Arm To Cancel Qualcomm's Chip Design License As Tech Feud Deepens (yahoo.com) 83
Arm has moved to cancel Qualcomm's architectural license agreement, escalating a legal battle that threatens to upend the global smartphone and PC chip markets. The British chip designer issued Qualcomm a 60-day termination notice for the license that allows the U.S. chipmaker to design custom processors using Arm's intellectual property. The cancellation could force Qualcomm to halt sales of products that generate much of its $39 billion annual revenue, Bloomberg reports.
The dispute stems from Qualcomm's $1.4 billion acquisition of chip startup Nuvia in 2021. Arm claims Qualcomm breached contract terms by using Nuvia's designs without permission, while Qualcomm maintains its existing agreement covers the acquired technology. The companies are set for a December trial to resolve Arm's 2022 breach-of-contract lawsuit and Qualcomm's countersuit. Arm is demanding Qualcomm destroy Nuvia designs created before the acquisition.
The dispute stems from Qualcomm's $1.4 billion acquisition of chip startup Nuvia in 2021. Arm claims Qualcomm breached contract terms by using Nuvia's designs without permission, while Qualcomm maintains its existing agreement covers the acquired technology. The companies are set for a December trial to resolve Arm's 2022 breach-of-contract lawsuit and Qualcomm's countersuit. Arm is demanding Qualcomm destroy Nuvia designs created before the acquisition.
This seems like a really bad idea (Score:3, Interesting)
There's already a lot of attention on market consolidation because the hurricane hit a single factory that made IV fluid and it turns out 70% of all the IV fluid in the country comes out of that one factory. Never mind the massive baby formula shortages we had several months back because again market consolidation meant a single factory shutting down completely crushed the supply.
And at this point we have more than an update to prove that inflation we've been facing is just price gouging by monopolies.
I'm saying people have noticed the effects of market consolidation and antitrust violations. This is likely to bring a hammer down in a lot of ways. Again assuming the election goes the right way. We all remember when the Microsoft antitrust law case was dropped by the Justice department immediately following an election
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What evidence do you have that inflation is caused by price gouging (as if companies only just figured out they can raise prices in 2021) and not from trillions of trash dollars getting printed up and dumped into the near zero interest rate economy?
I'll wait.
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Search for "greedflation" and you'll find plenty of good articles with studies to back them up.
It's no coincidence that right around the time Joe Biden started talking about anti-trust law enforcement inflation got under control. If he had more political capital he could've done it sooner. But he was busy trying to keep the Twitter Faction in the House of Reps from crashing the economy with a pointless government shutdown. Which to Joe's credit he did.
Ya triggered bro? (Score:2)
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you brought up elections and we all know exactly who you were talking about!
The Senate or the House, right totally because its not like the DOJ and FTC and friends responsible for Trust enforcement and like those are not Executive branch entities.
You are such scum, just more lying and misdirection. Its all you do!
Re:This seems like a really bad idea (Score:4, Informative)
You won't have to wait long. [bloomberg.com]
Under oath testimony from one of the nation's largest grocery chains admitting to price gouging above inflation, under oath, in a hearing where they're trying to buy one of the other largest grocery chains in the nation.
If you don't even believe them when they tell you what they're doing under penalty of perjury, then you just are un-anchored from reality.
What I like best about that trial (Score:2)
You would think that would get the merger request immediately denied but here we go again with zero antitrust law enforcement so there's still a chance to mergeable go through even though we all know it's massively anti-competi
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Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Qualcomm is famous for levering their customers into positions they don't want to be in through patents and malignant licensing terms. It's a damn shame that it's their turn to get bent over.
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It seems like an equally dangerous issue for both ARM and Qualcomm; the latter has a history of abusive contracts.
