I think AMD is the most likely to win this race as they are way more reasonable than Nvidia and Qualcomm in terms of margins and better at working with the vendors.
Nvidia and Qualcomm are just so... Nvidia and Qualcomm like. They can't help themselves.
That being said, history also suggests AMD will bungle the software side.
In my experience, pretty much all software engineering positions pay better than hardware engineering positions with equivalent experience. I don't fully understand why, as hardware is hard and if you have a really good hardware engineering team you can shave months off your time to market, so those engineers should be just as valuable to a business as systems/embedded software people.
Based on that people end up earning what they consider "a comfortable wage". Some people are not going to feel comfortable until they can buy a jet for their acro-flying hobby, some are happy when they can afford to easily save 1 year of income and being able to afford to buy a new pc every 3 years.
Other people have no idea these opportunities exist and they are miserable working in one place for a decade. Or they are not willing or can't take risks.
That's how we end up with two people doing similar jobs one earning $100k and the other $500k. In days of remote work the biggest differentiating factor in the earning potential IMO is your English (if not a native speaker) and willingness to work in timezones 6h+ away.
But you are right; the hardware market is harder than making web stuff. I just enjoy hardware/firmware more. Currently I am starting a new hardware/firmware project for a US company that will last 3 years with this income.
It depends where you live, spend and how you count; i optimised everything for the past 25+ years around making sure I never have to think about money if I would drop everything today. Your situation might be very different of course.
I think it has to do with the VC faucet, a completely irrational capital allocation mechanism.
Consider a senior SWE at e.g. NVIDIA making $300k, let's say halfsies split between base and RSU. The $150k RSU grant from a few years ago that still hasn't fully vested is worth $1M now. So even for a 50% increase in nominal total comp, it doesn't make financial sense to switch.
I don't know that anyone can afford to pay their engineers 10x more than the competition, and then also offer a cheaper product with thinner margins.
That disrupts the organization because the hardware people are arguably smarter and more talented than software people. They have actual engineering degrees.
A good software org has to value its people. A good hardware org is a manufacturing operation tries to minimize personnel costs.
It is impossible to find: AMD + high resolution screen (3840x2400) + 120hz + OLED. In the last year even the Intel ones downgraded though, everyone went 3200x2000 @ 120hz OLED.
It's just frustrating when you're looking at upper-end AMD laptops and you cannot find 16GB of memory, or a decent screen. I'm glad they can dish out $500-$800 laptops, but I don't know why OEMs are always pairing the good components with Intel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel#Allegations_by_the_Europ...
AMD do offer solutions, its the vendors that ignored Navi and insisted on supplying power guzzling 3060 instead. Blame the customers for that.
Good laptop with 3 flaws - should have been 16:10, and the touchpad driver is terrible, and power supply is a brick. Fix these and you would have had oerfect laptop.
Given the nature of their laptops, even if the laptop you want isn’t there yet it’s only a matter of time before you get the module that you want
Need me some 2160p or 2400p @ 120hz OLED. I'm often in hotel after hotel after hotel and I don't have a docked setup. I just have the 1 laptop. Certainly not toting around a high-end portable monitor for this need, you can't find 120hz OLED anyway. Another poster linked how Intel influenced what OEMs were offering with AMD CPUs and I think that's exactly what's going on. When you go to Dell.com you can very easily see the many options for Intel-CPU'd laptops, and the handful or less of AMD options for screen configurations, hard drives, memory, or graphics cards. It's just very fishy.
This is not correct. Just looking at Lenovo (and surely, there are similar machines from other brands), even a mainstream laptop like the Yoga 7 14" AMD ships 16 GB, and it has a 2.8K OLED display as option. If you want more, the T14(s) can ship with 32 GB and matte display.
AMD is cheaper (less power too for the same performances), so for my NAS and laptop it's my choice, and probably if I had to build a gaming computer I would use AMD too.
NVIDIA also shipped Tegra SoCs with their own Denver cores, but they scrapped the project