Arm gives up on killing off Qualcomm's vital chip license

Arm has given up on terminating one of its key licenses with Qualcomm, leaving the latter free to continue producing homegrown Arm-compatible chips for PCs, phones, and servers. The Brit biz had sought to end that license in a lawsuit it brought against Qualcomm in 2022. That suit is rooted in Qualcomm's 2021 acquisition of a …

[teknopaul]

Way to trash your brand!

So if a start-up works with Arm,

Arm expects their work to be deleted if when they get purchased? Unless they are purchased by a mega corp with deep pockets for lawyers.

Sueing your own customers is a strange tactic.

Pushes startups to risk V.

Im sure on a UK website this will get voted down. But to me, it looks like mangelment lotechs damaging the work of the hitechs,

and pointless legal battles proving the value of open-source in biz.

[Philip Storry]

Re: Way to trash your brand!

No, I'd agree with your assessment. This is the new management failing to understand how the old management got ARM to where it is today, and the failure of this lawsuit is the best thing that could have happened to them. Especially as there's now a viable competitor in the form of RISC-V.

Whilst folks in Britain are happy to celebrate ARM's success, we're also more than happy to point out their flaws. We have plenty of examples of bad management in our post-war industries, and frankly pointing them out is almost a hobby for some!

[Bebu sa Ware]

Re: Way to trash your brand!

"We have plenty of examples of bad management in our post-war industries, and frankly pointing them out is almost a hobby for some!".

I suppose trainspotting is more rewarding than flushing out unicorns.

Not too many examples of middling or even competent management let alone whiff of excellence in any arena I suspect.

The UK isn't exactly alone in that.

[werdsmith]

Re: Way to trash your brand!

So a startup gets a special deal from ARM intended to help the startup and encourage adoption.

Big established company buys start up and gets preferential deal intended for startup.

In future, special deals for startups are harder to negotiate because of big company grab.

[EvaQ]

Re: Way to trash your brand!

Yes. Or ARM lawyers should do their work before signing contracts with starups and special non-transferable startup deals ... instead of complaining later on and then failing in court.

[williamyf]

Re: Way to trash your brand!

Actually, qualcomm had produced datacenter chips before the aquisition, had an ALA for datacenter chips, and that ALA that was more restrictive than the ALA of nuvia.

This was more akin to ARM trying to double-dip.

Future start-ups would be wise to use RISC-V unless ARM offers even sweeter deals than the one offered to nuvia, to offset the posibility of similar drama down the line...

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Way to trash your brand!

Why would start up take a deal that would cap their growth?

Such a deal would be like winning gold medal, but in one's head...

[Tron]

Re: Way to trash your brand!

ARM is owned by SoftBank now, and so is no longer British. Most of the 'British' car industry of foreign-owned too. When you sell something, you no longer own it.

[Snowy]

Re: Way to trash your brand!

Yes once the cake is eaten it is gone!

[heyrick]

Re: Way to trash your brand!

<raises an eyelid>

Somebody mention cake?

Oh. Eaten. Never mind.

<slowly lowers eyelid>

[Sceptic Tank]

There's a gun in my hand and it's pointing at your head.

I'm clearly not the trusting kind. How do you go into business with someone like ARM when they can cancel the license for your core product at any time and basically sink your business overnight? You can't just jump over to something like RISC-V without a complete redesign of your products.

[airbrush]

Re: There's a gun in my hand and it's pointing at your head.

Guess the two licenses were different enough, seems trivial to us but it's their whole income model.

[Irongut]

Re: There's a gun in my hand and it's pointing at your head.

Seems to work for Samsung, Apple and all ARM's other customers.

RISC-V still isn't a comparable solution so you'd need a lot more than a redesign if you chose it.

[Philip Storry]

The best possible outcome for ARM

The lawsuit should never have happened, but as it did happen this is the best possible outcome for ARM.

The current management seems to fail to understand what got ARM into its position today. They offer a decent design with high performance and low power consumption, they have excellent toolchains for them, but they don't tie you to a fab because they don't have one. And their licensing is quite literally pennies per chip.

That's why they're the go-to for embedded devices and small form factors. They were cheaper than their competitors AND more flexible.

