Qualcomm Launches Global Antitrust Campaign Against Arm (tomshardware.com)
(Thursday March 27, 2025 @12:10PM (BeauHD)
from the high-stakes-legal-fights dept.)
- Reference: 0176833831
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/03/27/0051246/qualcomm-launches-global-antitrust-campaign-against-arm
- Source link: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/qualcomm-launches-global-antitrust-campaign-against-arm-accuses-arm-of-restricting-access-to-technology
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware:
> Qualcomm has reportedly filed secret complaints against Arm with the European Commission, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and the Korea Fair Trade Commission. Qualcomm argues that Arm's open licensing approach helped build a robust hardware and software ecosystem. However, this ecosystem is under threat now as Arm [1]moves to restrict that access to benefit its chip design business , namely compute subsystems (CSS) reference designs for client and datacenter processors and custom silicon based on CSS for large-scale clients.
>
> Qualcomm has presented its case to the EC, U.S. FTC, and Korea FTC behind closed doors and through formal filings, so it does not comment on the matter now. Arm rejected the accusations, stating that it is committed to innovation, competition, and upholding contract terms. The company called Qualcomm's move an attempt to shift attention from a wider commercial dispute between the two companies and use regulatory pressure for its benefit.
>
> Indeed, the antitrust complaints align with Qualcomm's arguments in a recent legal clash with Arm in Delaware. Qualcomm [2]won that trial , as the court ruled that the company did not break the terms of its architecture license agreement (ALA) and technology license agreement (TLA) by acquiring Nuvia and using its IP in its Snapdragon X processors for client PCs. Arm said it would seek a retrial. However, Qualcomm seems to want to ensure that it will have access to Arm's instruction set architecture and technologies by filing complaints with antitrust regulators.
[1] https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/qualcomm-launches-global-antitrust-campaign-against-arm-accuses-arm-of-restricting-access-to-technology
[2] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/12/20/2216253/qualcomm-processors-properly-licensed-from-arm-us-jury-finds
> Qualcomm has reportedly filed secret complaints against Arm with the European Commission, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and the Korea Fair Trade Commission. Qualcomm argues that Arm's open licensing approach helped build a robust hardware and software ecosystem. However, this ecosystem is under threat now as Arm [1]moves to restrict that access to benefit its chip design business , namely compute subsystems (CSS) reference designs for client and datacenter processors and custom silicon based on CSS for large-scale clients.
>
> Qualcomm has presented its case to the EC, U.S. FTC, and Korea FTC behind closed doors and through formal filings, so it does not comment on the matter now. Arm rejected the accusations, stating that it is committed to innovation, competition, and upholding contract terms. The company called Qualcomm's move an attempt to shift attention from a wider commercial dispute between the two companies and use regulatory pressure for its benefit.
>
> Indeed, the antitrust complaints align with Qualcomm's arguments in a recent legal clash with Arm in Delaware. Qualcomm [2]won that trial , as the court ruled that the company did not break the terms of its architecture license agreement (ALA) and technology license agreement (TLA) by acquiring Nuvia and using its IP in its Snapdragon X processors for client PCs. Arm said it would seek a retrial. However, Qualcomm seems to want to ensure that it will have access to Arm's instruction set architecture and technologies by filing complaints with antitrust regulators.
[1] https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/qualcomm-launches-global-antitrust-campaign-against-arm-accuses-arm-of-restricting-access-to-technology
[2] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/12/20/2216253/qualcomm-processors-properly-licensed-from-arm-us-jury-finds
Read this as "even QC says Windows ARM is crap" .. (Score:2)
by itsme1234 ( 199680 )
... at first sight, as I was imagining saying something like "even Qualcomm is against Microsoft on this one and is making their outrage public".
Many alternatives are available... (Score:2)
by nbritton ( 823086 )
You probably know that RISC-V exists, and remember that the Power ISA is also open source and royalty free... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_ISA
Re: (Score:2)
by buzz_mccool ( 549976 )
OpenSPARC [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSPARC/ [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSPARC/
They missed Japan and China. (Score:2)
by williamyf ( 227051 )
I guess that they missed Japan because is the Home of SoftBank (owners of ARM)...
But china? China would be very interested in the opportunity to make the fine folks at ARM more ammenable to "competition" and to treat their (chinese) customers "much "moar nicelyer" "
Hmm... (Score:4, Interesting)
ARM has absolutely become less likeable under the new "Softbank needs money now to cover Masayoshi's penchant for questionable valuations" model; but it's really difficult to cry too hard for the poster child of standards-related RF patents whining about the terms an ISA or some IP blocks are offered under.
USA - arm lost the colableration (Score:4, Interesting)
every engineer left the management of ARM
run by ego's now and its done unless they kick out the senior management team its done in 5 years
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Yep, RISC-V is going to eat their lunch as the development money leaves ARM and goes there, and then they will wind up holding 100% of 0%. Nothing at all is stopping the industry from switching.
Re: (Score:2)
I imagine the thing that will stop the industry switching is that China beat them to it, so they don't want to compete. They really seem to be just hoping that RISC-V doesn't take off, rather than actually developing competitive chips of their own.
Re: (Score:2)
I fear RISC V doesn't stand a chance because they looked at ARM and took away the wrong lesson.
ARM isn't successful because it's RISC - I seriously doubt the cores in most phones, Macs, etc, today even have a RISC architecture, treating the RISC ISA as just another generic architecture to implement as a machine-translation-to-VLIW type thing. ARM is successful because it made a great impression in 1987 (or whenever the Archimedes was released, can't be bothered to look it up), and then Acorn's successors di
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting idea. I think there are some benefits to RISC when it comes to low power mobile devices, traded off against raw performance. The biggest issue is the memory bandwidth needed and the resulting size of instruction caches. It seems that RISC architectures tend to do better for power efficiency though, probably because the simpler instruction set reduces the complexity of stuff like OOE.
Re:USA - arm lost the colableration (Score:4, Interesting)
> Yep, RISC-V is going to eat their lunch as the development money leaves ARM and goes there, and then they will wind up holding 100% of 0%. Nothing at all is stopping the industry from switching.
Nothing except standards and interoperability. RISC-V has a lot of gaps currently that it will need to compete with ARM. Different entities can develop what they want in RISC-V but that might fracture it into many separate and incompatible versions unless there is some governance. Today a manufacturer using a ARM CPU from Marvell or Realtek that uses Cortex-A53 processors knows what to expect from it.