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Arm reportedly changing licensing model to prohibit custom GPUs and TPUs

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Re: Arm reportedly changing licensing model to prohibit custom GPUs and TPUs

#31
post #2

That seems like an incredibly dumb decision. They do realize that RISC-V is right around the corner, and could quickly end much of the ARM chip market if licensing deals are this onerous?

It’s not just right around the corner, those chips are already in design phase: Jim Keller at Tenstorrent first wanted to license x86, then ARM to build AI chip, but as both said no, he went with RISC-V. The funniest part is that he licensed the RISC-V chip from SiFive, which is now part of Intel.

SiFive is not part of Intel. There were reportedly talks last year that fell through.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-failed-to-buy-sifive

Re: Arm reportedly changing licensing model to prohibit custom GPUs and TPUs

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just right around the corner, those chips are already in design phase: Jim Keller at Tenstorrent first wanted to license x86, then ARM to build AI chip, but as both said no, he went with RISC-V. The funniest part is that he licensed the RISC-V chip from SiFive, which is now part of Intel.

SiFive is not part of Intel. There were reportedly talks last year that fell through. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-failed-to-buy-sifive

Rumor is Intel made an offer and were laughed out of the room.

Re: Arm reportedly changing licensing model to prohibit custom GPUs and TPUs

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The early boot process (SBI) was standardized years ago, and widely deployed in current hardware. > > Late boot process (UEFI on RISC-V) was standarized early this year, ahead of relevant hardware (servers, laptops, workstations). UEFI was standardized for ARM many years before hardware arrived. It didn't matter. It was widely ignored. As long as we have to use U-Boot and use DTs provided by the OS instead, we're g…

>The ability to chop up the ISA is going to have ugly side-effects The instruction set is already reduced (hense RISC) to the bare minimum for the two important profiles: microcontrolers and linux machines. Microcontrollers will be 32-bit and will nessesarliy have a different tool-chain from 64 bit computers as they won't be running Linux. The only question is will most Linux machines use vector. That is probably a y…

>The only question is will most Linux machines use vector. That is probably a yes.

And, while RVA22 does not require vector, the next profile, whenever that happens, is.

Re: Arm reportedly changing licensing model to prohibit custom GPUs and TPUs

#34
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is suggesting they cant sell their license to another company. ARM is only claiming those special deals, likely cost per core are only applicable to Nuvia and not Qualcomm.

Arm is suggesting that they have language in their license explicitly preventing sale of the license.

It would be irrelevant to the lawsuit, as Qualcomm have a license that allows them to create designs such as the one they got from Nuvia, to begin with.

Re: Arm reportedly changing licensing model to prohibit custom GPUs and TPUs

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just right around the corner, those chips are already in design phase: Jim Keller at Tenstorrent first wanted to license x86, then ARM to build AI chip, but as both said no, he went with RISC-V. The funniest part is that he licensed the RISC-V chip from SiFive, which is now part of Intel.

SiFive is not part of Intel. There were reportedly talks last year that fell through. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-failed-to-buy-sifive

[deleted]

Re: Arm reportedly changing licensing model to prohibit custom GPUs and TPUs

#36
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SiFive is not part of Intel. There were reportedly talks last year that fell through. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-failed-to-buy-sifive

Rumor is Intel made an offer and were laughed out of the room.

Walking away from 2bn is gutsy.
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