Qualcomm Processors Properly Licensed From Arm, US Jury Finds

Jurors delivered a mixed verdict on Friday, ruling that Qualcomm had properly licensed its central processor chips from Arm. This decision effectively concludes Arm's lawsuit against Qualcomm, which had the potential to disrupt the global smartphone and PC chip markets.

The dispute stemmed from Qualcomm's $1.4 billion acquisition of chip startup Nuvia in 2021. Arm claimed Qualcomm breached contract terms by using Nuvia's designs without permission, while Qualcomm maintained its existing agreement covers the acquired technology. Arm demanded Qualcomm destroy the Nuvia designs created before the acquisition. Reuters reports: An eight-person jury in U.S. federal court deadlocked on the question of whether Nuvia, a startup that Qualcomm purchased for $1.4 billion in 2021, breached the terms of its license with Arm. But the jury found that Qualcomm did not breach Nuvia's license with Arm.

The jury also found that Qualcomm's chips created using Nuvia technology, which have been central to Qualcomm's push into the personal computer market, are properly licensed under its own agreement with Arm, clearing the way for Qualcomm to continue selling them.

One moron down

[locater16]

One moronic CEO brought on to squeeze money out of a tech company by destroying the customer base brought low, thousands more to go...

The writing's on the wall

[Guspaz]

Qualcomm's license can only be renewed through 2033 without ARM's agreement, which means that if ARM wants to, they can legally cut off Qualcomm's license at that point. If I were Qualcomm, I'd be working mighty hard to migrate to another instruction set by then, or at least a fallback plan in case license renegotiations fall through.

I guess RISCV is the only actual viable alternative, so Qualcomm would need to dump a significant amount of resources into pushing the state of Android's RISCV support forward over the next nine years.

Re:

[ShanghaiBill]

Qualcomm would need to dump a significant amount of resources into pushing the state of Android's RISCV

Qualcomm has a market cap of $170B, so it has plenty of resources.

Apple's M1 had an NRE cost of about $3B. Qualcomm can afford a similar investment.

Even better, Qualcomm could team up and form a consortium. There are plenty of other companies that'd love to get out of ARM's thumbscrews.

Re:

[williamyf]

Qualcomm's license can only be renewed through 2033 without ARM's agreement, which means that if ARM wants to, they can legally cut off Qualcomm's license at that point. If I were Qualcomm, I'd be working mighty hard to migrate to another instruction set by then, or at least a fallback plan in case license renegotiations fall through.

I guess RISCV is the only actual viable alternative, so Qualcomm would need to dump a significant amount of resources into pushing the state of Android's RISCV support forward over the next nine years.

OpenPower and OpenSpark are also available, and free of charge instruction sets. ;-)

But yeah, Qualcomm will have to "pull an Apple" and start moving to RISC-V in earnest.

Re: The writing's on the wall

[Gavino]

Arm won't be able to cut off Qualcomm's license - the US government won't let them. We live in a world where Governments increasingly dictate terms to tech companies, when it's in their best interests to do so, and its in the US government's best interests to do so. Think of the US government's propping up of Intel's domestic fab, or Europe forcing Apple to adopt USC-C. Anyway, Arm might be sold off by then who knows.

Re:

[ezdiy]

Reminder Qualcomm was aggressively pushing for RISC-V extension since 2022 that would allow for a trivial frontend swap [riscv.org] on Nuvia. If this went through last year, we'd be quite possibly seeing "RISC-V Elite", not Oryon right now.

For better or worse SiFive isn't going along with it. First its a bad look to let QC dominate the consortium on the market, plus they're probably right on that ARM (uarch-wise) compatibility approach would just add bloat just to save Qualcomm a boatload of money so that they don't ha

Re:

[ChunderDownunder]

Interesting.

Nvidia also has a contingency with Project Denver if they ever need to switch ISA.

Post case analysis - R&D version

[alteregon]

Now what I'd like to see is based on what ARM and Qualcomm spent on this lawsuit start to finish, what could each company's R&D teams have accomplished with those respective expenditures. Both companies have a vested interest in seeing ARM architecture market share increase.

Patent troll won

[rickkw]

Was hoping for the day that that notorious patent troll tastes its own medicine. That's a disappointment.

Suing your customers is stupid

[haunebu]

ARM suing its single biggest customer was completely idiotic. Not only suing Qualcomm, but delivering a notice that ARM would be canceling Qualcomm's license entirely during Qualcomm's investor day event in New York. Spiteful bastards.

Now the jury smacked ARM back down and Qualcomm - along with every other major ARM licensee - will accelerate the move to RISC-V as a result. Except Apple, because they have a sweetheart deal of a license through 2040.

ARM will reap what they sowed here. Morons.