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Qualcomm is known for having a particularly aggressive & hardball-style legal department to enforce its patents on core telecom IP. I believe the most likely ou

Qualcomm is known for having a particularly aggressive & hardball-style legal department to enforce its patents on core telecom IP. I believe the most likely outcome is they just settle the dispute here. Arm fighting hardball with hardball. Which would not really affect the ecosystem of phones using Qualcomm arm chips, it would just change the margins / market cap of Qualcomm. Yes, longterm Q might invest in their own RISC implementations, but I don't see a viable business case for Qualcomm to just stop ARM development for the foreseeable future.

chasil 2y ago
The phones haven't been custom ARM chips since 32-bit Krait, IIRC. This is about Nuvia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krait_(processor) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krait_(processor)
- lizknope 2y ago
  Snapdragon 805 had a 32-bit Krait designed by Qualcomm https://www.qualcomm.com/products/mobile/snapdragon/smartphones/snapdragon-8-series-mobile-platforms/snapdragon-processors-805 https://www.qualcomm.com/products/mobile/snapdragon/smartpho... 810 had a 64-bit core designed by ARM https://www.qualcomm.com/products/mobile/snapdragon/smartphones/snapdragon-8-series-mobile-platforms/snapdragon-processors-810 https://www.qualcomm.com/products/mobile/snapdragon/smartpho... 820/821 had a 64-bit Kryo custom core designed by Qualcomm https://www.qualcomm.com/products/mobile/snapdragon/smartphones/snapdragon-8-series-mobile-platforms/snapdragon-821-mobile-platform https://www.qualcomm.com/products/mobile/snapdragon/smartpho... After that it was all cores from ARM. The custom CPU team worked on their server chip before getting cancelled and most of the team went to Microsoft
  - chasil 2y ago
    I need to have a closer look. Thanks.
  - haerwu 2y ago
    When you look at https://gpages.juszkiewicz.com.pl/arm-socs-table/arm-socs.html https://gpages.juszkiewicz.com.pl/arm-socs-table/arm-socs.ht... table then you can see that in Snapdragon 8xx series the first "ARM cores out of shelf" was 888 in 2020. 865 (2019) has Cortex-A77 + Kryo 4xx Silver 888 (2002) uses Cortex-X1 + Cortex-A78 + Cortex-A55 cores
    - adrian_b 2y ago
      Most of the cores branded "Kryo" have negligible differences from the original Arm cores. There might be some differences in the cache memories and in the interfaces between the cores and the rest of the Qualcomm SoC, but there are no differences in the inner CPU cores. Snapdragon 865 has standard Arm cores. The same is true for the older Snapdragon 855, Snapdragon 845 and Snapdragon 835, which I am using or I have used in my phones. The claim of Qualcomm that those cores have been "semi-custom", is mostly BS, because the changes made by Qualcomm to the cores licensed from Arm have been minimal.
    - lizknope 2y ago
      That table doesn't have the Snapdragon 810 https://www.qualcomm.com/products/mobile/snapdragon/smartphones/snapdragon-8-series-mobile-platforms/snapdragon-processors-810 https://www.qualcomm.com/products/mobile/snapdragon/smartpho... I worked on it in 2014. The table does have 808 listed. That may have been a lower end version. Qualcomm got caught being late. They were continuing development of custom 32-bit cores and Apple came out with a 64-bit ARM core in the iPhone. The Chief Marketing Officer of Qualcomm called it a gimmick but Apple was a huge customer of Qualcomm's modems. Qualcomm shoved him off to the side for a while. https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/qualcomm-gambit-apple-64-bit-a7-is-a-gimmick/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/qualcomm-gambit-apple-64-bi... Because Q's custom 64-bit CPU was not ready the stop gap plan was to license a 64-bit RTL design from ARM and use that in the 810. It also had overheating problems but that's different issue. There were a lot of internal politics going on at Q over the custom cores and server chips that ended up in layoffs.
hajile 2y ago
Qualcomm doesn't have nearly as much to lose as ARM does and they know it. Qualcomm is almost certainly ARM's biggest customer. If ARM loses, Qualcomm doesn't have to pay out. If ARM wins, Qualcomm moves to RISC-V and ARM loses even harder in the long-term. The most likely outcome is that Qualcomm agrees to pay a slight bit more than they are currently paying, but nowhere near what ARM is demanding and in the meantime, Qualcomm continues having a team work on a RISC-V frontend for Oryon.
- svnt 2y ago
  You’re suggesting that Snapdragon processors would switch to RISC-V and that would be no big deal? Presumably Qualcomm is committed to numerous multi-year supplier agreements for the arm chipsets.
  - monocasa 2y ago
    This affects their custom Nuvia derived cores. I'm sure Qualcomm will be able to keep using ARM designed cores to cover themselves while they ween off ARM in favor of RISC-V if they need to.
  - hajile 2y ago
