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Just the impact of making this move will have a chilling effect, regardless of the long term outome. ARM Ltd wants to position itself as the ISA. It is highly

Just the impact of making this move will have a chilling effect, regardless of the long term outome. ARM Ltd wants to position itself as the ISA. It is highly proprietary of course, but the impression they want to give is that it is "open" and freely available, no lock-in, etc. This really brings the reality back into focus that ARM controls it with an iron fist, and they're not above playing political games and siding against you if you annoy their favored customers. Really horrible optics for them.

t43562 2y ago
Qualcomm is slightly bigger than ARM so it seems like a fair fight to me. Does Qualcomm police it's IP at all?
- starspangled 2y ago
  > Qualcomm is slightly bigger than ARM so it seems like a fair fight to me. I'm not really sure what you're responding to. It's got nothing to do with size whether or not something is fair, it's what is in the contract. None of us know exactly what's there so if it becomes disputed then a court is going to have to decide what is fair. But that was entirely not the point of my comment though. I'm talking about how corporations looking to make chips or get into the ecosystem view ARM and its behavior with its architecture and licensing. ARM Ltd might well be in the right here by the letter of their contracts, but that canceling their customer's license (ostensibly if not actually siding with another customer who is in competition with the first) is just not a good look for positioning they are going for.
  - t43562 2y ago
    You might be right, but they do perhaps also have to establish that their contracts are going to be defended/enforced. Otherwise they have nothing.
    - starspangled 2y ago
      Big middle ground before nuclear option of canceling license entirely though. It's a bad look too because Nuvia/QC has bad blood with Apple, and Apple is suspected to be a very favored client for ARM, so ARM has this problem of potentially appearing to be taking Apple's side against Qualcomm. I'm not saying that's what happened or that ARM did not try to negotiate and QC was being unreasonable and the whole thing has nothing at all to do with Apple, or that ARM had any better options available to them. Could be they were backed into a corner and couldn't do anything else. I don't know. That doesn't mean it's not bad optics for them though.
- michaelt 2y ago
  According to Wikipedia, Qualcomm has 50,000 employees, $51 billion assets and $35 billion revenue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualcomm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualcomm ARM Holdings has 7000 employees, $8 billion assets and $3 billion revenue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Holdings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Holdings I think "slightly bigger" is an understatement.
  - cduzz 2y ago
    That's roughly the same size -- like swamp thing vs namor -- both are name brand, almost blue chip heros. Or put another way -- as they said in gawker[1] -- if you're in a lawsuit with a billionaire you better have a billionaire on your side or you're losing. In this case -- it's unlikely that qualcomm will have quite enough juice to just smoosh Arm, in the same way that they would be able to just smoosh a company that's 100th the size of arm (not just 1/10th), regardless of the merits of the case. [1]https://gawker.com/how-things-work-1785604699 https://gawker.com/how-things-work-1785604699
- CamperBob2 2y ago
  Does Qualcomm police it's IP at all? Traditionally they've been known as a tech company that employs more lawyers than engineers, if that tells you anything. I'd probably go up against IBM or Oracle before I tugged on Qualcomm's cape. Good luck to ARM, they'll need it.
  - hajile 2y ago
    Oracle v Qualcomm would be epic.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
      The public will likely be the loser of such a battle. :-(
      - Nemo_bis 2y ago
        Not if they end up cancelling each other's patents. :)
  - verditelabs 2y ago
    I am an ex Qualcomm employee. We often called ourselves a law firm with a tech problem. QC doesn't actually have more lawyers than engineers, but I'd not be surprised if the legal department got paid more than all the engineers combined.
markhahn 2y ago
"Chilling effect" implies that we should want ARM to succeed. IMO we need to question the premises of the current IP ecosystem. Obviously, the principles of open-source are quite the opposite to how ARM licenses IP. (Afaik, ARM also licenses ready-to-go cores, which is very different from what Q is getting.) It's easy to see how RISC-V avoids the conflict of interest between owning the ISA and licensing specific implementations.
- starspangled 2y ago
  > "Chilling effect" implies that we should want ARM to succeed. It really doesn't. I agree an actual open ISA is far preferable, ARM is not much different than x86.
- ywvcbk 2y ago
  > RISC-V We’d just get a bunch of proprietary cores which might not even be compatible with each other due to extensions. Companies like Qualcomm would have zero incentives to share their designs with anyone. ARM is not perfect but it at least guarantees some minimal equal playing field. > Afaik, ARM also licenses ready-to-go cores Which is the core of Qualcomm’s business. All their phone chips are based on Cortex. Of course ARM has a lot of incentives to keep it that way, hence this while thing.
  - starspangled 2y ago
    > We’d just get a bunch of proprietary cores which might not even be compatible with each other due to extensions. No different than ARM. Apple has matrix extensions that others don't, for example. The ecosystem (e.g., Linux and OSS) pressure will strongly encourage compatible subsets however. There is some concern about RISCV fragmentation hell that ARM used to suffer from, but a least in the Linux-capable CPU space (e.g., not highly embedded or tiny), a plethora of incompatible cores will probably not happen. > Companies like Qualcomm would have zero incentives to share their designs with anyone. ARM cores are also proprietary. All ARM cores actually, you can't get an architectural license from ARM to create an open source core. With RISCV at least you can make open cores and there are some out there. But opening the ISA is attacking a different level of the stack than the logic and silicon.
h_tbob 2y ago
I don’t understand how they can copyright just the ISA. Didn’t a recent Supreme Court case in oracle v google Java issue decide that you can copy the api if you impelement it differently? So what exactl is arm pulling? Implementation hardware specs? I suspect Qualcomm can do that on its own
- TheFlyingFish 2y ago
  I think it might actually be patents rather than copyright restrictions that are in play here.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > Dudn’t a recent Supreme Court case in oracle v google Java issue decide that you can copy the api if you impelement it differently No, it didn’t. It ruled that the specific copying and use of that Google did with Java in Android was fair use, but did not rule anything as blanket as “you can copy an API as long as you re-implement it”.
  - sangnoir 2y ago
    It was a little more nuance than that. Oracle was hoping SCOTUS would rule that API Structure, sequence and organization are copyrightable - the court sidestepped that question altogether by ruling that if APIs are copyrightable[1], the case fell under fair use. So the pre-existing case law holds (broadly, it's still fine to re-implement APIs - like s3 - for compatibility since SCOTUS chose not to weigh in on it in Google v. Oracle). 1. Breyer's majority statement presupposes API's are copyrightable, without declaring it or offering any kind of test on whats acceptable.
    - dragonwriter 2y ago
      > So the pre-existing case law holds (broadly, it's still fine to re-implement APIs - like s3 - for compatibility since SCOTUS chose not to weigh in on it in Google v. Oracle). There is no clear preexisting national case law on API copyrightability, and it is unclear how other, more general, case law would apply to APIs categorically (or even if it would apply a categorical copyrightable-or-not rule), so, no, its not “ok”, its indeterminant.

