10 ms·

Qualcomm wins licensing fight with Arm over chip designs

211 points by my123 2y ago

jasoneckert 2y ago
Does the fact that the "jurors weren’t able to agree on whether Nuvia breached the license" mean that the legal fight isn't over? Or is that question irrelevant in light of the other findings, and the legal fight is actually over, with Qualcomm as the clear winner?
- phire 2y ago
  I suspect it's mostly irrelevant. ARM should be able to re-file the lawsuit and get financial damages out of Nuvia, which Qualcomm will need to pay. But I doubt the damages will be high enough to bother Qualcomm. I don't think ARM will even bother. As far as I could tell, this was never about money for ARM. It was about control over their licensees and the products they developed. Control which they could turn into money later.
  - eigenform 2y ago
    It always seemed like [from ARM's point of view]: "oh, you're going to sell way more parts doing laptop SoCs with the license instead of servers... if we'd known that before, we would've negotiated a different license where we get a bigger cut"
    - hashtag-til 2y ago
      That’s the model when you’re in the IP business - nothing new here. This is what you use to fund the next generation of said IP. There is no magic.
      - hajile 2y ago
        The whole ALA essentially boils down to "you pay us because other companies made our ISA popular". This is why companies are pushing toward RISC-V so hard. If ARM's ISA were open, then ARM would have to compete with lots of other companies to create the best core implementations possible or disappear.
      - sangnoir 2y ago
        Well, I suppose the magic is in crossing your t's and dotting your i's when drafting legal contracts pertaining to said IP. Arm failed to do that.
    - refulgentis 2y ago
      I'm not sure why it seemed that way to you, server market >> consumer laptops (c.f. $INTL).
      - eigenform 2y ago
        In the context of ARM machines, it's [historically] been the case that most of the devices are not servers (although that's slowly changing nowadays, which is nice to see!!)
      - adrian_b 2y ago
        The server market for Arm-based computers remains negligible. The number of servers with Arm-based CPUs is growing fast, but they are not sold on the free market, they are produced internally by the big cloud operators. Only Ampere Computing sells a few Arm-based CPUs, but they have fewer and fewer customers (i.e. mainly Oracle), after almost every big cloud operator has launched their own server CPUs. So for anyone hoping to enter the market of Arm-based server CPUs the chances of success are extremely small, no matter how good their designs may be.
    - adrian_b 2y ago
      Arm had already done that. The Nuvia ALA (architecture license agreement) specified much higher royalties, i.e. a much bigger cut for Arm, than the Qualcomm ALA. The official reason for the conflict is that Qualcomm says that the Qualcomm ALA is applicable for anything made by Qualcomm, while Arm says that for any Qualcomm product that includes a trace of something designed at the former Nuvia company the Nuvia ALA must be applied. The real reason of the conflict is that Qualcomm is replacing the CPU cores designed by Arm with CPU cores designed by the former Nuvia team in all their products. Had this not happened, Arm would have received a much greater revenue as a result of Nuvia being bought by Qualcomm, even when applying the Qualcomm ALA.
  - jauntywundrkind 2y ago
    Seemed like ARM was desperate to let Apple and Apple alone make decent CPUs in something besides servers. Having an ok core on mobile or desktop was unacceptable.
hu3 2y ago
https://archive.is/2uHTU https://archive.is/2uHTU
tiahura 2y ago
My understanding was that the central issue was whether the Nuvia “modify” license “transferred” to Qualcomm. If so, wouldn’t that be a legal issue to be resolved by MSJ? Why was this tried to a jury?
- phire 2y ago
  Qualcomm already had a "modify" licence, back from when they were doing their own custom ARM cores. So the actual central issue was if Qualcomm had the right to transfer the technology developed under the Nuvia architecture license to the Qualcomm architecture license.
  - fidotron 2y ago
    To be precise, it now appears the dispute has moved as to whether Nuvia had the right to transfer things to Qualcomm. It strikes me as a surprising diversion to this, and I wonder how prepared for this outcome the respective teams were.
    - phire 2y ago
      My memory is that before the lawsuit, Qualcomm were using both arguments, "we have the right to transfer the licence, and even if we didn't, we have our own license". The first argument was always the weaker argument, the license explicitly banned licence transfers between companies without explicit prior permission. Qualcomm were arguing that the fact they already had a licence counted as prior permission. But ARM bypassed that argument by just terminating the Nuvia licence, and by the time of the lawsuit qualcomm was down to the second argument. Which was good, it was the much stronger argument.