The inflation issue is a harder one to really say who is at fault-- were prices increased proactively vs reactively, or was it really price gouging. Nobody wants to be the last one to raise prices, and once everybody does it and labor costs have increased as a result you are pretty much stuck with a gap-up on inflation. Early on there was a chance to avoid where we are at now, but that ship sa
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Which they always will. The solution is to be more careful about inflation , and not hand everyone ( by everyone I mean both private individuals and companies) large sacks of money.
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And at this point we have more than an update to prove that inflation we've been facing is just price gouging by monopolies.
This has been debunked, repeatedly. It's just a political campaign talking point. Grocery store profit margins are still rather small for example.
... All as the dollar is devalued.
Inflation is largely caused by the massive spending increases that occurred during covid and the Biden's Recovery/Green spending. And we have increased fuel costs due to Biden policy. The latter leads to increased costs to farmers, increased costs for transportation. increased costs for fertilizers,
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Well someone is taking in profits. Food prices are more than double what they were pre-pandemic in many jurisdictions. Well above inflation. Commodity prices went up some, but have been flat for a while now. The money isn't going to farmers. I look at food packaging these days where prices are up and the size of packages is smaller. The big companies that control food packaging and distribution are certainly making out like bandits. More and more of the economic wealth is being concentrated into fewe
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Well someone is taking in profits ...
That is not necessarily true outside of government. If costs go up, prices go up, and profits may remain the same.
Now if costs are up because the dollar is devalued, inflation, government wins. It has the newly printed money to spend on whatever project(s) it wants, and its existing debt is devalued because the dollars it owes are "worth less". That everyone with dollars in the bank is hurt, especially seniors with savings and fixed income get hurt, oh well.
... Food prices are more than double what they were pre-pandemic in many jurisdictions. Well above inflation.
Inflation is an average. Plus not all componen
Go RISC-V Qualcomm! (Score:2)
I would love to see Qualcomm get behind RISC-V and kill ARM.
Re:Go RISC-V Qualcomm! (Score:4, Insightful)
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What do you mean "their version"? It's an open ABI, anyone can build a compatible chip without licencing fees. You mean their specific design? Obviously that will be proprietary, like most of the other RISC-V implementations out there.
There was an official Android kernel for RISC V, but Google discontinued it for now, saying they would come back to it later. It may well end up being one of the Chinese variants of Android for their domestic market that really sparks the boom in RISC V mobile devices. Compani
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What do you mean "their version"? It's an open ABI, anyone can build a compatible chip without licencing fees. You mean their specific design? Obviously that will be proprietary, like most of the other RISC-V implementations out there.
1) Who says Qualcomm will build a compatible chip? 2) If Qualcomm builds a proprietary design that has high licensing fees, how will that help RISC-V adoption in general. It does not as no one else would work with their design.
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Seems a bit pointless building an incompatible chip.
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You mean like an ARM CPU? There are loads of people making those.
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Their business model is selling Android compatible SoCs, and now Windows on ARM compatible ones too.
At the very least they would need to get Google and Microsoft to support their proprietary stuff.
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Their business model is selling Android compatible SoCs, and now Windows on ARM compatible ones too.
Can you drop a Qualcomm SOC into any Samsung phone that has their Exynos chip? What about Xaomi with their MediaTek chips? The answer is no. Both use ARM and Android. That's what I mean by incompatibility. Even if you could get the hardware to work despite chip pin layout/voltage/spec differences, you will need to install Android again as the drivers are not going to work.
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In fact Samsung does drop other manufacturer's ICs into its phones that use Exynos chips in one region and another chip in other regions.
The compatibility is that there is a standard ABI for the CPU, and a standard API for the GPU and some other components. The SoC manufacturer provides a "board support package" (BSP) that has firmware and drivers.
They can't provide a BSP that works around differences in the CPU ABI though. Well, I suppose they could provide some kind of emulation layer, but it would be pre
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In fact Samsung does drop other manufacturer's ICs into its phones that use Exynos chips in one region and another chip in other regions.