t43562 2y ago

Qualcomm is slightly bigger than ARM so it seems like a fair fight to me. Does Qualcomm police it's IP at all?

starspangled 2y ago
> Qualcomm is slightly bigger than ARM so it seems like a fair fight to me. I'm not really sure what you're responding to. It's got nothing to do with size whether or not something is fair, it's what is in the contract. None of us know exactly what's there so if it becomes disputed then a court is going to have to decide what is fair. But that was entirely not the point of my comment though. I'm talking about how corporations looking to make chips or get into the ecosystem view ARM and its behavior with its architecture and licensing. ARM Ltd might well be in the right here by the letter of their contracts, but that canceling their customer's license (ostensibly if not actually siding with another customer who is in competition with the first) is just not a good look for positioning they are going for.
- t43562 2y ago
  You might be right, but they do perhaps also have to establish that their contracts are going to be defended/enforced. Otherwise they have nothing.
  - starspangled 2y ago
    Big middle ground before nuclear option of canceling license entirely though. It's a bad look too because Nuvia/QC has bad blood with Apple, and Apple is suspected to be a very favored client for ARM, so ARM has this problem of potentially appearing to be taking Apple's side against Qualcomm. I'm not saying that's what happened or that ARM did not try to negotiate and QC was being unreasonable and the whole thing has nothing at all to do with Apple, or that ARM had any better options available to them. Could be they were backed into a corner and couldn't do anything else. I don't know. That doesn't mean it's not bad optics for them though.
michaelt 2y ago
According to Wikipedia, Qualcomm has 50,000 employees, $51 billion assets and $35 billion revenue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualcomm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualcomm ARM Holdings has 7000 employees, $8 billion assets and $3 billion revenue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Holdings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Holdings I think "slightly bigger" is an understatement.
- cduzz 2y ago
  That's roughly the same size -- like swamp thing vs namor -- both are name brand, almost blue chip heros. Or put another way -- as they said in gawker[1] -- if you're in a lawsuit with a billionaire you better have a billionaire on your side or you're losing. In this case -- it's unlikely that qualcomm will have quite enough juice to just smoosh Arm, in the same way that they would be able to just smoosh a company that's 100th the size of arm (not just 1/10th), regardless of the merits of the case. [1]https://gawker.com/how-things-work-1785604699 https://gawker.com/how-things-work-1785604699
CamperBob2 2y ago
Does Qualcomm police it's IP at all? Traditionally they've been known as a tech company that employs more lawyers than engineers, if that tells you anything. I'd probably go up against IBM or Oracle before I tugged on Qualcomm's cape. Good luck to ARM, they'll need it.
- hajile 2y ago
  Oracle v Qualcomm would be epic.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
    The public will likely be the loser of such a battle. :-(
    - Nemo_bis 2y ago
      Not if they end up cancelling each other's patents. :)
- verditelabs 2y ago
  I am an ex Qualcomm employee. We often called ourselves a law firm with a tech problem. QC doesn't actually have more lawyers than engineers, but I'd not be surprised if the legal department got paid more than all the engineers combined.

