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I have not heard anything about ARM helping Nuvia in any way. The legal complaint of ARM has been that the license they had granted to Nuvia was limited in sco

I have not heard anything about ARM helping Nuvia in any way. The legal complaint of ARM has been that the license they had granted to Nuvia was limited in scope, i.e. it allowed Nuvia to only design a core for server CPUs, so as soon as Nuvia has repurposed that core, the existing ARM license has been lawfully terminated. Moreover, ARM has argued that even if the buyer of Nuvia, Qualcomm, has an ARM license for CPUs that can be used in laptops, this license is not applicable to the Nuvia cores, because a significant part of their design has already happened under the Nuvia license, so it has become illegal after that license had been terminated. So ARM wants that Qualcomm should either buy a new, more expensive license, or destroy all the design work leading to the Nuvia cores and start a new cleanroom design of laptop cores, to be used perhaps in their 2029 laptop products. Without access to the text of the secret contracts between ARM and Qualcomm and between ARM and Nuvia, it is impossible to decide which of the legal arguments of Qualcomm or of ARM are a complete BS. Normally such contracts should have been unambiguous enough that such a legal fight should have never been possible, but it seems that at least one of the parties has concluded that it is possible to twist the meaning of the contracts according to their business interests. In any case, conditioning a design license in function of the application domain seems abusive. What could be acceptable would be only a per-device royalty fee that is computed differently depending on the application domain.

aurareturn 2y ago
The licenses provided Nuvia access to specific Arm architecture, designs, intellectual property, and support in exchange for payment of licensing fees and royalties on future server products that include processor cores based on Arm’s architecture, designs, or related intellectual property. Arm provided preferential support for Nuvia’s development efforts, with Arm seeking to accelerate research and development in next-generation processors for data center servers to support that sector’s transition to Arm technology. This is from the legal filing.
- adrian_b 2y ago
  The paragraph about "support" is void of any content. Arm does indeed provide significant technical support to the companies that buy Arm IP, as it is normal for any vendor, but that does not apply to companies like Nuvia. For companies which buy ISA licences, there is very little need for technical support, at most some clarifications about how to implement the compliance tests. There are only a handful of companies with ISA licenses, which have only very infrequently needs for technical support, so even if a single Arm employee is assigned for this task there is no need for "preferential support" in order to respond immediately to any support request. "Arm seeking to accelerate research and development in next-generation processors for data center servers to support that sector’s transition to Arm technology" just means that Arm has continued to act as a competitor for Nuvia, in developing their own Neoverse server cores and related infrastructure. It is true however that only because the Arm CPUs have a minor share of the server market for now, the progress for one of them can still have a synergetic effect on the others, instead of an antagonistic effect, so there is a little truth in the claim of Arm that they have worked "to support that sector’s transition to Arm technology", but in any case that does not mean that Arm has spent any cent with the support of Nuvia. All the text that is public about the Arm-Qualcomm conflict is useless, because it avoids to quote the relevant paragraphs of the contracts between Arm and both companies, which would have clarified instantly which party is right.
rcxdude 2y ago
Even if ARM's legal reasoning has a relatively low chance of success, I suspect the likely difference in the value of the contracts is enough that it's worth them trying anyway, either to cause enough of a threat to extract some kind of settlement from Qualcomm or for a chance of a really big payout. It's probably not a great long-term plan: such actions are likely to hasten work on RISC-V alternatives at Qualcomm and all the other manufacturers witnessing the attempt.
- aurareturn 2y ago
  It's probably not a great long-term plan: such actions are likely to hasten work on RISC-V alternatives at Qualcomm and all the other manufacturers witnessing the attempt. I think any Qualcomm work on RISC-V is mostly for show. It's an empty threat. Qualcomm can't move to RISC-V because they don't have the power to drag an entire industry to optimize software for RISC-V.
  - 15155 2y ago
    If any industry player has anything resembling this power, it's Qualcomm.
    - aurareturn 2y ago
      I disagree. Qualcomm does not have any pull to make Google to make RISC-V Android a first class citizen. Nor do they have any pull to make Microsoft develop Windows RISC-V. They also don't have a presence in servers so they can't make Linux and server software like Kubernetes/Postgres/Redis/etc. optimize for RISC-V. The actual entities that have this kind of power is Apple, AWS, Microsoft, and Google and some Chinese tech giants.
      - yencabulator 2y ago
        > Qualcomm does not have any pull to make Google to make RISC-V Android a first class citizen. You can debate what "first class" means, but RISC-V was announced as an official Android platform in 2023, and runs in emulators today: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/01/google-announces-official-android-support-for-risc-v/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/01/google-announces-off... https://opensource.googleblog.com/2023/10/android-and-risc-v-what-you-need-to-know.html https://opensource.googleblog.com/2023/10/android-and-risc-v... https://github.com/google/android-riscv64 https://github.com/google/android-riscv64

