4 ms·

It is informative to note the contrast between the fact that 22 companies (Microsoft, Google, Samsung, etc, etc) were all given enough notice in advance of the

It is informative to note the contrast between the fact that 22 companies (Microsoft, Google, Samsung, etc, etc) were all given enough notice in advance of the Nuvia acquisition, to be able to come up with a quote endorsing it. [1] And the treatment of the 'partner' upon whose IP the deal depends: > Neither Qualcomm nor Nuvia provided prior notice of this transaction to Arm [2] [1] https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2021/01/qualcomm-acquire-nuvia https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2021/01/qualcomm-acqu... [2] From Arm's initial court submission.

brookst 2y ago
I read that part differently. I didn’t see it as a statement about the legal merits of ARM’s choices so much as the pragmatic business outcomes. It is possible for an action to be 100% legally correct and a bad business move (see: creative IP companies that sue their biggest fans). Even granting that ARM is completely within their right, this is a pretty bug reminder of the dangers of building on sole-source licensed IP when there’s an open alternative. I have little doubt that ARM drove some number of startups into choosing RISC-V. Which may or may not matter in the long run. But it is rolling the dice and by definition a short term maximization strategy.
- klelatti 2y ago
  My comment wasn’t really around legal or business merits but rather the bad faith nature of these actions which would apply whether using open or closed source ip. However, the ‘dangers of building on sole-source’ licensed IP is true in general but a bit overdone in this case. Qualcomm had a large number of options using Arm IP including developing their own cores in house. However they chose to do something that was - on the face of it - in breach of license agreements that Nuvia had signed.
  - MobiusHorizons 2y ago
    > including developing their own cores in house. I believe ARM just revoked Qualcomm’s architecture license, so they no longer have that option if they want to run aarch64. The architecture license predated the Nuvia acquisition, and was the license under which Qualcomm developed their most recent laptop core.
    - adrian_b 2y ago
      Because the Qualcomm and Nuvia ALAs have remained secret, we cannot know whether Arm really has the right to revoke them at will. It is hard to believe that anyone would accept to sign an ALA that can easily be revoked, because whoever signs an ALA intends to invest a lot of money developing products based on it and there is no doubt that all the invested money can be lost if the ALA is revoked unilaterally. It remains to be seen what will happen at the trial.
adrian_b 2y ago
The architecture license agreements between Qualcomm, Nuvia and Arm have remained secret. Both Qualcomm and Arm claim that they follow the requirements of the existing ALAs, while the other party has breached them. Without access to the original texts, we cannot verify who tells the truth. Even when a judge will give a decision for this conflict we will not be able to know who is right if the ALAs remain secret, because in recent years there have been plenty of absurd judicial decisions, where judges have been obviously wrong. According to Qualcomm, they had no obligation to notify Arm about their business intentions. While I do not like Qualcomm for many reasons, for now there is no ground to believe more the claims of Arm than the claims of Qualcomm, so any of the two could be right about this. Perhaps Arm is right and Qualcomm must pay the royalties specified in the Nuvia ALA instead of the royalties specified in the Qualcomm ALA, which is the main subject of this conflict, but if this is true then Nuvia has been conned by Arm into signing a really disadvantageous ALA, which is somewhat surprising, because among their business plan variants must have been one of being bought by some big company, in which case their target should have been to retain ownership of the IP developed by themselves. There is no doubt that even if Qualcomm pays only the low royalties specified in the Qualcomm ALA, Arm will obtain a revenue orders of magnitude greater than any revenue that could have been obtained from Nuvia, had it not been bought by Qualcomm. The reason why Arm does not like this increased revenue from the Nuvia work is that Qualcomm has decided to replace all the cores licensed from Arm in all of their products with cores developed by the Nuvia team. Thus the loss of the royalties for the Arm-designed cores will be even greater than the increased revenue from the ALA royalties. So Arm attempts to use or abuse whatever was written in their ALAs in order to prevent competition in the cores implementing the Arm architecture. Even if Arm had been cunning enough to have included paragraphs in their ALAs that justify their current requests, there is no doubt that the real villain in this conflict is Arm, who fights for forcing the use of CPU cores that are weaker and more expensive than what is possible.
- Voultapher 2y ago
  I think you got it the wrong way around. Nuvia got allegedly got a really good ALA because they targeted server and where small, but then Qualcomm bought Nuvia and wants to produce smartphone chips with the cheaper Nuvia ALA, based on Nuvia IP. Arm argues they have to use the more expensive Qualcomm ALA.

