Qualcomm vs. Arm: The bizarro quotient just went off the scale | Hacker News Reader

Qualcomm vs. Arm: The bizarro quotient just went off the scale

theregister.com

82 pointsrntn50 comments

Really hard to imagine Arm would be so adamant about running its own business into the ground. Requiring Arm designed IP to go together with an Arm core in a SoC would destroy a large part of the Arm ecosystem.

Whatever the truth may be, this kind of shadow lurking over Arm can only be good for RISC-V.

How would this affect Apple and its M lineup? As apple uses its own GPU. Would arm attempt to extort apple ?

Apple pays 30% of their revenue for the privilege of using ARM.

It is interesting to think about the actual number, because it wouldn't be zero

The number gets smaller the more Apple sells ...

Apple is both a chip designer and a device manufacturer, and it already has a very special relationship with ARM (as in, it can do things literally nobody else can like extend the ABI or drop mandatory features they don’t care about).

So that seems unlikely.

There are two levels of ARM licensee:

* IP licensee - this is what most people are. You are allowed to "photocopy" the design of a CPU core and attached bits into your chip

* Architecture licensee - in this case you are licensing the underlying concept of the ARM instruction set (the software's interface to the processor). This means you are allowed to design new cores that use the ARM instruction set (usually based on existing ARM work)

I don't doubt that Apple has a special commercial relationship, and they do seem to be able to go further with the architecture licence than others, but most of what they do is just normal architecture licensee stuff.

Can Qualcomm or any other company own such license ?

or is it monopoly.

Qualcomm already are:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture_family#Archit...

Then on what basis they are targeted by this lawsuit but not Apple or Samsung for example.

Arm was a joint venture between Acorn and Apple and another company whose name I forget. It's not unreasonable to think that Apple might have some special benefits due to that.

VLSI Technology. As I understand it, Acorn provided the existing ARM2 chip and its design team, VLSI Technology provided design and fabrication expertise, and Apple provided capital (and the potential for the use of the design beyond Acorn).

VLSI was also the major ARM-based designer / manufacturer at the time, there was almost nobody else building SoC on ARM.

AFAIK its roughly that a startup called Nuvia was working on server focussed ARM chips. As this is a market ARM are interested in growing, they got a good deal on licensing terms etc. Then Nuvia got bought by Qualcomm, and ARM don't seem to want Qualcomm to benefit from the special deal Nuvia had. Hence the big lawsuit.

Qualcomm is being targeted because they bought Nuvia. In some ways, it's Nuvia being targeted. ARM alleges that Nuvia's architecture license required them to get ARM's approval before transferring their chip designs to another company and that without ARM's approval, all their designs had to be destroyed. Qualcomm bought Nuvia.

Apple and Samsung didn't buy a company that had designed ARM cores with this restriction. Apple bought PA Semi, but they were a PowerPC company before Apple bought them. Samsung has been making its own cores for a long time based on in-house designs. Qualcomm has tried to make its own cores and failed. It bought Nuvia because it failed to make its own cores. ARM alleges that Nuvia's license requires ARM approval for them to transfer their chip designs to another company. Therefore, Qualcomm/Nuvia is targeted by this lawsuit while Apple and Samsung aren't.

If you're ARM, you say that Apple and Samsung played by the rules of their licenses so there's no reason to sue them. If you're ARM, you say that Nuvia agreed it wouldn't sell the designs it made under Nuvia's license from ARM without ARM's approval. Nuvia then did sell the designs made under that license. Nuvia didn't play by the rules of its license, therefore they're getting sued.

When Qualcomm was developing its own internal custom cores, there was no talk of ARM suing Qualcomm - it's only come about because they bought Nuvia to bootstrap their custom cores where they had failed. ARM alleges this isn't allowed by Nuvia's license.

Apologies if you've already answered this question (all of your comments are great, but still pretty hard for me to digest), but what do you supposed the outcome of Qualcomm/Nuvia requesting ARM's approval before the acquisition might have been?

Straight up "no", "yes" (thank you for asking) or just a matter of how much money?

Probably a mix of "no" and "how much money": Nuvia definitely got a deal on licensing cost.