aurareturn 2y ago

The licenses provided Nuvia access to specific Arm architecture, designs, intellectual property, and support in exchange for payment of licensing fees and royalties on future server products that include processor cores based on Arm’s architecture, designs, or related intellectual property. Arm provided preferential support for Nuvia’s development efforts, with Arm seeking to accelerate research and development in next-generation processors for data center servers to support that sector’s transition to Arm technology. This is from the legal filing.

adrian_b 2y ago
The paragraph about "support" is void of any content. Arm does indeed provide significant technical support to the companies that buy Arm IP, as it is normal for any vendor, but that does not apply to companies like Nuvia. For companies which buy ISA licences, there is very little need for technical support, at most some clarifications about how to implement the compliance tests. There are only a handful of companies with ISA licenses, which have only very infrequently needs for technical support, so even if a single Arm employee is assigned for this task there is no need for "preferential support" in order to respond immediately to any support request. "Arm seeking to accelerate research and development in next-generation processors for data center servers to support that sector’s transition to Arm technology" just means that Arm has continued to act as a competitor for Nuvia, in developing their own Neoverse server cores and related infrastructure. It is true however that only because the Arm CPUs have a minor share of the server market for now, the progress for one of them can still have a synergetic effect on the others, instead of an antagonistic effect, so there is a little truth in the claim of Arm that they have worked "to support that sector’s transition to Arm technology", but in any case that does not mean that Arm has spent any cent with the support of Nuvia. All the text that is public about the Arm-Qualcomm conflict is useless, because it avoids to quote the relevant paragraphs of the contracts between Arm and both companies, which would have clarified instantly which party is right.

rcxdude 2y ago

Even if ARM's legal reasoning has a relatively low chance of success, I suspect the likely difference in the value of the contracts is enough that it's worth them trying anyway, either to cause enough of a threat to extract some kind of settlement from Qualcomm or for a chance of a really big payout. It's probably not a great long-term plan: such actions are likely to hasten work on RISC-V alternatives at Qualcomm and all the other manufacturers witnessing the attempt.

aurareturn 2y ago
It's probably not a great long-term plan: such actions are likely to hasten work on RISC-V alternatives at Qualcomm and all the other manufacturers witnessing the attempt. I think any Qualcomm work on RISC-V is mostly for show. It's an empty threat. Qualcomm can't move to RISC-V because they don't have the power to drag an entire industry to optimize software for RISC-V.
- 15155 2y ago
  If any industry player has anything resembling this power, it's Qualcomm.
  - aurareturn 2y ago
    I disagree. Qualcomm does not have any pull to make Google to make RISC-V Android a first class citizen. Nor do they have any pull to make Microsoft develop Windows RISC-V. They also don't have a presence in servers so they can't make Linux and server software like Kubernetes/Postgres/Redis/etc. optimize for RISC-V. The actual entities that have this kind of power is Apple, AWS, Microsoft, and Google and some Chinese tech giants.
    - yencabulator 2y ago
      > Qualcomm does not have any pull to make Google to make RISC-V Android a first class citizen. You can debate what "first class" means, but RISC-V was announced as an official Android platform in 2023, and runs in emulators today: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/01/google-announces-official-android-support-for-risc-v/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/01/google-announces-off... https://opensource.googleblog.com/2023/10/android-and-risc-v-what-you-need-to-know.html https://opensource.googleblog.com/2023/10/android-and-risc-v... https://github.com/google/android-riscv64 https://github.com/google/android-riscv64