Sigh. Let me explain this slowly. You cannot drop a Qualcomm SOC into a board designed for an Exynos chip. This is no different than Intel chips not working in a AMD board. Samsung has chosen to name two different phones with same name and model but use different internal parts. From a hardware standpoint, they are not the same hardware. From a performance standpoint they are not the same. From a software standpoint, they are not the same. If you took the HD from one phone and put on the other, it would not
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Can you drop a Qualcomm SOC into any Samsung phone that has their Exynos chip? What about Xaomi with their MediaTek chips? The answer is no. [...] That's what I mean by incompatibility.
The last time we had that kind of compatibility was the mid nineties, when Socket 7 was still a thing. Nobody has had socket compatibility in decades.
Even if you could get the hardware to work despite chip pin layout/voltage/spec differences, you will need to install Android again as the drivers are not going to work.
You're not too familiar with how the ARM ecosystem works, are you?
Re: Go RISC-V Qualcomm! (Score:2)
Can you take an Apple M# chip and put it in any other device?
Most Arm implementations are proprietary SoCs. Qualcomm isnâ(TM)t doing anything different from most other vendors. And Apple is the worst offender of all.
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And Apple is the worst offender of all.
But Apple is not trying to sell their CPU designs to others. They only make their CPUs for themselves. Qualcomm's business is to sell CPU designs to others.
Apple also has rights to ARM designs as founder (Score:2)
And Apple is the worst offender of all.
But Apple is not trying to sell their CPU designs to others. They only make their CPUs for themselves. Qualcomm's business is to sell CPU designs to others.
Apple is also a founding member (along with Acorn and VLSI) of ARM Holdings and has rights to their designs in perpetuity. No further negotiations or contracts necessary I believe. At least for any instruction set architectures. That also makes their business much simpler compared to Qualcomm.
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Embrace, Extend, Eliminate would like a word.
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Wider adoption wouldn't really matter.
The community benefit would be more tooling in RISC-V and more eyeballs on the ISA.
ARM has been the go-to arch for a long time in embedded. My first ARM device was in the early 90's.
e.g. if the Raspberry Pi project were first started today it would be RISC-V based, not ARM.
ARM went from innovative to a drag on the industry sometime in the past few decades. Remember how hard MALI was to work with for no good reason except a lack of competition?
You can already buy a RPi
RPi is ARM and RISC-V based for microcontroller (Score:2)
if the Raspberry Pi project were first started today it would be RISC-V based, not ARM.
No, it would be both. Let the customer decide which they need. Seriously, this has just happened. RPi's Pico 2 microcontroller was just released. In addition to the various improvements to the ARM cores, there was a surprise bonus. Two RISC-V cores. On startup the Pico 2 recognizes whether code is ARM or RISC-V and hands it off to the proper cores. You can switch between ARM and RISC-V by updating the code.
It's not some option. It's part of the standard Pico 2 design, 2 ARM cores, 2 RISC-V cores. I would
Re: Go RISC-V Qualcomm! (Score:2)
So what? All of their products are like that and people still buy them. Usually because of power consumption, performance, or both.
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If Qualcomm uses their own RISC-V that is not compatible with any other RISC-V, who is going to support them other than Qualcomm?
I've read your other comments on this issue and already I know you have a delusional view of how "compatible" ARM chips are with one another. You think common chips used now have pin compatibility. They do not. They have instruction set compatibility. Many implementation details already differ and you already need different drivers for different SOC manufacturers' products, which you somehow don't apparently know since you claim that's what's going to be wrong with Qualcomm's chips. Well, that's what's wron
RISC-V widely distributed by Raspberry Pi (Score:2)
If Qualcomm gets behind RISC-V do not expect their version to be widely adopted.
RISC-V is being widely distributed by Raspberry Pi right now. The Pico 2 microcontroller was just announced, in addition to various improvements made relative to the original ARM-based Pico 1. They added a surprise bonus, one that cost them nearly nothing. In addition to the two ARM cores, the Pico 2 has 2 RISC-V cores. On powerup the Pico 2 looks at the startup code, recognizes whether it is ARM or RISC-V, and hands it off to the proper cores.