      - bonzini 2y ago
        But is it even a second company (and thus a license transfer) if Qualcomm bought Nuvia?
        2y ago
mewse-hn 2y ago
Haven't read deeply into this particular dispute but Arm suing their own customers doesn't seem good for business. Especially since they lost.
- williamDafoe 2y ago
  A lot of companies with great IPR have very terrible management, now ARM has joined that club! Pay their license fees religiously for almost 30 years and they turn around and sue you, GEEZ!
  - walterbell 2y ago
    Softbank likely played a role in Arm's change of business model, away from IP licensing towards selling complete complete chips.
LeFantome 2y ago
Wow, this has been settled already? I mean, I am sure ARM will appeal. ARM did massive damage to their ecosystem for nothing. There will for sure be consequences of suing your largest customer. Lots of people that would have defaulted to licensing designed off ARM for whatever chips they have planned will now be considering RISC-V instead. ARM just accelerated the timeline for their biggest future competitor. Genius.
- bhouston 2y ago
  RISC-V is not anywhere near competitive to ARM at the level that Qualcomm operates. I’ve written about that here: https://benhouston3d.com/blog/risc-v-in-2024-is-slow https://benhouston3d.com/blog/risc-v-in-2024-is-slow
  - 3eb7988a1663 2y ago
    Not everyone is trying to make a chip for a phone. There are plenty of low compute applications which just need something.
    - refulgentis 2y ago
      Correct. Also correct: RISC-V is not anywhere near competitive to ARM at the level that Qualcomm operates.
  - boredatoms 2y ago
    RISCV is an instruction set, but you compare ASICs If qualcomm changes instruction decoding over you’ll likely see a dramatic difference
  - fidotron 2y ago
    Your otherwise on point piece contains the common misconception that ARM began in embedded systems. When they started they had a full computer system that had very competitive CPU performance for the time: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes They pivoted to embedded shortly after spinning off into a separate company.
maximusdrex 2y ago
What a disaster for ARM. Qualcomm building out new chips targeting the pc market should have been a victory lap for ARM, not the source of a legal battle with their largest customer. Now potential customers might be a little more wary of ARMs licensing practices compared to the free RISC-V ISA.
- wyldfire 2y ago
  > Now potential customers might be a little more wary of ARMs licensing practices compared to the free RISC-V ISA. This is unbelievably understated. If I were Qualcomm, I would put parts of the Nuvia team's expertise to work designing RISC-V applications cores for their various SoC markets.
  - Havoc 2y ago
    If you bet the farm on hardware but the software ecosystem isn't there yet, then you sell no hardware and sink the company. Software ecosystem either takes lots of time (see ARM) or you need to be in a position to force it (Apple & M chips). RISC-V is still a long way off from consumer (or server) prime time
    - wyldfire 2y ago
      It's a bit chicken-and-egg. People won't port their software if there's no popular targets available. Even if there are targets, if the popular targets don't perform well, people will assume the ISA is not worth porting to. No, it's not just around-the-corner but Qualcomm has a role to play here. Not like they should just sit on the sidelines and say "call me when we are RISC-V"
jasoneckert 2y ago
By the end of Day 3, it seemed quite clear that Qualcomm's legal team and position was far ahead of ARM's. I feel the following snippet sums up the whole week: "Qualcomm’s counsel turned Arm’s Piano analogy on its head. Arm compared its ISA to a Piano Keyboard design during the opening statement and used it throughout the trial. It claimed that no matter how big or small the Piano is, the keyboard design remains the same and is covered by its license. Qualcomm’s counsel extended that analogy to show how ridiculous it would be to say that because you designed the keyboard, you own all the pianos in the world. Suggesting that is what Arm is trying to do." Source: https://www.tantraanalyst.com/ta/qualcomm-vs-arm-trial-day-3-testimonies-end-dispute-funneled-down-to-two-key-questions/ https://www.tantraanalyst.com/ta/qualcomm-vs-arm-trial-day-3...
- ksec 2y ago
  Wholeheartedly agree. I understand where ARM is coming from, but my god the legal team from both parties were night and day apart. And from evidences ARM isn't even asking for a lot more money. They are likely fighting this from principle, but their explanation were weak, very weak. ( They were even worst then Apple during the Apple vs Qualcomm case ) I thought the whole thing Qualcomm was way more professional. ARM's case was that what they think was written in the contract, what they "should" have written in contract and what Qualcomm shows clearly contradict. It is more of a lesson for ARM to learn. And now the damage has been done. This also makes me think who was pushing this lawsuit. Softbank ? I also gained more respect to Qualcomm. After what they showed Apple vs Qualcomm's case and here. Side Note: ARM's Design has caught on. The Cortex X5 is close to Apple's Design. We should have news about X6 soon.