markhahn 2y ago

"Chilling effect" implies that we should want ARM to succeed. IMO we need to question the premises of the current IP ecosystem. Obviously, the principles of open-source are quite the opposite to how ARM licenses IP. (Afaik, ARM also licenses ready-to-go cores, which is very different from what Q is getting.) It's easy to see how RISC-V avoids the conflict of interest between owning the ISA and licensing specific implementations.

starspangled 2y ago
> "Chilling effect" implies that we should want ARM to succeed. It really doesn't. I agree an actual open ISA is far preferable, ARM is not much different than x86.
ywvcbk 2y ago
> RISC-V We’d just get a bunch of proprietary cores which might not even be compatible with each other due to extensions. Companies like Qualcomm would have zero incentives to share their designs with anyone. ARM is not perfect but it at least guarantees some minimal equal playing field. > Afaik, ARM also licenses ready-to-go cores Which is the core of Qualcomm’s business. All their phone chips are based on Cortex. Of course ARM has a lot of incentives to keep it that way, hence this while thing.
- starspangled 2y ago
  > We’d just get a bunch of proprietary cores which might not even be compatible with each other due to extensions. No different than ARM. Apple has matrix extensions that others don't, for example. The ecosystem (e.g., Linux and OSS) pressure will strongly encourage compatible subsets however. There is some concern about RISCV fragmentation hell that ARM used to suffer from, but a least in the Linux-capable CPU space (e.g., not highly embedded or tiny), a plethora of incompatible cores will probably not happen. > Companies like Qualcomm would have zero incentives to share their designs with anyone. ARM cores are also proprietary. All ARM cores actually, you can't get an architectural license from ARM to create an open source core. With RISCV at least you can make open cores and there are some out there. But opening the ISA is attacking a different level of the stack than the logic and silicon.

h_tbob 2y ago

I don’t understand how they can copyright just the ISA. Didn’t a recent Supreme Court case in oracle v google Java issue decide that you can copy the api if you impelement it differently? So what exactl is arm pulling? Implementation hardware specs? I suspect Qualcomm can do that on its own

TheFlyingFish 2y ago
I think it might actually be patents rather than copyright restrictions that are in play here.
dragonwriter 2y ago
> Dudn’t a recent Supreme Court case in oracle v google Java issue decide that you can copy the api if you impelement it differently No, it didn’t. It ruled that the specific copying and use of that Google did with Java in Android was fair use, but did not rule anything as blanket as “you can copy an API as long as you re-implement it”.
- sangnoir 2y ago
  It was a little more nuance than that. Oracle was hoping SCOTUS would rule that API Structure, sequence and organization are copyrightable - the court sidestepped that question altogether by ruling that if APIs are copyrightable[1], the case fell under fair use. So the pre-existing case law holds (broadly, it's still fine to re-implement APIs - like s3 - for compatibility since SCOTUS chose not to weigh in on it in Google v. Oracle). 1. Breyer's majority statement presupposes API's are copyrightable, without declaring it or offering any kind of test on whats acceptable.
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    > So the pre-existing case law holds (broadly, it's still fine to re-implement APIs - like s3 - for compatibility since SCOTUS chose not to weigh in on it in Google v. Oracle). There is no clear preexisting national case law on API copyrightability, and it is unclear how other, more general, case law would apply to APIs categorically (or even if it would apply a categorical copyrightable-or-not rule), so, no, its not “ok”, its indeterminant.