This is not an option. This is the standard Pico 2.
Again,
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If Qualcomm did switch whole-hog into RISC-V they would have the opportunity to completely define the way consumer RISC-V systems work since nobody has shipped any yet.
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Re:Go RISC-V Qualcomm! (Score:4, Insightful)
RISC-V is not new.
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Uh, it will take a decade+ of intense focussed work to get RISC V to be on par with ARM. Good luck with that.
Re: Go RISC-V Qualcomm! (Score:3)
This story is about ARM making sure that happens.
f*ck ARM (Score:1)
Re:f*ck ARM (Score:5, Informative)
Nuvia had architectural license.
Nuvia had a special architecture license which specifically stated any IP could not be transferred in the event of company sale. This was because as a startup Nuvia could not afford the true architecture license fees and paid way less. Qualcomm wants to ignore that part of the license.
Re:f*ck ARM (Score:4, Interesting)
If this wasn't disclosed as part of the sale, the sellers of Nuvia should expect legal action from Qualcomm. If this was disclosed as part of the sale and Qualcomm didn't enter a three-way negotiation with ARM as part of the purchase, that's borderline negligent.
This story was originally a yawn but now you have me interested.
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If this wasn't disclosed as part of the sale, the sellers of Nuvia should expect legal action from Qualcomm.
This is what due diligence is for. If they wanted to know the exact terms of the license, they should have asked for it during due diligence.
Kind of like how Musk waived due diligence on his Twitter acquisition, and then tried to lawsuit his way out of it. This is why company M&A takes months if it's done right.
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Kind of like how Musk waived due diligence on his Twitter acquisition, and then tried to lawsuit his way out of it. This is why company M&A takes months if it's done right.
Incidentally Musk is trying to sue the M&A law firm Twitter used in the sale. Twitter paid the firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz $90M on the day of the transfer. Musk is trying to recover all that money saying it was too much in fees. The irony that Musk seems to ignore is that Musk could not sue the law firm if he did not own Twitter.
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Nuvia had a special architecture license which specifically stated any IP could not be transferred in the event of company sale.
However, since Qualcomm already has the architectural license they already hold that ARM IP. Thus there is no ARM IP to be transferred in the company sale, only Nuvia IP that is entangled with the same IP Qualcomm is already licensing.
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However, since Qualcomm already has the architectural license they already hold that ARM IP
No. Qualcomm's license does not grant them whatever Nuvia developed under ARM. That's like saying Qualcomm's license gives them the right to Apple's ARM CPU technology. Or Samsung's. Now if Qualcomm bought Apple that they could acquire that technology unless Apple's ARM license specifically prohibited a transfer of IP.
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Qualcomm's license does not grant them whatever Nuvia developed under ARM.
It would. Because ARM's license gives Qualcomm the rights to ARM's IP covering the ARM elements Nuvia will have used in their design(s), and as Nuvia's successor Qualcomm owns any patents or copyrights Nuvia owned for Nuvia's inventions. Licensing your patent rights once exhausts your patent rights.
The design as a whole minus the specific components of the design that other entities such as ARM created, which Nuvia licensed
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Qualcomm's license does not grant them whatever Nuvia developed under ARM.
It would. Because ARM's license gives Qualcomm the rights to ARM's IP covering the ARM elements Nuvia will have used in their design(s), and as Nuvia's successor Qualcomm owns any patents or copyrights Nuvia owned for Nuvia's inventions. Licensing your patent rights once exhausts your patent rights.
In principle, I agree. I can't think of any plausible way to interpret patent law where ARM has a leg to stand on.
That said, I haven't read the contract, and there's no guarantee that their patent license might not contain terms based on contract law that preclude the subsequent sale of any intellectual property derived from ARM intellectual property, in which case they absolutely could have grounds for a breach of contract action for doing so. And depending on how weaselly their patent grant is, breach o
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In principle, I agree. I can't think of any plausible way to interpret patent law where ARM has a leg to stand on.