  - fc417fc802 2y ago
    > ARM isn't even asking for a lot more money I thought the entire point of this was that Arm was trying to prevent Qualcomm from switching away from products that fall under the TLA. Isn't revenue from TLA fees a huge difference from that of ALA fees?
    - adrian_b 2y ago
dismalaf 2y ago
Nuvia never even had a finished product. Not sure what ARM thinks their losses are considering Qualcomm already had an architectural license... ARM is (edit) figuratively blowing up their ecosystem for no reason; now everyone will be racing to develop RISC-V just to cut out ARM...
- HKH2 2y ago
  > ARM is literally blowing up their ecosystem for no reason With explosives?
2809 2y ago
This went exactly as expected. ARM had no leg to stand on going in.
- kernal 2y ago
  Arm will appeal. Regardless, Arm will tighten the screws on Qualcomm in their next round of licensing negotiations.
  - hajile 2y ago
    This lawsuit scared away any future startups from using ARM technology if they want the option to be acquired. This in turn means that all the awesome new chip IP is going to be designed for some other ISA and that's almost certainly RISC-V. Meanwhile, Qualcomm's ALA expires in 2033. They will almost certainly have launched RISC-V chips by then specifically because they know their royalties will be going WAY up if they don't make the switch.
    - Hilift 2y ago
      ARM has been a shambles for years since acquisition by Softbank in 2016. The China subsidiary went rogue and had to be dealt with at a time when they were considering an IPO. This has Oracle Java like lessons learned waiting to be written, sprinkled with Intel-like market position squandered. Or even the methane producing pig farmer in underworld in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
      - prewett 2y ago
        > The China subsidiary went rogue Expecting to get something out of the China market is unwise. I think there's plenty of evidence that this sort of stuff is de rigeur. Until recently you had to have a Chinese partner with 51% of the shares. What do you think is going to happen?
williamDafoe 2y ago
As I said on another forum yesterday, Qualcomm almost always wins its legal battles - when they lose its not because they are wrong but usually only because their lawyers screwed up (Broadcom lawsuit of ~2012). It's kind of a Boy Scout Company in a legal sense and they are very careful. They retrained some of their best engineers as lawyers to help them succeed in court battles ...
- hashtag-til 2y ago
  Retrain engineers as lawyers is clever. Better than repurpose them as subpar managers.
  - kevvok 2y ago
    Oh don’t worry, they have plenty of those too
- justahuman74 2y ago
  How does one sign up for this retraining program?
williamDafoe 2y ago
This lawsuit will cast a cloud of darkness on any startup company that wants to build a new arm chip design! What a terribly stupid thing for ARM to do - they have basically pointed a gun at their own head and pulled the trigger!
walterbell 2y ago
For details beyond Bloomberg's three paragraph summary: https://www.tantraanalyst.com/ta/qualcomm-vs-arm-trial-day-1-opening-statements-and-surprising-revelations/ https://www.tantraanalyst.com/ta/qualcomm-vs-arm-trial-day-1... > Arm’s opening statement.. presented with a soft, almost victim-like demeanor. Qualcomm’s statement was more assertive and included many strong facts (e.g., Arm internal communications saying Qualcomm has “Bombproof” ALA). Testimonials were quite informative and revealed many interesting facts, some rumored and others unknown (e.g. Arm considered a fully vertically integrated approach). https://www.tantraanalyst.com/ta/qualcomm-vs-arm-trial-day-2-is-processor-design-derivative-of-instructing-set-architecture-isa/ https://www.tantraanalyst.com/ta/qualcomm-vs-arm-trial-day-2... > The most important discussion was whether processor design and RTL are a derivative of Arm’s technology.. This assertion of derivative seems an overreach and should put a chill down the spine of every Arm customer, especially the ones that have ALA, which include NXP, Infineon, TI, ST Micro, Microchip, Broadcom, Nvidia, MediaTek, Qualcomm, Apple, and Marvell. No matter how much they innovate in processor design and architecture, it can all be deemed Arm’s derivative and, hence, its technology. https://www.tantraanalyst.com/ta/qualcomm-vs-arm-trial-day-3-testimonies-end-dispute-funneled-down-to-two-key-questions/ https://www.tantraanalyst.com/ta/qualcomm-vs-arm-trial-day-3... https://www.tantraanalyst.com/ta/qualcomm-vs-arm-trial-day-4-both-parties-rest-their-case-and-jury-deliberations-begin/ https://www.tantraanalyst.com/ta/qualcomm-vs-arm-trial-day-4...
buckle8017 2y ago
Well yes Qualcomm is the CIA of course they won.