But a probably bigger sticking point is that Nuvia may have gotten a deal on licensing restrictions, as they were trying to pierce into an interesting market (server chips). That would be a major reason for Nuvia's licensing preventing transfer of their IP without approval.

Most of what they do is just normal architecture licensee stuff, but they absolutely have a special relationship due to their very early investment in ARM. Probably some benefits are grandfathered in.

Why are instruction sets copyrighted?

Because it takes a lot of creative and skilled effort to design one.

Does it mean that emulators like qemu are illegal? They are using instruction sets without permission.

That's a good question! Hopefully it never goes to court.

Its not the list of named instructions that are copyrighted. Its the ISA which describes how those instructions actually work which is.

Intel actually bothered to copyright the mnemonics for the 8080 assembly language, so Zilog used the same binary instructions for its Z80 but different names at the assembly level. They had many more instructions, so having a different naming scheme (LD for a lot of stuff that were different names in the 8080) helped keep the complexity reasonable.

http://popolony2k.com.br/xtras/programming/asm/nemesis-lones...

> they do seem to be able to go further with the architecture licence than others

No, they literally do things mere architecture license holders are not allowed to do: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29798744

> but most of what they do is just normal architecture licensee stuff.

Bespoke ISA extensions is not “normal architecture licensee stuff” and Apple literally does that.

Also, I believe Apple is not using any ARM cores of any kind. Their CPU cores follow the ARM ISA but are designed in-house, the GPU used to be by Imagination but is now in-house (with some clear heritage) and the multitude of codecs, vector, DSP, etc. cores may also not be ARM designs but I have no idea.

PA Semi really had a lot of tallent and Apple benefitted immensely from that acquisition.

> I believe Apple is not using any ARM cores of any kind.

That is normal for an “architecture” license, Qualcomm can do the same, they don’t have to use ARM’s cores they can build their own.

They can and they did make custom cores (Krait) in the past. Kryo is semi-custom, based on ARM designs. Nvidia made custom cores (Denver) in the past too.

As an early ARM funder (via Apple Newton) dont they have a special architecture license into perpetuity that allows them to do the M1 and basically whatever they feel like ???.

they're a joint founder (besides funder) : Acorn + Apple + VLSI --> ARM

It wouldn't impact Apple because Apple isn't acquiring Nuvia.

The article doesn't do a good job of talking about the case. I will try to summarize what is at issue (IANAL nor an expert on this case). I'm going to start by telling ARM's side of the story (since they're the ones suing).

Nuvia got a license from ARM. Part of that license was a requirement that any transfer of Nuvia's tech developed under these licenses required ARM approval. Nuvia agreed to this, presumably to get more favorable rates. Qualcomm bought Nuvia to jumpstart their custom-core business. ARM didn't consent to the transfer. Therefore, Qualcomm must destroy the Nuvia tech or reach an agreement with ARM.

Why would ARM want to do this? Let's say you're ARM. You're the king of mobile, but you have very little presence in the datacenter. Nuvia comes along and says, "we think ARM can conquer the datacenter." Awesome, you now have a company that will start rolling some sweet datacenter money your way. But what if Nuvia is just a trojan horse? What if they're just a smokescreen to create some custom cores and then have one of the companies that licenses your cores switch to only licensing your architecture? That would be terrible for your revenue. That's not Nuvia's strategy: they genuinely want to do their stated mission. Nuvia and ARM agree that ARM will have veto power over transfer of their IP. Fast forward a few years and it turns out that chip startups are hard and Qualcomm has lots of cash and the potential to bring your dreams to life - and more. Qualcomm's lawyers believe they will be able to get around the agreement - they've been able to bead back FRAND patent claims for decades, even against Apple.

Why would Nuvia agree to this? Possibly because they had no other choice. If ARM won't give you an architecture license without this, you have to agree to it. Or maybe it was a way of getting a lot of cost savings. Or maybe ARM would give you the kind of support and service that would cut years off the development of your custom cores because ARM felt safe knowing that you couldn't just sell that on to Qualcomm or MediaTek.

Ultimately, this doesn't impact Apple because Apple isn't buying Nuvia.

