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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

#441

Post by starspangled »

ksec wrote: post #431
starspangled wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really see how this follows. Fixed length instructions are a well known and highly desirable property for instruction decoders (at the cost of some density), which has been known about and done since the first RISCs. And ARMv8 is basically just a warmed-over RISC with very little new or innovative in there. It's just an ISA. ARM Ltd is basically rent-seeking on keeping the ISA proprietary, same as Intel and A…

>If ARM gets upset because someone wanted fixed-length instructions standardized in RISCV that's really the height of hypocrisy. ARM never said that. >but not to the value of extracting hundreds of millions of dollars ever year. ARM makes money on selling ARM design, not from their ISA licensing.

> ARM never said that.

Someone did.

> ARM makes money on selling ARM design, not from their ISA licensing.

That's not correct, they make money from ISA licensing. That's called their architectural license, and that is what is being canceled here.

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#442

Post by starspangled »

aseipp wrote: post #418
starspangled wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> RISCV fragmentation hell that ARM used to suffer from Does "fragmentation hell" refer to Age Old problem of massive incompatibility in the Linux codebase, or the more "modern" problem people refer to which is the problem of device trees and old kernel support for peripheral drivers? Because you can rest assured that this majestic process will not be changed at all for RISC-V devices. You will still be fed plenty of…

Neither. It refers to proliferation of incompatible extensions that plagued ARM. Most well known one was hf incompatibility, but there were others too.

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#443

Post by ywvcbk »

starspangled wrote: post #413
ywvcbk wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. O…

> 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…

> No different than ARM

Everyone has more or less the same access to relatively competitive Cortex and Neoverse cores. As ARM’s finances show that’s not a very good business model so it’s unlikely anyone would do that with RISC-V.

You can make opensource cores, but nobody investing massive amounts of money/resources required to design high end CPUs will make them open source. The situation with ARM is of course not ideal but at least the playing field is somewhat more even.

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#444

Post by ywvcbk »

6SixTy wrote: post #426
ywvcbk wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. O…

Even the base integer instructions are Turing complete in RISC-V. Only instruction extensions that could be a point of contention are Matrix operations, as T-Head and Tenstorrent already have their own. Even then, I can't find a reason how this "clash" is any different than those in the x64 or ARM space. Even if Qualcomm makes their own RISC-V chips that are somehow incompatible with everyone else's, they can't adver…

> they can't advertise that it's RISC-V due to the branding guidelines

Unless it’s a superset of RISC-V. They can still have proprietary extensions

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#445

Post by klelatti »

What’s missing from most of these analyses is the perspective that Arm really doesn’t want Qualcomm to become a dominant - architecture license (ALA) based - vendor of Arm based SoCs. Bad for Arm and for Arm’s other customers and the ecosystem.

Whilst Qualcomm has a wide ranging ALA that’s always a possibility. This might just be an opportunistic move to remove that threat to Arm’s business model.

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#446

Post by notpushkin »

klelatti wrote: post #445

What’s missing from most of these analyses is the perspective that Arm really doesn’t want Qualcomm to become a dominant - architecture license (ALA) based - vendor of Arm based SoCs. Bad for Arm and for Arm’s other customers and the ecosystem. Whilst Qualcomm has a wide ranging ALA that’s always a possibility. This might just be an opportunistic move to remove that threat to Arm’s business model.

Bad for Arm – sure. But that’s because Arm themselves want to be the dominant vendor. Arm’s other customers lose either way.

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#447

Post by klelatti »

notpushkin wrote: post #446
klelatti wrote: post #445

What’s missing from most of these analyses is the perspective that Arm really doesn’t want Qualcomm to become a dominant - architecture license (ALA) based - vendor of Arm based SoCs. Bad for Arm and for Arm’s other customers and the ecosystem. Whilst Qualcomm has a wide ranging ALA that’s always a possibility. This might just be an opportunistic move to remove that threat to Arm’s business model.

Bad for Arm – sure. But that’s because Arm themselves want to be the dominant vendor. Arm’s other customers lose either way.

> Arm’s other customers lose either way.

Sure Arm has done things - eg pricing v8 to v9 that customers hate. But do you really think Mediatek for example wants to compete with Qualcomm selling Nuvia based cores with a low ALA based royalty.

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#448

Post by initramfs »

ARM is owned by an investment bank, SoftBank. It operates kind of like Goldman Sachs. ARM is becoming a chipmaker, just like Intel. But Intels' CHIP grant is more similar to a pre-emptive 2008-era bailout of the banks (TARP), for being "too big to fail." (because it makes defense chips) https://irrationalanalysis.substack.com/p/arms-chernobyl-mom...

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#449

Post by michaelt »

As I understand it [1] the context is:

Qualcomm had one type of ARM license, granting them one type of IP at one royalty rate.

A startup called "Nuvia" had a different type of ARM license, granting them more IP but at a higher royalty rate. Nuvia built their own cores based on the extra IP.

Then Qualcomm brought Nuvia - and they think they should keep the IP from the Nuvia license, but keep paying the lower royalty rate from the Qualcomm license.

ARM offer a dizzying array of licensing options. Tiny cores for cheap microcontrollers, high-end cores for flagship smartphones. Unmodifiable-but-fully-proven chip layouts, easily modifiable but expensive to work with verilog designs. Optional subsystems like GPUs where some chip vendors would rather bring their own. Sub-licensable soft cores for FPGAs. I've even heard of non-transferable licenses - such as discounts for startups, which only apply so long as they're a startup.

If Nuvia had a startup discount that wasn't transferable when they were acquired, and Qualcomm has a license with a different royalty rate but covering slightly different IP, I can see how a disagreement could arise.

[1] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/31/arm_sues_qualcomm/

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#450

Post by Pet_Ant »

notpushkin wrote: post #446
klelatti wrote: post #445

What’s missing from most of these analyses is the perspective that Arm really doesn’t want Qualcomm to become a dominant - architecture license (ALA) based - vendor of Arm based SoCs. Bad for Arm and for Arm’s other customers and the ecosystem. Whilst Qualcomm has a wide ranging ALA that’s always a possibility. This might just be an opportunistic move to remove that threat to Arm’s business model.

Bad for Arm – sure. But that’s because Arm themselves want to be the dominant vendor. Arm’s other customers lose either way.

So previously ARM mainly just licensed the ISA or licensed already made cores for people who wanted to creating their own and now they want to shift the paradigm to mainly being that you buy cores from ARM and get them to customise them for you? They want to move up the food chain?
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