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Full text: The litigation between Arm and Qualcomm has taken an unexpected turn. The British developer of processor architectures decided to radically change i

by stevefan1999 4y ago

Full text: The litigation between Arm and Qualcomm has taken an unexpected turn. The British developer of processor architectures decided to radically change its business model: first, license fees will have to be paid by manufacturers of end devices, including smartphones and tablets; second, third-party components, including GPUs, NPUs and ISPs, will be prohibited in chips with Arm processors. In late August Arm filed a lawsuit against Qualcomm. Qualcomm absorbed server processor developer NUVIA and, according to Arm, had to update its license agreement because it deemed all previous agreements with the company invalid after it bought it. Qualcomm filed a countersuit against the British developer, and new documentation on the case contains crucial details. Qualcomm's updated lawsuit says that after 2024, Arm will stop licensing its processor architecture to semiconductor component manufacturers - payments will be charged to end-device manufacturers. Arm, according to the U.S. company, has already told OEMs that soon the only way for them to get Arm-based chips will be through direct license fees, and they'll have to accept these rules of the game. But that's not all. The British company has also decided to tighten its policy with respect to chip developers like Qualcomm: they will not be able to use third-party components in single-chip platforms with Arm processors if Arm offers their analogs as a licensed product. This will affect graphics and network processors, as well as image processors. In other words, Arm will prohibit the creation of duos like Samsung and AMD chips, as well as MediaTek and Imagination - both pairs of companies cooperate in the field of mobile graphics. And Qualcomm itself does not use GPUs from Arm, but its own. Such an initiative Arm has clear signs of anti-competitive behavior, notes the resource SemiAnalysis, and it is possible that these steps will accelerate the companies' efforts to develop chips based on open architecture RISC-V. However, some of the British company's partners may not be affected by the new rules. For example, NVIDIA has a 20-year license for the development of components with Arm-architecture. Apple was at the origins of Arm, so it is unlikely that this tandem can be destroyed so easily. There is also a version that a mutually beneficial cooperation binds Arm with Broadcom. Thus, the dispute between Arm and Qualcomm in just over two years threatens to affect the interests of many smaller players.

stevefan1999 4y ago
tl;dr summary: 1. Arm will stop licensing its processor architecture to semiconductor component manufacturers by charging payments to end-device manufacturers. 2. Only way for OEMs to get Arm-based chips will be through direct license fees 3. Third-party components such are custom GPUs and NPUs are no longer directly incorporable with Arm processors. This would probably mean they need to operate as a coprocessor of some kind that would not be tightly integrated. 3.1 This means Samsung's Exynos, AMD's PSP and Imagination's PowerVR are probably *fucked* Conclusion: ARM is really fed up with Qualcomm and is wishing to step up the game by hurting itself. But that said, it's more like "Friendship ended with Qualcomm, Samsung and AMD (but it's more like a frenemy), now Apple and NVIDIA are my homies"
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > ARM is really fed up with Qualcomm Everyone is fed up with Qualcomm at that point.
- speed_spread 4y ago
  > Imagination's PowerVR are probably fucked I would have no issue paying for a RISC-V + licensed PowerVR core that's well supported in Wayland and Mesa.
  - monocasa 4y ago
    Good news, the StarFive JH7110 in the upcoming VisionFive 2 and Pine64's Star64 should fit that bill.
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  Your post is missing a big "according to Qualcomm, a company known for stretching the rules and truth to favour itself and currently being sued for its misuse of ARM intellectual property following the Nuvia acquisition" disclaimer at the beginning. I would need at least some OEMs confirmation and a statement for Samsung before I believe it.
  - monocasa 4y ago
vesinisa 4y ago
What site was this content stolen from? Google finds nothing. The submitted link on HN seems to be a poorly copy&pasted content pirate.
- outsomnia 4y ago
  https://www.semianalysis.com/p/arm-changes-business-model-oem-partners https://www.semianalysis.com/p/arm-changes-business-model-oe... Qualcomm have been involved in many IP right bustups over the years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualcomm#Patents_and_patent_disputes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualcomm#Patents_and_patent_di... I wonder if they will find that doesn't help them argue against getting some of their own medicine.
causi 4y ago
And Qualcomm itself does not use GPUs from Arm, but its own. Fuck. Adreno GPUs are light-years ahead of Arm designs when it comes to console emulation.
stevefan1999 4y ago
My own conspiracy theory: Since Nuvia is led by former Apple engineers and Apple doesn't want Qualcomm to have a toe-to-toe fight, Apple pressured Arm to either keep getting the high premium license fee from Apple and destroy Qualcomm and consequently relationships with all other licensees (which includes but not limited to Qualcomm, Samsung, AMD and even embedded market), or Apple would move away and start their new architecture in secret and ditch ARM architecture in long term just like Apple ended its course with x86. This is a very good news for RISC-V and with the recent news of Android RISC-V port upstreamed to AOSP [1] I will say 2024 (not until 2023 Q4 I guess) will be the year RISC-V starting to explode. [1]: https://riscv.org/blog/2022/10/risc-v-celebrates-upstreaming-of-android-open-source-project-risc-v-port-risc-v-international/ https://riscv.org/blog/2022/10/risc-v-celebrates-upstreaming...
- throw827474737 4y ago
  > RISC-V starting to explode. I hope for that!! But will it be better in regards to not every instantiation needings its very own tiny Linux kernel patch and device trees? Or similar one level down into the embedded world, a true CMSIS like HAL that includes peripherals, not the half-assed attempt of ARM-CMSIS where you still always need to fiddle with vendor's peripheral driver SDKs? That would be so great!
  - BirAdam 4y ago
    I expect that some RISC-V implementations will always need patches, but as any ISA matures it tends to get standardized and the implementations start to look more and more similar. In the case of RISC-V, the costs for both the implementer and the customer will get better as it becomes more standardized, which will help to push both more implementation and more adoption. This in turn drives more standardization… it’s a feedback loop. Then, you will always have your one-off oddities. These are important. Sometimes, semi-custom platforms are for experimentation, and sometimes they’re just super niche use-cases. RISC-V is great in these situations due to zero license fees.
    - stevefan1999 4y ago