    Qualcomm pitched Znew quite a while ago. It mostly ditched 16-bit instructions and added a bunch of instructions that were basically ripped straight from ARM64. The idea was obviously an attempt at making it as easy as possible to replace ARM with RISC-V without having to rework much of the core. https://lists.riscv.org/g/tech-profiles/attachment/332/0/code_size_extension_rvi_20231006.pdf https://lists.riscv.org/g/tech-profiles/attachment/332/0/cod...
    - snvzz 2y ago
      An attempt that failed miserably. (it was formally rejected a year ago) But, by now, it is expected that Qualcomm's RISC-V designs have been re-aligned to match the reality that Qualcomm does not control the standard.
    - dwaite 2y ago
shmerl 2y ago
Not just telecom, they are just super aggressive in general as a bully with weapons pile. I remember they tried to threaten Opus codec with patents just becasue, when IETF proposed it for Internet standard. Luckily that failed, but it shows their nasty approach very clearly. So now they are getting the taste of their own medicine.
chris_wot 2y ago
When do Qualcomm's patents run out?
electronbeam 2y ago
Qualcomm should put a giant bid on SiFive tomorrow, to remind ARM that its not unassailable
- NewJazz 2y ago
  They can design chips. What Qualcomm might not be able to do is deliver solid software support for their riscv64 hardware. Android decelerated their efforts toward support recently.
- kernal 2y ago
  So a business that is entirely dependent on ARM IP and, for the most part, Android should "remind" the company they're dependent upon? Let's do a thought experiment - Qualcomm switches to RISC-V while the other Android SoC makers (MediaTek, Samsung, Google, Xiaomi, etc.) stay on ARM. Who buys the new Snapdragon RISC-V phone?
- hajile 2y ago
  Intel supposedly put in a multi-billion dollar offer and got laughed out of the room.
zoobab 2y ago
[flagged]
delfinom 2y ago
>Yes, longterm Q might invest in their own RISC implementations Q is investing over $1billion into RISC-V. ARM is fucked long term. Sure Qualcomm themselves are no angel. But the absurdities of this case are basically making ARM toxic to any serious long term investment. Especially when ARM is in Apple's pocket and ARM isn't releasing any chip designs competitive with Apple's chips where they get free reign to do as they want. Basically a permanent handicap on ARM chip performance.
- kernal 2y ago
  Since I don't see the Android or IOS app stores ever switching to RISC-V I think ARM will be fine.
  - Tostino 2y ago
    Why would you think that? The Play store already supports x86 binaries when necessary.
    - kernal 2y ago
      Because an extremely low percentage of apps support x86.
      - kllrnohj 2y ago
        An extremely low ship x86 support but a huge number support it already for internal uses. The emulator, for both local and CI, and any host-side tests are all x86. These are extremely common to have for everyone. Big companies love having CI, and small ones love the emulator to avoid needing a ~dozen dev phones for the different API levels and form factors. But importantly since ARM and RISC-V have the same memory model, unlike x86, then it really is just going to be an extra compilation target for any native libraries and that's about it.
fidotron 2y ago
The Qualcomm online defenders are something else too. Qualcomm have been acting badly for years, including attempting to turn RISC-V into Arm64 but without the restrictions. You cannot trust people that behave like this, where everything they do is important and everything you do is worthless. The funny thing is Qualcomm do have some wildly impressive tech which is kept secret despite being so ubiquitous, but they have had persistent execution failures at integrations which lead to them throwing their partners under the bus. Qualcomm have the same sort of corporate difficulty you see at Boeing, only in a less high profile sector.
- eqvinox 2y ago
  > attempting to turn RISC-V into Arm64 but without the restrictions This flew past me, do you have a link?
  - fidotron 2y ago
    Brucehoult mentions it further down. > This time last year they were all over the RISC-V mailing lists, trying to convince everyone to drop the "C" extension from RVA23 because (basically confirmed by their employees) it was not easy to retrofit mildly variable length RISC-V instructions (2 bytes and 4 bytes) to the Aarch64 core they acquired from Nuvia. At the same time, Qualcomm proposed a new RISC-V extension that was pretty much ARMv8-lite. This is enough of a philosophy change to break existing RISC-V software, and so is purely motivated by a desire to clone IP they supposedly licensed as honest brokers.
    - rangestransform 2y ago
      Not a cpu designer, but aren’t variable length instructions a big part of why x86 decoders take up so much area, and also increases branch predictor complexity?
      - wbl 2y ago
        So much is relative: on a giant OoO core it's barely noticeable. In the case of x86 the range of lengths is extreme: a simple two or four choice is much simpler.

