Arm To Cancel Qualcomm's Chip Design License As Tech Feud Deepens (yahoo.com)
- Reference: 0175309103
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/23/133246/arm-to-cancel-qualcomms-chip-design-license-as-tech-feud-deepens
- Source link: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/arm-cancel-qualcomm-chip-design-001717248.html
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.
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/arm-cancel-qualcomm-chip-design-001717248.html
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:5, Insightful)
If Qualcomm gets behind RISC-V do not expect their version to be widely adopted. Any RISC-V chip Qualcomm makes will be behind high licensing fees and an army of lawyers.
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:1)
RISC-V has an interesting design process... but I'd expect a LOT MORE of these types of lawsuits in a world where RISC-V devices were common.
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.
Re: (Score:3)
One of the major advantages that RISC-V is flexibility but that also might introduce incompatibility if companies go in different directions. Also being very new, RISC-V currently lacks comprehensive testing tools from what I know. Designing a chip is great but that involves each designer to build their own testing patterns and tools which adds to timelines.
f*ck ARM (Score:2)
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.
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: (Score:2)
We aren't allowed to actually read the contracts but Nuvia didn't have the same agreement with Arm that Qualcomm has/had. Nuvia's contract was specifically to develop server CPUs and Qualcomm/Nuvia agreed to destroy designs produced under it during the acquisition... Qualcomm obviously wasn't going to destroy that work and should have just renegotiated. Instead of negotiating the management at Qualcomm ignored the problem and it's now going to cost them way way more than if they had done it during the acqui
Re: (Score:2)
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.
I remember when tech was about innovation (Score:2)
Now, it seems to be all about social media and lawsuits
Re: (Score:3)
> Now, it seems to be all about social media and lawsuits
Your memories must be from before the days of SCO, circa 2002.
Re: (Score:2)
Qualcomm has always been involved with legal disputes as far as I remember including actions from the EU and the FTC.
Is an instruction set even copyrightable? (Score:1)
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?
Re: (Score:2)
This case does not involve copyright. This is a dispute about contracts and licensing. According to ARM, Nuvia's license with them had a provision that their technology could not be transferred even in the event of company sale. This was because Nuvia could not afford the full price of an architecture license. I imagine Qualcomm's argument is that their full architecture license includes everything that ARM has. We will see in court.
This seems like a really bad idea (Score:3)
Depending on how the election goes here in America you're going to see some major antitrust law enforcement and this sets off so many red flags I don't know where to even begin.
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