How can this even be legal? Wouldn't this be against anti trust laws? It is like Intel saying that it is forbidden to have an Nvidia GPU in their laptop if an Intel CPU is used.
Unlike intel, ARM seems at least open to the idea to licensing such packages somewhat (see Nvidia, Apple) whereas Intel traditionally hasn't been too interested in letting 3rd parties fiddle under the lid of their silicon.
It's a regression of how things used to be with ARM, but it's not saying you can't connect 3rd party accelerators to an ARM SoC fullstop, just that it has to be seperate dies/chiplet/SoC. Your example of adding an Nvidia GPU into an intel system is still fine, so long as they are separate components.
So no, this is not antitrust worthy in the slightest.
If there is any reason to treat them differently, that would be the weight they have in the mobile CPU market, not the fact that they decided to sell licenses.
All IP is monopolistic, and there is no first sale doctrine. If I buy a physical book from you, it is mine to do with as I see fit. If I license the right to publish your book as part of a set, I am not necessarily allowed to sell that set into your channels and undercut your pricing. The terms of the contract dictate that, and it is not at all an antitrust violation of our contract says I am only to sell the set to schools or whatever.
It is relevant when IP is used in an anticompetitive way, like Microsoft’s licensing terms back in the day. I can see a company making the argument that ARM is dominant enough that onerous terms with one company and not the others is anticompetitive (not saying that it is the case, but I have seen worse points seeing some successes recently).
Otherwise yes, I agree with everything you said.
Can you make me not call it an ARM chip, probably. Can you compel me not to make the chip at all -- crazy.
It all depends on the licensing agreement. The vast majority of them have this sort of restrictions. The way it works is that a license agreement gives some rights, but not all of them. If you get a license, you have to follow the terms you agreed, which often have a whole bunch of restrictions. Whether you thing it is preposterous is not really here nor there.
It is not far fetched to have agreements covering one type of cores and not others, or things like that. Or, in software terms, a license to run some software on 12 cores and not 13. Or to install it on netbooks and not proper laptops.
A license is an authorisation to use some IP. It does not make the IP yours.
> Can you make me not call it an ARM chip, probably. Can you compel me not to make the chip at all -- crazy.
Well, then I guess the world is crazy.
In a case like this, you’d be perfectly able to make a chip, just not with the IP tied to a licensing term you don’t agree with… Well, some companies try to have more restrictive terms than that occasionally, like Microsoft who prevented OEMs from selling computers without Windows, or Google who prevents OEMs from making Android-derivative devices.
This kind of thinking makes the world worse for everyone except parties that have leverage. No matter what, no company should be able exert so much will over another that it actively prevents anyone but them iterating on their design.
Any time you see an agreement like “we’ll give you x only on the condition you not compete with us” alarm bells should ring.
Frankly - many of those other firms are antitrust worries too; it's just that legal antitrust tools are quite weak and (IMHO) insufficient for ensuring competition, and other borderline monopolies likely have better lobbyists. And that might work against ARM here, because the very customers ARM will be squeezing here are those entities with potentially harmful amounts of market (and political) influence.
We'll see how this develops, but I wouldn't take it for granted that this is not antitrust worthy in the slightest. It probably won't get to that, but to entirely exclude the possibility...
ARM is certainly large but I don’t think anyone would argue there are no alternatives (this thread is full of many!).
And the angle to get antitrust here is pretty nuclear: it would require saying that Arm IP is so critical that the company has lost the right to license it as they see fit. Not quite a revocation of their IP rights, but close.
So yeah we can’t totally rule it out, but such an action seems incredibly unlikely.
Especially given the specifics of the complaint here, where someone wants to leverage a beneficial price they get from Arm to undercut Arm in the market. It reminds me of that “TV antennas in a datacenter” company that sought to leverage broadcast TV licensing for internet streaming delivery: a clever troll but never going to stand up to contract law, and unlikely to get regulatory support.