brookst 2y ago

I read that part differently. I didn’t see it as a statement about the legal merits of ARM’s choices so much as the pragmatic business outcomes. It is possible for an action to be 100% legally correct and a bad business move (see: creative IP companies that sue their biggest fans). Even granting that ARM is completely within their right, this is a pretty bug reminder of the dangers of building on sole-source licensed IP when there’s an open alternative. I have little doubt that ARM drove some number of startups into choosing RISC-V. Which may or may not matter in the long run. But it is rolling the dice and by definition a short term maximization strategy.

klelatti 2y ago
My comment wasn’t really around legal or business merits but rather the bad faith nature of these actions which would apply whether using open or closed source ip. However, the ‘dangers of building on sole-source’ licensed IP is true in general but a bit overdone in this case. Qualcomm had a large number of options using Arm IP including developing their own cores in house. However they chose to do something that was - on the face of it - in breach of license agreements that Nuvia had signed.
- MobiusHorizons 2y ago
  > including developing their own cores in house. I believe ARM just revoked Qualcomm’s architecture license, so they no longer have that option if they want to run aarch64. The architecture license predated the Nuvia acquisition, and was the license under which Qualcomm developed their most recent laptop core.
  - adrian_b 2y ago
    Because the Qualcomm and Nuvia ALAs have remained secret, we cannot know whether Arm really has the right to revoke them at will. It is hard to believe that anyone would accept to sign an ALA that can easily be revoked, because whoever signs an ALA intends to invest a lot of money developing products based on it and there is no doubt that all the invested money can be lost if the ALA is revoked unilaterally. It remains to be seen what will happen at the trial.

adrian_b 2y ago

The architecture license agreements between Qualcomm, Nuvia and Arm have remained secret. Both Qualcomm and Arm claim that they follow the requirements of the existing ALAs, while the other party has breached them. Without access to the original texts, we cannot verify who tells the truth. Even when a judge will give a decision for this conflict we will not be able to know who is right if the ALAs remain secret, because in recent years there have been plenty of absurd judicial decisions, where judges have been obviously wrong. According to Qualcomm, they had no obligation to notify Arm about their business intentions. While I do not like Qualcomm for many reasons, for now there is no ground to believe more the claims of Arm than the claims of Qualcomm, so any of the two could be right about this. Perhaps Arm is right and Qualcomm must pay the royalties specified in the Nuvia ALA instead of the royalties specified in the Qualcomm ALA, which is the main subject of this conflict, but if this is true then Nuvia has been conned by Arm into signing a really disadvantageous ALA, which is somewhat surprising, because among their business plan variants must have been one of being bought by some big company, in which case their target should have been to retain ownership of the IP developed by themselves. There is no doubt that even if Qualcomm pays only the low royalties specified in the Qualcomm ALA, Arm will obtain a revenue orders of magnitude greater than any revenue that could have been obtained from Nuvia, had it not been bought by Qualcomm. The reason why Arm does not like this increased revenue from the Nuvia work is that Qualcomm has decided to replace all the cores licensed from Arm in all of their products with cores developed by the Nuvia team. Thus the loss of the royalties for the Arm-designed cores will be even greater than the increased revenue from the ALA royalties. So Arm attempts to use or abuse whatever was written in their ALAs in order to prevent competition in the cores implementing the Arm architecture. Even if Arm had been cunning enough to have included paragraphs in their ALAs that justify their current requests, there is no doubt that the real villain in this conflict is Arm, who fights for forcing the use of CPU cores that are weaker and more expensive than what is possible.

Voultapher 2y ago
I think you got it the wrong way around. Nuvia got allegedly got a really good ALA because they targeted server and where small, but then Qualcomm bought Nuvia and wants to produce smartphone chips with the cheaper Nuvia ALA, based on Nuvia IP. Arm argues they have to use the more expensive Qualcomm ALA.