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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

#401

Post by snvzz »

shash wrote: post #346
adrian_b wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Designing a new clean and better ISA is easy. With the current existing experience that could be done in weeks or a few months at most, to allow for the simulation of how various variants run benchmarks, to determine the best variant. Nevertheless, designing the ISA is the only easy part. Then you have to write high-quality compilers, assemblers, linkers, debuggers and various other tools, and also good documentation…

Interesting to see RISC-V described as an "incumbent" :D

Having already shipped in 10b+ chips by two years ago, it isn't wrong.

It has already entrenched itself in the industry.

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#402

Post by AlotOfReading »

rickdeckard wrote: post #257
neonsunset wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I checked, Qualcomm did not introduce any custom instructions into the ISA. What damage are you speaking of?

The merge of the Qualcomm architecture with the Nuvia IP they acquired, which was created under a far-reaching license ARM granted to Nuvia. Combining both creates a custom architecture different from ARMs consolidated and harmonized designs offered to licensees (i.e. Blackhawk or Cortex-X). The IP of Nuvia was not supposed to be used in all the use-cases that Qualcomm intends to deploy it in (and moreover there is s…

The wrinkle is that nuvia's IP supposedly wasn't used here. Qualcomm set up an IP firewall during the acquisition and immediately switched the team over to doing new work under the existing Qualcomm license. It's about the right timeframe for the v2 chips at the very least.

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#403

Post by sangnoir »

dragonwriter wrote: post #398
h_tbob wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> 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”.

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.

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#404

Post by rickdeckard »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #402
rickdeckard wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The merge of the Qualcomm architecture with the Nuvia IP they acquired, which was created under a far-reaching license ARM granted to Nuvia. Combining both creates a custom architecture different from ARMs consolidated and harmonized designs offered to licensees (i.e. Blackhawk or Cortex-X). The IP of Nuvia was not supposed to be used in all the use-cases that Qualcomm intends to deploy it in (and moreover there is s…

The wrinkle is that nuvia's IP supposedly wasn't used here. Qualcomm set up an IP firewall during the acquisition and immediately switched the team over to doing new work under the existing Qualcomm license. It's about the right timeframe for the v2 chips at the very least.

That's not Qualcomm's position in court. Do you have any legitimate source for that statement?

Also, the foundation of Qualcomm's "Oryon" is clearly Nuvia's "Phoenix" core, which is based on Arm’s v8.7-A ISA.

After Acquisition, Qualcomm formed a team to redesign Phoenix for use in consumer-products instead of servers, creating Oryon.

That's the issue they have. Qualcomm was/is confident to resolve this IP issue of the technical QCT-division via their licensing strong-arm QTL, forcing ARM into accepting Qualcomm's view.

However, they possibly overstepped a bit, as they also expect that they don't need to license newer CPU-designs from ARM because (like Apple) they built a custom design under their architecture license.

But in reality the core design of Oryon was in parts built under the license agreement of Nuvia, which has explicit limitations in transferability (only Nuvia as-is) and usage (only servers).

In court, Qualcomm doesn't even dispute that, they argue that this contract should not be enforced and hope that the court agrees.

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#405

Post by AlotOfReading »

rickdeckard wrote: post #404
AlotOfReading wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wrinkle is that nuvia's IP supposedly wasn't used here. Qualcomm set up an IP firewall during the acquisition and immediately switched the team over to doing new work under the existing Qualcomm license. It's about the right timeframe for the v2 chips at the very least.

That's not Qualcomm's position in court. Do you have any legitimate source for that statement? Also, the foundation of Qualcomm's "Oryon" is clearly Nuvia's "Phoenix" core, which is based on Arm’s v8.7-A ISA. After Acquisition, Qualcomm formed a team to redesign Phoenix for use in consumer-products instead of servers, creating Oryon. That's the issue they have. Qualcomm was/is confident to resolve this IP issue of th…

Picked it up from skimming the irrational analysis piece on it today, but it looks like it's unsubstantiated speculation on oryon v2.

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#406

Post by ddingus »

lights0123 wrote: post #122
ddingus wrote: post #119

Damn! So what happens to the Raspberry Pi? Edit: OK, following the discussion now. Nothing in the short term, potentially longer term.

The Raspberry Pi uses Broadcom, not Qualcomm chips. It also uses cores designed by Arm, which are not affected by today's news.

Yeah this is a total botch for me.

That is what I get for posting tired.

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#407

Post by ywvcbk »

simfree wrote: post #396
GeekyBear wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By all means, point to some official statement showing that Google cannot market the Pixel phone as supporting the 4g/5g standards due to Google's use of Samsung modems.

Google certainly tortured me and everyone else I knew who had a Pixel 6 (or Pro) phone, you would randomly lose cellular and WiFi and they would not recover on their own, necessitating a reboot or toggling airplane mode to get back online. The Exynos chipset is cursed, Samsung only ships it in markets where performance is a lower priority than price, hence not shipping Exynos in the US outside the Google Pixel whitel…

> hence not shipping Exynos in the US

I thought it was primarily because of some patent/royalty dispute with Qualcomm?

And/or it not having support for CDMA which was not relevant outside of the US. Now that it’s not an issue I wouldn’t be surprised if Samsung would transition to Exynos eventually (they are already apparently selling some models).

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#408

Post by ywvcbk »

hajile wrote: post #52
mushufasa wrote: post #36

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 ow…

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 meantim…

> If ARM wins

Qualcomm pays them.

> Qualcomm moves to RISC-V

That’s like chopping your foot off to save on shoes…

It would take years for Qualcomm to develop a competitive RISC-V chip. Just look at how long it took them to design a competitive ARM core…

Of course they could use this this threat (even if it’s far-fetched) to negotiate a somewhat more favorable settlement.

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#409

Post by ywvcbk »

markhahn wrote: post #285
starspangled wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sidi…

"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 impl…

> 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.

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#410

Post by iggldiggl »

Const-me wrote: post #327
B1FF_PSUVM wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Binary-only translators exist, for instance Apple has https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software)

Apple gross revenue is 10x the Qualcomm, and the difference in net income is even larger. Apple could easily afford these R&D costs. Another obstacle, even if Qualcomm develops an awesome emulator / JIT compiler / translation layer, I’m not sure the company is in the position to ship that thing to market. Unlike Apple, Qualcomm doesn’t own the OS. Such emulator would require extensive support in the Android OS. I’m n…

> I’m not sure Google will be happy supporting huge piece of complicated third-party software as a part of their OS.

Yeah, for the upcoming/already happening 64-bit-only transition (now that Qualcomm is dropping 32-bit support from their latest CPU generations), Google has decided to go for a hard cut-off, i.e. old apps that are still 32-bit-only simply won't run anymore.

Though from what I've heard, some third party OEMs (I think Xiaomi at least?) still have elected to ship a translation layer for their phones at the moment.

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