Termination clauses upon ownership changes are not new. In this case, to get their cheap license to use ARM, Nuvia agreed the IP could not be transferred upon company sale. Nuvia did not have to agree to this.
Except, of course, that this would invalidate NUVIA's architecture license, presumably, rather than Qualcomm's. It would be rather difficult for NUVIA's violation to cause the invalidation of the license of a company that acquired them, barring specific contract language in Qualcomm's license that limits their ability to buy another licensee, which would be quite unusual.
If if invalidates Nuvia's license then Nuvia has no right to transfer the IP.
Qualcomm's license that limits their ability to buy another licensee, which would be quite unusual.
Qualcomm did not buy another license. This is the point. If Qualcomm wanted Nuvia's IP they would have to negotiate with ARM. From ARM's perspective, architecture licenses are not cheap. They granted Nuvia a cheaper license if
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In principle, I agree. I can't think of any plausible way to interpret patent law where ARM has a leg to stand on.
Termination clauses upon ownership changes are not new. In this case, to get their cheap license to use ARM, Nuvia agreed the IP could not be transferred upon company sale. Nuvia did not have to agree to this.
They're not unusual, but again, Qualcomm already has a license. They don't need the license to be transferred, because they don't need a second license. So Qualcomm has a license to use ARM's work, and ARM has no clear right under patent law to demand that Nuvia's rights to their own work be terminated, because that intellectual property does not belong to ARM. This isn't copyright here. Commingling of patented intellectual property doesn't give the creator of the original patented material control over
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They're not unusual, but again, Qualcomm already has a license
Again, that's not the problem. The problem is NUVIA's license says specifically their IP derived from ARM designs cannot be transferred upon company sale. In general, when a company purchases another company, they inherit everything except where there are specified provisions like a termination upon ownership clause. When one of my former companies was bought out by a bigger one, we had to go through which contracts transferred and which did not. Some transfers were easy like paying a small fee to transfer
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It would. Because ARM's license gives Qualcomm the rights to ARM's IP covering the ARM elements Nuvia will have used in their design(s),
Again, no. Qualcomm gets rights to stock ARM cores. Their rights do not cover what other licenses develop. Nuvia did not just use stock Cortex A-53s processors; they designed their own. Your argument would grant Qualcomm rights to Apple and Samsung ARM designs.
and as Nuvia's successor Qualcomm owns any patents or copyrights Nuvia owned for Nuvia's inventions. Licensing your patent rights once exhausts your patent rights.
As a general rule, Qualcomm inherits what Nuvia owned except for when they are exceptions [lawinsider.com]. For example, Qualcomm will inherit employees from Nuvia; however, employment contracts can be written so they terminate when ownership changes. Transfer of all
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Again, no. Qualcomm gets rights to stock ARM cores.
No. An architecture license is for the ARM Architecture specification and the related patents. This is one of the licenses Qualcomm gets and allows them to make and sell their own entirely custom CPU designs that implement the ARM architecture spec. and instruction set.
ARM has other licenses for specific stock cores. If you chose a stock core: you aren't allowed to customize it much; they have to use ARM's design as-is. That's not the licensing invol
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No. An architecture license is for the ARM Architecture specification and the related patents. This is one of the licenses Qualcomm gets and allows them to make and sell their own entirely custom CPU designs that implement the ARM architecture spec. and instruction set.
Again only to what ARM developed. This does not cover what NUVIA developed. Again NUVIA didn't just use stock ARM cores; they designed their own. That is not covered by Qualcomm's architecture license any more than Apple's ARM designs are not covered by Qulacomm's architecture license.
ARM has other licenses for specific stock cores. If you chose a stock core: you aren't allowed to customize it much; they have to use ARM's design as-is. That's not the licensing involved here, since Nuvia designs from scratch using only the architecture and Not based on one of ARM's core designs.