chasil 2y ago

The phones haven't been custom ARM chips since 32-bit Krait, IIRC. This is about Nuvia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krait_(processor) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krait_(processor)

lizknope 2y ago
Snapdragon 805 had a 32-bit Krait designed by Qualcomm https://www.qualcomm.com/products/mobile/snapdragon/smartphones/snapdragon-8-series-mobile-platforms/snapdragon-processors-805 https://www.qualcomm.com/products/mobile/snapdragon/smartpho... 810 had a 64-bit core designed by ARM https://www.qualcomm.com/products/mobile/snapdragon/smartphones/snapdragon-8-series-mobile-platforms/snapdragon-processors-810 https://www.qualcomm.com/products/mobile/snapdragon/smartpho... 820/821 had a 64-bit Kryo custom core designed by Qualcomm https://www.qualcomm.com/products/mobile/snapdragon/smartphones/snapdragon-8-series-mobile-platforms/snapdragon-821-mobile-platform https://www.qualcomm.com/products/mobile/snapdragon/smartpho... After that it was all cores from ARM. The custom CPU team worked on their server chip before getting cancelled and most of the team went to Microsoft
- chasil 2y ago
  I need to have a closer look. Thanks.
- haerwu 2y ago
  When you look at https://gpages.juszkiewicz.com.pl/arm-socs-table/arm-socs.html https://gpages.juszkiewicz.com.pl/arm-socs-table/arm-socs.ht... table then you can see that in Snapdragon 8xx series the first "ARM cores out of shelf" was 888 in 2020. 865 (2019) has Cortex-A77 + Kryo 4xx Silver 888 (2002) uses Cortex-X1 + Cortex-A78 + Cortex-A55 cores
  - adrian_b 2y ago
    Most of the cores branded "Kryo" have negligible differences from the original Arm cores. There might be some differences in the cache memories and in the interfaces between the cores and the rest of the Qualcomm SoC, but there are no differences in the inner CPU cores. Snapdragon 865 has standard Arm cores. The same is true for the older Snapdragon 855, Snapdragon 845 and Snapdragon 835, which I am using or I have used in my phones. The claim of Qualcomm that those cores have been "semi-custom", is mostly BS, because the changes made by Qualcomm to the cores licensed from Arm have been minimal.
  - lizknope 2y ago
    That table doesn't have the Snapdragon 810 https://www.qualcomm.com/products/mobile/snapdragon/smartphones/snapdragon-8-series-mobile-platforms/snapdragon-processors-810 https://www.qualcomm.com/products/mobile/snapdragon/smartpho... I worked on it in 2014. The table does have 808 listed. That may have been a lower end version. Qualcomm got caught being late. They were continuing development of custom 32-bit cores and Apple came out with a 64-bit ARM core in the iPhone. The Chief Marketing Officer of Qualcomm called it a gimmick but Apple was a huge customer of Qualcomm's modems. Qualcomm shoved him off to the side for a while. https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/qualcomm-gambit-apple-64-bit-a7-is-a-gimmick/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/qualcomm-gambit-apple-64-bi... Because Q's custom 64-bit CPU was not ready the stop gap plan was to license a 64-bit RTL design from ARM and use that in the 810. It also had overheating problems but that's different issue. There were a lot of internal politics going on at Q over the custom cores and server chips that ended up in layoffs.

hajile 2y ago

Qualcomm doesn't have nearly as much to lose as ARM does and they know it. Qualcomm is almost certainly ARM's biggest customer. If ARM loses, Qualcomm doesn't have to pay out. If ARM wins, Qualcomm moves to RISC-V and ARM loses even harder in the long-term. The most likely outcome is that Qualcomm agrees to pay a slight bit more than they are currently paying, but nowhere near what ARM is demanding and in the meantime, Qualcomm continues having a team work on a RISC-V frontend for Oryon.

