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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

#471

Post by blurbleblurble »

orev wrote: post #457
blurbleblurble wrote: post #451

Meanwhile RISC-V slowly but surely picks up momentum.

It’s getting extremely tiresome to see RISC-V comments in every thread about this. It’s unnecessary and irrelevant.

It's arguably the most glaring element of background context I can imagine, there's a reason people are mentioning it. Just because it's not ready to compete right now, in the medium-long term it's looking like a flat out alternative to ARM. ARM wants their slice of the money now because this decade could easily end up being peak ARM times. Sell high.

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#472

Post by ywvcbk »

initramfs wrote: post #470
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…

> Companies like Qualcomm would have zero incentives to share their designs with anyone. And yet, that's what linux did in 1991- they shared the code, lowering the cost of buying an operating system. I wouldn't say there is zero incentive, but it certainly lowers the incentive without a profitable complementary hardware implementation that can be sold for less than the proprietary isa when there is a royalty free lic…

Hardware is not software. Almost nothing alike. Surr it might happen for low-end/old chips with low margins but nothing cutting edge or competitive on the high-end

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#473

Post by probell »

wmf wrote: post #167
fargle wrote: post #102

> If Arm follows through with the license termination, Qualcomm would be prevented from doing its own designs using Arm’s instruction set i'm not sure this is true. certainly "chip" IP has been a real legal quagmire since, forever. but it was my understanding that you could neither patent nor copyright simply an "instruction set". presumably what you get from ARM with an architecture license would be patent licenses…

You can patent something like "any possible hardware circuit that implements [the functionality of some weird yet mandatory ARM instruction]". The patent doesn't cover emulators because they're not hardware. Way back in the day there were some MIPS patents that only covered a few instructions so people would build not-quite-MIPS clone CPUs without paying any royalties.

Thanks for highlighting Lexra, my first startup. After becoming a patent agent and strategist 15 years later, these are my takeaways.

1. Little companies don't sue big companies. No need. Startups exist because they have something new and move faster. 2. Big companies don't sue little companies. Too little money, it would look anticompetitive to the gov't, and most startups fail, anyway. 3. Medium companies sue little companies when they start taking away prime customers.

ARM sued Picoturbo and they settled. Lexra chose to fight MIPS. Lexra and MIPS hurt each other. That gave ARM the opportunity to dominate the industry.

On an unrelated topic, readers looking for concise basic info on patenting that your attorney might not mention might enjoy. https://www.probell.com/patents

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#474

Post by Paianni »

hajile wrote: post #290
gonzo wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Qualcomm is almost certainly ARM's biggest customer. You think Qualcomm is larger than Apple?

Absolutely. There are nearly 2B smartphones sold each year and only 200M laptops, so Apple's 20M laptop sales are basically a rounding error and not worth considering. As 15-16% of the smartphone market, Apple is generally selling around 300m phones. I've read that Qualcomm is usually around 25-35% of the smartphone market which would be 500-700M phones. But Qualcomm almost certainly includes ARM processors in their…

Qualcomm may have the market but Apple has the profit.

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#475

Post by initramfs »

ywvcbk wrote: post #472
initramfs wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Companies like Qualcomm would have zero incentives to share their designs with anyone. And yet, that's what linux did in 1991- they shared the code, lowering the cost of buying an operating system. I wouldn't say there is zero incentive, but it certainly lowers the incentive without a profitable complementary hardware implementation that can be sold for less than the proprietary isa when there is a royalty free lic…

Hardware is not software. Almost nothing alike. Surr it might happen for low-end/old chips with low margins but nothing cutting edge or competitive on the high-end

software used to be hardware limited, and therefore efficient. Today Software relies on many more transistors per joule to compute a number of operations in high-level languages. I'd agree 22nm isn't leading edge, but foundries like Skywater could theoretically provide more options at 65nm and 90nm in coming years that are fully open source, except for the cost of the foundry technique perhaps: https://riscv.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/1130-19.07.18-L...

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#476

Post by ywvcbk »

initramfs wrote: post #475
ywvcbk wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardware is not software. Almost nothing alike. Surr it might happen for low-end/old chips with low margins but nothing cutting edge or competitive on the high-end

software used to be hardware limited, and therefore efficient. Today Software relies on many more transistors per joule to compute a number of operations in high-level languages. I'd agree 22nm isn't leading edge, but foundries like Skywater could theoretically provide more options at 65nm and 90nm in coming years that are fully open source, except for the cost of the foundry technique perhaps: https://riscv.org/wp-c…

Yes, I think we might be talking about slightly different things. I don’t really see OS model working for higher-end / leading-edge chips.

In segments where chips are almost an interchangeable commodity and the R&D cost might be insignificant relative to manufacturing/foundry it would make a lot more sense.

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#477

Post by astrange »

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. Apple has matrix extensions that others don't, for example.

Not anymore, M4 supports ARM SME instead.

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#478

Post by astrange »

notpushkin wrote: post #373
szundi wrote: post #173

On mobile devices efficiency is so important, I don't see how Qualcomm would be able to live without ARM licences. RISC-V and other architectures like x86-64 are nice, actually I think the peripheral libraries, boot and stuff like that are bigger headache to replace for Qualcomm's clients given that they can just switch the gcc to a different arch - still if your code is 25% less efficient, that'll be quite noticable…

You're assuming there is something inherent to Arm specifically that makes it efficient. I'm not sure about that: it just evolved naturally as it was used in portable devices predominantly. Same thing can be done with RISC-V-based designs, but obviously it will take a lot of time.

ARMv8 is not an evolution of previous designs, it was created by and for Apple's phone SoCs.

Whereas RISC-V was created by academics who mostly just claim it's the best because they invented it.

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#479

Post by snvzz »

astrange wrote: post #478
notpushkin wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming there is something inherent to Arm specifically that makes it efficient. I'm not sure about that: it just evolved naturally as it was used in portable devices predominantly. Same thing can be done with RISC-V-based designs, but obviously it will take a lot of time.

ARMv8 is not an evolution of previous designs, it was created by and for Apple's phone SoCs. Whereas RISC-V was created by academics who mostly just claim it's the best because they invented it.

I suggest having a look into the actual pedigree of RISC-V, rather than making wild guesses.

It might have been born in academia, but from those drafts until the first ratified spec there's a good decade of high quality input from distinguished industry veterans.

Re: Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

#480

Post by kllrnohj »

kernal wrote: post #421
Tostino wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you think that? The Play store already supports x86 binaries when necessary.

Because an extremely low percentage of apps support x86.

An extremely low ship x86 support but a huge number support it already for internal uses. The emulator, for both local and CI, and any host-side tests are all x86. These are extremely common to have for everyone. Big companies love having CI, and small ones love the emulator to avoid needing a ~dozen dev phones for the different API levels and form factors.

But importantly since ARM and RISC-V have the same memory model, unlike x86, then it really is just going to be an extra compilation target for any native libraries and that's about it.

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