AGAIN, Nuvia designed their own cores. Qualcomm's license does not cover designs by other architecture licensees. By your logic, Apple ARM designs can be used by Qualcomm. I am not sure how to explain any simpler as you do not
Its like Window Retail and OEM licenses (Score:4, Informative)
Nuvia had architectural license.
Nuvia had a special architecture license which specifically stated any IP could not be transferred in the event of company sale. This was because as a startup Nuvia could not afford the true architecture license fees and paid way less. Qualcomm wants to ignore that part of the license.
To bring in something a little more familiar to some readers, it's like Windows Retail vs OEM licenses. You can pay less but then it is not transferable.
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To be clear, ARM does not really want to kill Nuvia designs. I would even imagine they are happy their ISA has a foot in the door in the windows PC market.
The threat of killing Nuvia designs is the same as North Korea's threat to use nukes. It is simply a scare tactic to force Qualcomm to pay additional licensing fees.
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The threat of killing Nuvia designs is the same as North Korea's threat to use nukes. It is simply a scare tactic to force Qualcomm to pay additional licensing fees.
Or given the legal history Qualcomm has faced with Nokia, Apple, the EU, the FTC, etc, Qualcomm might not be angels when it comes to legal and contractual matters.
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Apple is probably behind the whole thing if we follow the money.
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Nuvia had architectural license. Qualcomm had architectural license. Qualcomm bought Nuvia and ARM wants to shake down. Qualcomm is their best chance of taking some windows PC market. Dumb move.
Have you considered that the license may be non-transferable, that the licenses may not completely overlap in terms of technology? Licenses can made quite specific to reduct their price tag.
I remember when tech was about innovation (Score:2)
Now, it seems to be all about social media and lawsuits
Re:I remember when tech was about innovation (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, it seems to be all about social media and lawsuits
Your memories must be from before the days of SCO, circa 2002.
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Or before Windows / OS2.
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And Apple was right to. They proved that Microsoft had stolen QuickTime code through a 3rd party. They could have fucked Microsoft every which way they wanted, but didn't want to turn into SCO where they were a "tech" company that specialized in suing people for survival instead of making better products.
That's why Microsoft settled in 1999 and bought a load of Apple non-voting stock - to make the QuickTime problem go away. And they made a very nice profit on that stock when they sold it after the lockup
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The theme of the last 20 years really has been market consolidation
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Is an instruction set even copyrightable? (Score:1)
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The A in "ISA" .. the architecture, is patentable. It is nearly impossible (uh ok, in theory it might be possible if you're some kind of genius, but good luck) to efficiently implement a modern ISA without violating a bunch of patents on how the instruction and CPU is implemented. Here's a famous example of a patent from back in my day on an instruction implementation that MIPS (a famous CPU company) used to sue a company called Lexra (a company that tried to sell clones of their CPUs) over a set of unalign
Maybe they just bought the less expensive license (Score:2)
I am thinking if the Google v Oracle Supreme Court case, where it was found that the Java API was not copyrightable for Android. Why not just decide an ISA is an API?
It may be simpler than that. I'm thinking Windows Retail vs Windows OEM licenses. Same OS, just a non-transferable license at a lower price for the OEM version. A startup may buy the cheaper license to save some money. Whoever buys them as part of their exit plan can deal with getting the more expensive license.
Awesome! (Score:2)
ARM seems to have gone to shit but Qualcomm is like a shit's idea of shit, so it's even shittier. Honestly, I hope qualcomm blows a bunch of cash designing a RiscV chip, calls it quits because they renegotiating with ARM and their shitty corporate behavior sabotages their own efforts. As a result Qualcomm fires the RiscV design team which ends up regrouping as a fabless company to make a better RiscV chip to sell. Seriously, I've seen this one before, it's a classic. MBAs are great at ruining good ideas.