News Arm is giving Qualcomm the wake-up call it needs

[AC News]

Qualcomm and Arm will surely settle but Arm is going to play hardball.

Arm is giving Qualcomm the wake-up call it needs : Read more

 

[jasaero]

That right there is a pretty biased take! Haha. ARM is really more the one making themselves look bad in all of this. Up until they did what they did with Nuvia there was a lot of investment in startup chip designers using ARM architecture licenses. Your startup didn't even need tons of cash to actually tape out and produce the design if the business model was more about selling off the IP eventually. It's not clear if this was Nuvia's business model...but I HIGHLY doubt they would have went as far as they did without more efforts to get versions of the chips into fabs than what seems to have happened with something in their license that basically said they had too as they couldn't sell the IP. ARM is basically making it look like they OWN the IP produced with some startups architecture license when that is I doubt at all what these licenses/contracts say.

But beyond all of that, you also have Qualcomm who has their OWN architecture license and it's very hard to prove they did anything other than use the Nuvia team and their memories to design the qualcomm take on what they did at Nuvia with some stuff done just to target it more for smartphones than servers.

At the end of the day it's quite obvious ARM thinks they NEED revenue from qualcomm TLA's that are much more lucrative than what they will get from ALA Qualcomm will utilize with the designs from the Nuvia team and it's really as simple as that and nothing else. At this point ARM is effectively saying ALA's now only exist for entities like Apple who have no interest in really selling chips to 3rd parties or selling their IP off to 3rd parties. The ALA was always a lot less expensive thing as you have to do lots of your own work to design a chip that jus uses the ARM architecture...but now it's basically looking like all the work belongs to ARM from ARMs perspective more or less.

As bad as Qualcomm can get about using lawyers to go over the top in the use of their stuff...ARM sorta is one upping them here. I don't think anyone would ever have assumed the ALA could get ruined the the point ARM seems to be ruining it. ARM want's to be the only ARM architecture designer in the land it seems...unless some company really just wants something very unique for their own internal uses like Apple does. The idea of ARM compatible chip sellers with their own designs rather than ARM TLA designs is basically getting killed off.

 

[jheithaus]

Qualcomm should ditch ARM and switch to RISCV. I think Arm is over without Qualcomm. All Qualcomm has to do is switch to RISCV and ban 5G IP licenses to ARM SOCs. I doubt Jensen or Cook will want to stay on ARM after watching this anyways. I really don’t understand that value of ARM over RISCV.

 

[moka62]

I find it hard to side with either company. Most likely there is no shortage of greed on both sides.

I think the key point is this:

Qualcomm will do whatever it takes to keep on making chips.

I highly doubt consumers will have anything to worry about. At the end of the day this is Qualcomm betting that they will have to pay less in a legal settlement than they would negotiating with ARM outright. ARM is betting the opposite. The rest of us get to grab popcorn and watch the lawyers laugh their way to the bank.

 

[Jerry Hildenbrand]

Qualcomm should ditch ARM and switch to RISCV. I think Arm is over without Qualcomm. All Qualcomm has to do is switch to RISCV and ban 5G IP licenses to ARM SOCs. I doubt Jensen or Cook will want to stay on ARM after watching this anyways. I really don’t understand that value of ARM over RISCV.

The value of arm is that companies like Qualcomm don't have to spend billions and billions to make the switch to an entirely different architecture.

Ban 5g IP? that kills every cell site in North America. It also means Qualcomm either breaks out its networking division or gets banned in the US for abusing monopoly powers.

Jensen and Cook like making billions, not spending billions to switch even if riscv is better in the long run. The move away from arm will be very slow because it interferes with the money machine.

I find it hard to side with either company. Most likely there is no shortage of greed on both sides.

I think the key point is this:

I highly doubt consumers will have anything to worry about. At the end of the day this is Qualcomm betting that they will have to pay less in a legal settlement than they would negotiating with ARM outright. ARM is betting the opposite. The rest of us get to grab popcorn and watch the lawyers laugh their way to the bank.

Yup. Let them fight so we can watch. Neither loses — we get to lose when prices go up so they can still make 18% margins and not have to cut back CEO bonuses.