211 points by my123 2y ago

Does the fact that the "jurors weren’t able to agree on whether Nuvia breached the license" mean that the legal fight isn't over? Or is that question irrelevant in light of the other findings, and the legal fight is actually over, with Qualcomm as the clear winner?

phire 2y ago
I suspect it's mostly irrelevant. ARM should be able to re-file the lawsuit and get financial damages out of Nuvia, which Qualcomm will need to pay. But I doubt the damages will be high enough to bother Qualcomm. I don't think ARM will even bother. As far as I could tell, this was never about money for ARM. It was about control over their licensees and the products they developed. Control which they could turn into money later.
- eigenform 2y ago
  It always seemed like [from ARM's point of view]: "oh, you're going to sell way more parts doing laptop SoCs with the license instead of servers... if we'd known that before, we would've negotiated a different license where we get a bigger cut"
  - hashtag-til 2y ago
    That’s the model when you’re in the IP business - nothing new here. This is what you use to fund the next generation of said IP. There is no magic.
    - hajile 2y ago
      The whole ALA essentially boils down to "you pay us because other companies made our ISA popular". This is why companies are pushing toward RISC-V so hard. If ARM's ISA were open, then ARM would have to compete with lots of other companies to create the best core implementations possible or disappear.
    - sangnoir 2y ago
      Well, I suppose the magic is in crossing your t's and dotting your i's when drafting legal contracts pertaining to said IP. Arm failed to do that.
  - refulgentis 2y ago
    I'm not sure why it seemed that way to you, server market >> consumer laptops (c.f. $INTL).
    - eigenform 2y ago
      In the context of ARM machines, it's [historically] been the case that most of the devices are not servers (although that's slowly changing nowadays, which is nice to see!!)
    - adrian_b 2y ago
      The server market for Arm-based computers remains negligible. The number of servers with Arm-based CPUs is growing fast, but they are not sold on the free market, they are produced internally by the big cloud operators. Only Ampere Computing sells a few Arm-based CPUs, but they have fewer and fewer customers (i.e. mainly Oracle), after almost every big cloud operator has launched their own server CPUs. So for anyone hoping to enter the market of Arm-based server CPUs the chances of success are extremely small, no matter how good their designs may be.
  - adrian_b 2y ago
    Arm had already done that. The Nuvia ALA (architecture license agreement) specified much higher royalties, i.e. a much bigger cut for Arm, than the Qualcomm ALA. The official reason for the conflict is that Qualcomm says that the Qualcomm ALA is applicable for anything made by Qualcomm, while Arm says that for any Qualcomm product that includes a trace of something designed at the former Nuvia company the Nuvia ALA must be applied. The real reason of the conflict is that Qualcomm is replacing the CPU cores designed by Arm with CPU cores designed by the former Nuvia team in all their products. Had this not happened, Arm would have received a much greater revenue as a result of Nuvia being bought by Qualcomm, even when applying the Qualcomm ALA.
- jauntywundrkind 2y ago
  Seemed like ARM was desperate to let Apple and Apple alone make decent CPUs in something besides servers. Having an ok core on mobile or desktop was unacceptable.