The overlooked thing is that there was definitely more money on the table to be taken. Early embedded devices were using old Zilog processors, or Motorola 68000 series ones. In the high performance arena there was a plethora of options, but most notably PowerPC became popular in embedded use for a while. ARM swept them all away because their business model depended on their partner fabs choosing bulk sales over higher margins.

But Softbank want a fast return on their investment, so have decided to throw this away.

In the process they've ruined their reputation AND sent a message that they're not necessarily the reliable partner that they once were.

And they've done this at a time when a viable competitor has arrived - RISC-V. I'd bet pennies to pounds that Apple have a coupe of development boards running their operating systems on RISC-V, just in case this lawsuit succeeded.

ARM won't vanish overnight, but unless they - and their owners - understand what made them big, they're going to go into a slow decline.

Their advantage over RISC-V is a slim one, and it's in those toolchains and their higher end designs. Perhaps they'll have to abandon the lower end of the market to RISC-V eventually, but their ecosystem advantage would make low licensing fees profitable for years to come. Sadly, the greed of their current owners means I'm not sure that they'll be able to take such a long term view, and that they'll continue to do damned foolish things like suing one of their largest customers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The best possible outcome for ARM

.

... greed of their current owners ...

SoftBank, a multinational investment holding company.

Did you expect anything else?

It was a huge blunder on behalf of the UK to allow them to take over/purchase ARM.

.

[Tom66]

Re: The best possible outcome for ARM

I really don't understand why UK Govt didn't purchase a decent share (say at least 10-20%). The French government owns EDF - and that works out quite well for them. We ought to do more of the same. We don't need majority shares but strategic investments would be a good idea, especially in nationally significant infrastructure. Another one: It's absurd that something like say, the ExCeL centre is owned entirely by Abu Dhabi, for instance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The best possible outcome for ARM

.

... really don't understand why ...

Really?

What part of Tories don't you understand?

.

[Missing Semicolon]

Re: The best possible outcome for ARM

We had to obey the no-State-aid rules.

[Roland6]

Re: The best possible outcome for ARM

So does France and Germany, they have managed to own and fund industries within the rules; suggest the problem was the UK didn’t bother to read and understand the rules, because of being Tories…

[StrangerHereMyself]

Re: The best possible outcome for ARM

For now ARM has a leg-up on high-performance design but the gap is shrinking faster than they expected. And in the low-end MCU space RISC-V is eating ARM's lunch left, right and center.

[purpleduggy]

RISC-V for no other reason but to end the licensing mess or ARM and X86. Why does anyone need a license to make something? Just dump these license ISAs in the dustbin of history already.

[BlitzDiablo]

Does this mean that Qualcomm can now use Armv9 in their chips?? Both the Snapdragon 8 Elite and X-Elite use Armv8.

[Anonymous Coward]

... and what about the new server processor that they might be allegedly developing ... Will that require a new license (or will that result in a brand new legal drama soap opera)?

[Roland6]

Suspect the future was part of this, given the orange one’s propensity to hit foreign companies…

['bluey]

surely this is a legal failure in ARMs original Ts&Cs....??

I mean, lawsuits about transferring licenses have been going on forever... remember Gates and Allen buying the original DOS and giving the author a license to install it for free? There used to be an aftermarket for Windows licenses too didn't there from old equipment?

I'd have thought any license now stipulates exactly what happens if the recipient is bought / sold / tries to sell the license.

[Grunchy]

ARM! Good god y’all, what is it good for? Absolutely nuthen!

Actually, I happen to own several Raspberry Pis.

I mean, no, I don’t ever do anything with any of them.. the Pi400 is set up with the Amiga emulator. I let it sit on my desktop, it ain’t hurting much.

(I tried several times to dummy-out the RetroPi thingy, but the dang thing never worked right. Yes, yes, operator error, OBVIOUSLY. Sheesh!)

Granny got her M2 Mac Mini that I have to go figure out every once in awhile (I still have no idea what the big deal is about, really I don’t.)

Well, so much for that.

[StrangerHereMyself]

Replacement

Maybe Qualcomm showed them their progress on replacing ARM-cores with RISC-V ones and they had a change of mind. Or they got wind of other licensees jumping ship and moving towards RISC-V and realized this court case isn't doing them any good.