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Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

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Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#31

Post by bhouston »

tightbookkeeper wrote: post #27
bhouston wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people do not realize how slow RISC-V is right now. Yes, it will definitely get better, but it will take some time given how far behind it is. Like 30x slower than a top of the line Apple Mx series CPU. Maybe there is a high performing RISC-V chip out there but I haven't yet run into one. RISC-V benchmarks: https://browser.geekbench.com/search?q=RISC-V . Compare to an Apple M4 benchmark: https://browser.geekbenc…

Is it slower by design or just because it’s implementations have not been aggressively optimized?

I believe it is just lacking aggressive optimization. ARM is basically RISC as well, so it isn't an architectural limitation.

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#32

Post by NelsonMinar »

magnio wrote: post #15
MBCook wrote: post #10

Let’s just assume this happens for a moment. What do Android OEMs do? They can’t use Apple chips, or now Qualcomm chips. Switching to another architecture is a big deal. Would this basically hand the Android market to Samsung and their Exynos chips? Or does another short term viable competitor exist?

MediaTek is still available.

Don't know about cell phones but their Chromebooks are pretty good.

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#34

Post by greesil »

MBCook wrote: post #10

Let’s just assume this happens for a moment. What do Android OEMs do? They can’t use Apple chips, or now Qualcomm chips. Switching to another architecture is a big deal. Would this basically hand the Android market to Samsung and their Exynos chips? Or does another short term viable competitor exist?

Everyone's going to have to buy a Pixel phone, ahahahahaahahha.

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#35

Post by snvzz »

dagmx wrote: post #23
talldayo wrote: post #2

Could be the best thing that's ever happened for RISC-V!

Maybe fine for Android but this will set their windows plans back another decade if it happens It has taken them that long to make arm be a thing on windows and that’s building on people porting stuff to arm for Mac to finally get momentum. RISC-V with windows will be an eternity to be feasible.

>RISC-V with windows will be an eternity to be feasible.

Will it now?

Microsoft was already deeply involved in 2021 as per that years' summit RISC-V Foundation's technical talks. Ztso was pushed by them.

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#36

Post by mushufasa »

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.

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#37

Post by [deleted] »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #8
nahnahno wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think they have a plan B. Architectures take half a decade of work. Porting from risc-v to arm is not a matter of a backup plan, it’s that of a very costly pivot.

No kidding; and while RISC-V is a massive improvement, I hate to be the wet blanket, but RISC-V will not change signed boot, bootloader restrictions, messy or closed source drivers, carrier requirements, DRM implementation, or other painful day to day paper cuts. Open source architecture != Open source software and certainly != Open source hardware; no matter what the YouTubers think.

[deleted]

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#38

Post by snvzz »

refulgentis wrote: post #28
wmf wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropping "C" overnight and thus making all existing Linux software incompatible is completely out of the question. Android was never really Linux though.

This is officially too much quibbling, even if we settled philosophical questions like "Is Android Linux?" Then "If not, would dropping C make RISC nonviable", there isn't actually an Android version that'll do RISC anywhere near on the horizon. Support _reversed_ for it, got pulled 5 months ago

>Support _reversed_ for it, got pulled 5 months ago

Cursory research will yield that this was a technicality with no weight in Google's strong commitment to RISC-V Android support.

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#39

Post by tightbookkeeper »

bhouston wrote: post #31
tightbookkeeper wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it slower by design or just because it’s implementations have not been aggressively optimized?

I believe it is just lacking aggressive optimization. ARM is basically RISC as well, so it isn't an architectural limitation.

(Naive question) then is it really a big hurdle for a company who knows how to make arm chips to try making riscv chips?

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#40

Post by bhouston »

tightbookkeeper wrote: post #39
bhouston wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it is just lacking aggressive optimization. ARM is basically RISC as well, so it isn't an architectural limitation.

(Naive question) then is it really a big hurdle for a company who knows how to make arm chips to try making riscv chips?

I suspect not? I think the principles and methods of optimization are the same.

But I say this as a software guy who doesn't actually know CPU design.

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