hu3 2y ago

https://archive.is/2uHTU https://archive.is/2uHTU

tiahura 2y ago

My understanding was that the central issue was whether the Nuvia “modify” license “transferred” to Qualcomm. If so, wouldn’t that be a legal issue to be resolved by MSJ? Why was this tried to a jury?

phire 2y ago
Qualcomm already had a "modify" licence, back from when they were doing their own custom ARM cores. So the actual central issue was if Qualcomm had the right to transfer the technology developed under the Nuvia architecture license to the Qualcomm architecture license.
- fidotron 2y ago
  To be precise, it now appears the dispute has moved as to whether Nuvia had the right to transfer things to Qualcomm. It strikes me as a surprising diversion to this, and I wonder how prepared for this outcome the respective teams were.
  - phire 2y ago
    My memory is that before the lawsuit, Qualcomm were using both arguments, "we have the right to transfer the licence, and even if we didn't, we have our own license". The first argument was always the weaker argument, the license explicitly banned licence transfers between companies without explicit prior permission. Qualcomm were arguing that the fact they already had a licence counted as prior permission. But ARM bypassed that argument by just terminating the Nuvia licence, and by the time of the lawsuit qualcomm was down to the second argument. Which was good, it was the much stronger argument.
    - bonzini 2y ago
      But is it even a second company (and thus a license transfer) if Qualcomm bought Nuvia?
      - 2y ago

mewse-hn 2y ago

Haven't read deeply into this particular dispute but Arm suing their own customers doesn't seem good for business. Especially since they lost.

williamDafoe 2y ago
A lot of companies with great IPR have very terrible management, now ARM has joined that club! Pay their license fees religiously for almost 30 years and they turn around and sue you, GEEZ!
- walterbell 2y ago
  Softbank likely played a role in Arm's change of business model, away from IP licensing towards selling complete complete chips.

LeFantome 2y ago

Wow, this has been settled already? I mean, I am sure ARM will appeal. ARM did massive damage to their ecosystem for nothing. There will for sure be consequences of suing your largest customer. Lots of people that would have defaulted to licensing designed off ARM for whatever chips they have planned will now be considering RISC-V instead. ARM just accelerated the timeline for their biggest future competitor. Genius.

bhouston 2y ago
RISC-V is not anywhere near competitive to ARM at the level that Qualcomm operates. I’ve written about that here: https://benhouston3d.com/blog/risc-v-in-2024-is-slow https://benhouston3d.com/blog/risc-v-in-2024-is-slow
- 3eb7988a1663 2y ago
  Not everyone is trying to make a chip for a phone. There are plenty of low compute applications which just need something.
  - refulgentis 2y ago
    Correct. Also correct: RISC-V is not anywhere near competitive to ARM at the level that Qualcomm operates.
- boredatoms 2y ago
  RISCV is an instruction set, but you compare ASICs If qualcomm changes instruction decoding over you’ll likely see a dramatic difference
- fidotron 2y ago
  Your otherwise on point piece contains the common misconception that ARM began in embedded systems. When they started they had a full computer system that had very competitive CPU performance for the time: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes They pivoted to embedded shortly after spinning off into a separate company.

