By Jon Gabay, contributing writer
What’s really in a name? Certainly associations with other synonyms or acronyms. Also branding, which is an association unto itself. Names also have connotations that can conjure up visions or even affect senses.
When a product name is involved, it takes on new levels of meanings. Branding and trademarking have important business consequences and even legal ramifications, including creating a distinct product identity, avoiding infringement, and preventing infringement and dilution by others.
Snapdragon is no longer a processor; it is now considered a platform. Image source: Qualcomm.
The recent push from Qualcomm to redefine the term “processor” is one of those mixed bags. A processor, as it’s generally known in the electrical engineering design community, is a microcontroller or a microprocessor that’s the central processing unit (CPU) heart of any computer or dedicated device.
The processor arose from meager roots that began from ROM-based bit slice engines that merely used logic past and present, states to address sequences coded into ROM that were able to quickly and flexibly direct digital operations in a predetermined way.
The first product that everyone truly agreed was a microprocessor was the Intel 4004, which grew to the 8008, and then became the first widely accepted and used processor: the 8080. Of course, these are rather spartan in comparison to modern processors. There was no internal firmware — just micro-code that directed an internal sequencer to execute predefined instructions in a reliable and deterministic way. Key was the integration of logical operations, RAM, registers, and parallel I/O.
Future generations integrated serial I/O, arithmetic units, networking, ROM, EPROM, Flash, EEPROM, DMA, real-time clocks, DSP functionality, energy management functionality, power management functionality, wider bus widths, brown-out and watchdog functionality, A/Ds and D/As, PLLs, oscillators, and more. All the time, the umbrella term “processor” fit.
The term processor continued to be used even when these became multi-chip modules and entire systems on substrate types of devices. Even older Pentiums implemented this type of physical architecture.
So why now is Qualcomm trying to eliminate the term “processor” from the lexicon of the Snapdragon line of devices they manufacture? Why are they calling it a “platform” instead? True, it encompasses many technologies and even several devices integrated into a single module. But at the heart, it’s a system-on-a-chip integrating CPU, DSP, RF, modem, charge control, camera support, security support, touch control, mixed signal, audio, finger print, and more.
It’s impressive as to how much technology has been integrated into this class of processing device. By touting the term “platform,” Qualcomm is trying to express that it has combined these parts to create a higher level of functionality integrated into a single device. In reality, this is and has been the trend in so-called “microprocessor” development for a long time.
It’s not new that a branded name encompasses a class of devices. Pentium, Centrino, the IBM PC, Android, and other umbrella terms are also “platforms,” but these can be thought of as “processors,” too. Many products include an embedded computer to make their functionality possible. We’ll see many products embedding Android-architected devices into them as well. These are all platform-based designs.
There is talk that a key reason for Qualcomm’s differentiation is to untangle itself from antitrust issues and the scrutiny it’s under for its licensing and patent royalty structures. From a legal perspective, by changing the terminology, you might be able to change the rules.
“It is not uncommon for companies to use semantics and even create new acronyms and other terms to differentiate themselves for various legal purposes,” Steve Grill, attorney for the Devine Millimet law firm in New Hampshire, told Electronic Products. “Even minor updates or changes to existing products can be used to protect and extend patents. When care is taken to create products with unique names, functionality, architecture and other characteristics, valuable intellectual property results and, in addition, charges of monopolization can often be better defended,” he said. This is certainly true in electronics, and in the pharmaceutical industry as well.
A processor by any other name may not smell as sweet.
Since studying electrical engineering, Jon Gabay has worked with defense, commercial, industrial, consumer, energy, and medical companies as a design engineer, firmware coder, system designer, research scientist, and product developer. As an alternative energy researcher and inventor, he has been involved with automation technology since he founded and ran Dedicated Devices Corp up until 2004. Since then, he has been doing research and development, writing articles, and developing technologies for next-generation engineers and students.
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