svnt 2y ago
You’re suggesting that Snapdragon processors would switch to RISC-V and that would be no big deal? Presumably Qualcomm is committed to numerous multi-year supplier agreements for the arm chipsets.
- monocasa 2y ago
  This affects their custom Nuvia derived cores. I'm sure Qualcomm will be able to keep using ARM designed cores to cover themselves while they ween off ARM in favor of RISC-V if they need to.
- hajile 2y ago
  Qualcomm pitched Znew quite a while ago. It mostly ditched 16-bit instructions and added a bunch of instructions that were basically ripped straight from ARM64. The idea was obviously an attempt at making it as easy as possible to replace ARM with RISC-V without having to rework much of the core. https://lists.riscv.org/g/tech-profiles/attachment/332/0/code_size_extension_rvi_20231006.pdf https://lists.riscv.org/g/tech-profiles/attachment/332/0/cod...
  - snvzz 2y ago
    An attempt that failed miserably. (it was formally rejected a year ago) But, by now, it is expected that Qualcomm's RISC-V designs have been re-aligned to match the reality that Qualcomm does not control the standard.
  - dwaite 2y ago

shmerl 2y ago

Not just telecom, they are just super aggressive in general as a bully with weapons pile. I remember they tried to threaten Opus codec with patents just becasue, when IETF proposed it for Internet standard. Luckily that failed, but it shows their nasty approach very clearly. So now they are getting the taste of their own medicine.

chris_wot 2y ago

When do Qualcomm's patents run out?

electronbeam 2y ago

Qualcomm should put a giant bid on SiFive tomorrow, to remind ARM that its not unassailable

NewJazz 2y ago
They can design chips. What Qualcomm might not be able to do is deliver solid software support for their riscv64 hardware. Android decelerated their efforts toward support recently.
kernal 2y ago
So a business that is entirely dependent on ARM IP and, for the most part, Android should "remind" the company they're dependent upon? Let's do a thought experiment - Qualcomm switches to RISC-V while the other Android SoC makers (MediaTek, Samsung, Google, Xiaomi, etc.) stay on ARM. Who buys the new Snapdragon RISC-V phone?
hajile 2y ago
Intel supposedly put in a multi-billion dollar offer and got laughed out of the room.

zoobab 2y ago

[flagged]

delfinom 2y ago

>Yes, longterm Q might invest in their own RISC implementations Q is investing over $1billion into RISC-V. ARM is fucked long term. Sure Qualcomm themselves are no angel. But the absurdities of this case are basically making ARM toxic to any serious long term investment. Especially when ARM is in Apple's pocket and ARM isn't releasing any chip designs competitive with Apple's chips where they get free reign to do as they want. Basically a permanent handicap on ARM chip performance.

kernal 2y ago
Since I don't see the Android or IOS app stores ever switching to RISC-V I think ARM will be fine.
- Tostino 2y ago
  Why would you think that? The Play store already supports x86 binaries when necessary.
  - kernal 2y ago
    Because an extremely low percentage of apps support x86.
    - kllrnohj 2y ago
      An extremely low ship x86 support but a huge number support it already for internal uses. The emulator, for both local and CI, and any host-side tests are all x86. These are extremely common to have for everyone. Big companies love having CI, and small ones love the emulator to avoid needing a ~dozen dev phones for the different API levels and form factors. But importantly since ARM and RISC-V have the same memory model, unlike x86, then it really is just going to be an extra compilation target for any native libraries and that's about it.

fidotron 2y ago

The Qualcomm online defenders are something else too. Qualcomm have been acting badly for years, including attempting to turn RISC-V into Arm64 but without the restrictions. You cannot trust people that behave like this, where everything they do is important and everything you do is worthless. The funny thing is Qualcomm do have some wildly impressive tech which is kept secret despite being so ubiquitous, but they have had persistent execution failures at integrations which lead to them throwing their partners under the bus. Qualcomm have the same sort of corporate difficulty you see at Boeing, only in a less high profile sector.

eqvinox 2y ago
> attempting to turn RISC-V into Arm64 but without the restrictions This flew past me, do you have a link?
- fidotron 2y ago
  Brucehoult mentions it further down. > This time last year they were all over the RISC-V mailing lists, trying to convince everyone to drop the "C" extension from RVA23 because (basically confirmed by their employees) it was not easy to retrofit mildly variable length RISC-V instructions (2 bytes and 4 bytes) to the Aarch64 core they acquired from Nuvia. At the same time, Qualcomm proposed a new RISC-V extension that was pretty much ARMv8-lite. This is enough of a philosophy change to break existing RISC-V software, and so is purely motivated by a desire to clone IP they supposedly licensed as honest brokers.
  - rangestransform 2y ago
    Not a cpu designer, but aren’t variable length instructions a big part of why x86 decoders take up so much area, and also increases branch predictor complexity?
    - wbl 2y ago
      So much is relative: on a giant OoO core it's barely noticeable. In the case of x86 the range of lengths is extreme: a simple two or four choice is much simpler.