maximusdrex 2y ago

What a disaster for ARM. Qualcomm building out new chips targeting the pc market should have been a victory lap for ARM, not the source of a legal battle with their largest customer. Now potential customers might be a little more wary of ARMs licensing practices compared to the free RISC-V ISA.

wyldfire 2y ago
> Now potential customers might be a little more wary of ARMs licensing practices compared to the free RISC-V ISA. This is unbelievably understated. If I were Qualcomm, I would put parts of the Nuvia team's expertise to work designing RISC-V applications cores for their various SoC markets.
- Havoc 2y ago
  If you bet the farm on hardware but the software ecosystem isn't there yet, then you sell no hardware and sink the company. Software ecosystem either takes lots of time (see ARM) or you need to be in a position to force it (Apple & M chips). RISC-V is still a long way off from consumer (or server) prime time
  - wyldfire 2y ago
    It's a bit chicken-and-egg. People won't port their software if there's no popular targets available. Even if there are targets, if the popular targets don't perform well, people will assume the ISA is not worth porting to. No, it's not just around-the-corner but Qualcomm has a role to play here. Not like they should just sit on the sidelines and say "call me when we are RISC-V"

jasoneckert 2y ago

By the end of Day 3, it seemed quite clear that Qualcomm's legal team and position was far ahead of ARM's. I feel the following snippet sums up the whole week: "Qualcomm’s counsel turned Arm’s Piano analogy on its head. Arm compared its ISA to a Piano Keyboard design during the opening statement and used it throughout the trial. It claimed that no matter how big or small the Piano is, the keyboard design remains the same and is covered by its license. Qualcomm’s counsel extended that analogy to show how ridiculous it would be to say that because you designed the keyboard, you own all the pianos in the world. Suggesting that is what Arm is trying to do." Source: https://www.tantraanalyst.com/ta/qualcomm-vs-arm-trial-day-3-testimonies-end-dispute-funneled-down-to-two-key-questions/ https://www.tantraanalyst.com/ta/qualcomm-vs-arm-trial-day-3...

ksec 2y ago
Wholeheartedly agree. I understand where ARM is coming from, but my god the legal team from both parties were night and day apart. And from evidences ARM isn't even asking for a lot more money. They are likely fighting this from principle, but their explanation were weak, very weak. ( They were even worst then Apple during the Apple vs Qualcomm case ) I thought the whole thing Qualcomm was way more professional. ARM's case was that what they think was written in the contract, what they "should" have written in contract and what Qualcomm shows clearly contradict. It is more of a lesson for ARM to learn. And now the damage has been done. This also makes me think who was pushing this lawsuit. Softbank ? I also gained more respect to Qualcomm. After what they showed Apple vs Qualcomm's case and here. Side Note: ARM's Design has caught on. The Cortex X5 is close to Apple's Design. We should have news about X6 soon.
- fc417fc802 2y ago
  > ARM isn't even asking for a lot more money I thought the entire point of this was that Arm was trying to prevent Qualcomm from switching away from products that fall under the TLA. Isn't revenue from TLA fees a huge difference from that of ALA fees?
  - adrian_b 2y ago

dismalaf 2y ago

Nuvia never even had a finished product. Not sure what ARM thinks their losses are considering Qualcomm already had an architectural license... ARM is (edit) figuratively blowing up their ecosystem for no reason; now everyone will be racing to develop RISC-V just to cut out ARM...

HKH2 2y ago
> ARM is literally blowing up their ecosystem for no reason With explosives?