stevefan1999 4y ago

tl;dr summary: 1. Arm will stop licensing its processor architecture to semiconductor component manufacturers by charging payments to end-device manufacturers. 2. Only way for OEMs to get Arm-based chips will be through direct license fees 3. Third-party components such are custom GPUs and NPUs are no longer directly incorporable with Arm processors. This would probably mean they need to operate as a coprocessor of some kind that would not be tightly integrated. 3.1 This means Samsung's Exynos, AMD's PSP and Imagination's PowerVR are probably *fucked* Conclusion: ARM is really fed up with Qualcomm and is wishing to step up the game by hurting itself. But that said, it's more like "Friendship ended with Qualcomm, Samsung and AMD (but it's more like a frenemy), now Apple and NVIDIA are my homies"

mschuster91 4y ago
> ARM is really fed up with Qualcomm Everyone is fed up with Qualcomm at that point.
speed_spread 4y ago
> Imagination's PowerVR are probably fucked I would have no issue paying for a RISC-V + licensed PowerVR core that's well supported in Wayland and Mesa.
- monocasa 4y ago
  Good news, the StarFive JH7110 in the upcoming VisionFive 2 and Pine64's Star64 should fit that bill.
WastingMyTime89 4y ago
Your post is missing a big "according to Qualcomm, a company known for stretching the rules and truth to favour itself and currently being sued for its misuse of ARM intellectual property following the Nuvia acquisition" disclaimer at the beginning. I would need at least some OEMs confirmation and a statement for Samsung before I believe it.
- monocasa 4y ago

vesinisa 4y ago

What site was this content stolen from? Google finds nothing. The submitted link on HN seems to be a poorly copy&pasted content pirate.

outsomnia 4y ago
https://www.semianalysis.com/p/arm-changes-business-model-oem-partners https://www.semianalysis.com/p/arm-changes-business-model-oe... Qualcomm have been involved in many IP right bustups over the years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualcomm#Patents_and_patent_disputes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualcomm#Patents_and_patent_di... I wonder if they will find that doesn't help them argue against getting some of their own medicine.

causi 4y ago

And Qualcomm itself does not use GPUs from Arm, but its own. Fuck. Adreno GPUs are light-years ahead of Arm designs when it comes to console emulation.

stevefan1999 4y ago

My own conspiracy theory: Since Nuvia is led by former Apple engineers and Apple doesn't want Qualcomm to have a toe-to-toe fight, Apple pressured Arm to either keep getting the high premium license fee from Apple and destroy Qualcomm and consequently relationships with all other licensees (which includes but not limited to Qualcomm, Samsung, AMD and even embedded market), or Apple would move away and start their new architecture in secret and ditch ARM architecture in long term just like Apple ended its course with x86. This is a very good news for RISC-V and with the recent news of Android RISC-V port upstreamed to AOSP [1] I will say 2024 (not until 2023 Q4 I guess) will be the year RISC-V starting to explode. [1]: https://riscv.org/blog/2022/10/risc-v-celebrates-upstreaming-of-android-open-source-project-risc-v-port-risc-v-international/ https://riscv.org/blog/2022/10/risc-v-celebrates-upstreaming...

throw827474737 4y ago
> RISC-V starting to explode. I hope for that!! But will it be better in regards to not every instantiation needings its very own tiny Linux kernel patch and device trees? Or similar one level down into the embedded world, a true CMSIS like HAL that includes peripherals, not the half-assed attempt of ARM-CMSIS where you still always need to fiddle with vendor's peripheral driver SDKs? That would be so great!
- BirAdam 4y ago
  I expect that some RISC-V implementations will always need patches, but as any ISA matures it tends to get standardized and the implementations start to look more and more similar. In the case of RISC-V, the costs for both the implementer and the customer will get better as it becomes more standardized, which will help to push both more implementation and more adoption. This in turn drives more standardization… it’s a feedback loop. Then, you will always have your one-off oddities. These are important. Sometimes, semi-custom platforms are for experimentation, and sometimes they’re just super niche use-cases. RISC-V is great in these situations due to zero license fees.
  - stevefan1999 4y ago