before being degraded. This year, manufacturers of smartphones will start using drives even for 512GB, and 256/128/64 have been tested for a long time. And the cost of such drives itself is not super-large. Basic data in theory can be stored in the future in the clouds of the same Google, paying extra for the volume, and only the system itself will be located on physical memory, and software that runs independently.

- And what can we say about saving space? The motherboard on the form factor will be clearly less than in a regular laptop, but then where can I use the free space? As a trivial example for installing super-capacious batteries. And in order not to charge them for eternity, there are different standards (the same Quick Charge), and we are on the verge of widespread use of graphene batteries. In this case, the 15.6-inch laptop of the new type can have incredible autonomy indicators. And all modern SoC
consume at the peak of no more than 2.1-1.3A / hour, and on average the mode does not exceed 0.5-0.7 Ampere (information about the Snapdragom 835, made according to 10Nm technology). This is for smartphones. It should be assumed that consumption on laptops will be closer to the peak. But this is well offset by the installation capabilities of super-high-capacity batteries. I will not go into other aspects, because once they have stated this, it means that it is possible. The only thing that can still be done is to release devices with such an architecture on Chrome OS. There are obvious preferences - this is their project, so the more “their own” - the better for them. The market of Khrombukov is not so big, there are no more than 20 million copies.

Why not?

As a result, one can say about the indisputable advantages of integrating the above three components, if it is implemented under the wing of Google. Introduce another
personally it is not possible for me to implement it. Well, will not Microsoft do it?

+ Increased production of mobile chipsets, their cheaper prices. Going beyond the mobile market. A new round of competition from manufacturers of ARM solutions: Qualcomm, Mediatek,
Samsung, Huawei.

+ Inexpensive, lightweight, stand-alone mobile computers based on the familiar Windows OS with sufficient resources for normal use)

+ New rethinking loyalty programs.

+ Profit to mobile Internet providers, the possibility of GSM-telephony from the workstation.

+ A huge development of cloud technologies.

+ Distribution of proprietary software, developers' profits - you cannot buy a product temporarily / permanently, you cannot use it.

+ Google / any other company, which will be the first in this - will receive in the future a huge and monthly profitable market.

+ Growth in the number of data centers around the world, the development of wireless / wired data transmission standards.

+ New life for owners of old computers and the poor.

+ Unloading the main market for personal computers.

But there are in this concept and the dark side. But as long as it has not gone beyond the framework of the theory, there is nothing concrete to talk about. It was my vision on how to arrange everything - from the buyer, to the companies that provide commercial software.

What do you think about this?