2809 2y ago

This went exactly as expected. ARM had no leg to stand on going in.

kernal 2y ago
Arm will appeal. Regardless, Arm will tighten the screws on Qualcomm in their next round of licensing negotiations.
- hajile 2y ago
  This lawsuit scared away any future startups from using ARM technology if they want the option to be acquired. This in turn means that all the awesome new chip IP is going to be designed for some other ISA and that's almost certainly RISC-V. Meanwhile, Qualcomm's ALA expires in 2033. They will almost certainly have launched RISC-V chips by then specifically because they know their royalties will be going WAY up if they don't make the switch.
  - Hilift 2y ago
    ARM has been a shambles for years since acquisition by Softbank in 2016. The China subsidiary went rogue and had to be dealt with at a time when they were considering an IPO. This has Oracle Java like lessons learned waiting to be written, sprinkled with Intel-like market position squandered. Or even the methane producing pig farmer in underworld in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
    - prewett 2y ago
      > The China subsidiary went rogue Expecting to get something out of the China market is unwise. I think there's plenty of evidence that this sort of stuff is de rigeur. Until recently you had to have a Chinese partner with 51% of the shares. What do you think is going to happen?

williamDafoe 2y ago

As I said on another forum yesterday, Qualcomm almost always wins its legal battles - when they lose its not because they are wrong but usually only because their lawyers screwed up (Broadcom lawsuit of ~2012). It's kind of a Boy Scout Company in a legal sense and they are very careful. They retrained some of their best engineers as lawyers to help them succeed in court battles ...

hashtag-til 2y ago
Retrain engineers as lawyers is clever. Better than repurpose them as subpar managers.
- kevvok 2y ago
  Oh don’t worry, they have plenty of those too
justahuman74 2y ago
How does one sign up for this retraining program?

williamDafoe 2y ago

This lawsuit will cast a cloud of darkness on any startup company that wants to build a new arm chip design! What a terribly stupid thing for ARM to do - they have basically pointed a gun at their own head and pulled the trigger!

walterbell 2y ago

For details beyond Bloomberg's three paragraph summary: https://www.tantraanalyst.com/ta/qualcomm-vs-arm-trial-day-1-opening-statements-and-surprising-revelations/ https://www.tantraanalyst.com/ta/qualcomm-vs-arm-trial-day-1... > Arm’s opening statement.. presented with a soft, almost victim-like demeanor. Qualcomm’s statement was more assertive and included many strong facts (e.g., Arm internal communications saying Qualcomm has “Bombproof” ALA). Testimonials were quite informative and revealed many interesting facts, some rumored and others unknown (e.g. Arm considered a fully vertically integrated approach). https://www.tantraanalyst.com/ta/qualcomm-vs-arm-trial-day-2-is-processor-design-derivative-of-instructing-set-architecture-isa/ https://www.tantraanalyst.com/ta/qualcomm-vs-arm-trial-day-2... > The most important discussion was whether processor design and RTL are a derivative of Arm’s technology.. This assertion of derivative seems an overreach and should put a chill down the spine of every Arm customer, especially the ones that have ALA, which include NXP, Infineon, TI, ST Micro, Microchip, Broadcom, Nvidia, MediaTek, Qualcomm, Apple, and Marvell. No matter how much they innovate in processor design and architecture, it can all be deemed Arm’s derivative and, hence, its technology. https://www.tantraanalyst.com/ta/qualcomm-vs-arm-trial-day-3-testimonies-end-dispute-funneled-down-to-two-key-questions/ https://www.tantraanalyst.com/ta/qualcomm-vs-arm-trial-day-3... https://www.tantraanalyst.com/ta/qualcomm-vs-arm-trial-day-4-both-parties-rest-their-case-and-jury-deliberations-begin/ https://www.tantraanalyst.com/ta/qualcomm-vs-arm-trial-day-4...

buckle8017 2y ago

Well yes Qualcomm is the CIA of course they won.