ARM says, "The licenses safeguarded Arm's rights and expectations by prohibiting assignment without Arm's consent, regardless of whether a contemplated assignee had its own Arm licenses."

For ARM, the potential issue here is that Qualcomm (one of their largest licensees) stops buying ARM-designed cores because they have their own designs. That is fair insofar as Qualcomm has an architecture license. However, it isn't fair if they do that by buying a company that explicitly agreed that their tech wouldn't be transferred without ARM's consent.

Let's say that ARM licensed Nuvia and the restriction was explicit: you can never sell your company to Qualcomm. Then they sell the company to Qualcomm. Not allowed, right? In this case, Qualcomm is arguing that Qualcomm has its own architecture license so it should be allowed to use its architecture license with Nuvia's designs.

ARM's complaint: https://regmedia.co.uk/2022/08/31/pacer_arm_qualcomm.pdf

Now, I don't have access to the Nuvia/ARM contract so I can't really say if ARM's complaint is valid. Did Nuvia's license require the destruction of any technology created under such license when the license terminates as ARM alleges?

Qualcomm says that the requirement to destroy information only applies to ARM-provided information and not anything developed under the license.

https://regmedia.co.uk/2022/11/01/pacer_qualcomm_arm_filing....

It's really hard to tell without actually having access to the license agreements who is right. Qualcomm's filing seems to fall back on the idea that it would be ridiculous to give ARM this kind of power over what Nuvia had created. However, companies seem to make these types of agreements all the time. ARM wanted to give Nuvia an opportunity to succeed, but also wanted to prevent Nuvia from just selling itself to Qualcomm, MediaTek, etc. So it inserted a clause to prevent that without ARM's agreement. Nuvia could be an independent company and sell all its chips and become the next big chip designer. If they wanted to be bought by Qualcomm or someone, they could negotiate with ARM for ARM's consent.

To me, this op-ed reads like Qualcomm propaganda. To me, it sounds like ARM has Qualcomm dead-to-rights and Qualcomm is trying to allege something unrelated to the case: that ARM wants to cease its architecture licenses because it sees that companies will be able to stop paying them for ARM-designed cores. That would certainly be problematic, but many ARM licensees have perpetual architecture licenses (like Apple and presumably Qualcomm as well) so it wouldn't actually impact them if ARM pivoted their business model in this way. It's also just speculation on ARM's future business model.

I definitely understand the position of those who would hate ARM in this case. ARM isn't an open-source company. They're open...to companies paying them royalties. ARM wants to protect their current revenue while also being open enough that they can enter new markets - like the datacenter. That's a hard line to balance, but it sounds like they tried to do that with Nuvia: giving them a license on good terms in exchange for a guarantee that they weren't just a trojan horse to undercut revenue from Qualcomm, MediaTek, or others.

I'm not trying to argue that's good for consumers or the market in general. As a consumer, if we eliminated all existing patents while pinky-swearing "we won't do that again" it would mean we'd continue to get all the future benefits of patents (since inventors would feel safe that their future inventions would get paid back) while not suffering the monopoly of current patents (since once the invention has been made, we no longer need to incentivize that invention). Likewise, if we just eliminated ARM's IP, it would be great - as long as we didn't make other companies worry that we'd be eliminating their IP as well. While we're eliminating IP, eliminating Qualcomm's patents might have some of the biggest impact - Qualcomm literally wants more royalties from a device if it includes a better screen or camera despite using the same LTE/5G.

I'd love to actually see the architecture license with Nuvia, but instead I guess I'll just read the sniping that Qualcomm and ARM make in their filings.

Sounds like a change of control type clause. Such clauses are common enough that I‘ve seen some and I‘m not a lawyer. There should be enough case law that Qualcomm needs to come up with really good reasons. The strategy to complicate matters might help against a less Arm‘ed opponent but is not convincing.

I think the complication here, and the case for Qualcomm, is that Qualcomm doesn't want to transfer the Nuvia architecture license to Qualcomm. Qualcomm wants to transfer what was created by Nuvia with that license.

Qualcomm argues that it would be unreasonable to allow a company like ARM to control what Nuvia created entirely on its own with the license from ARM and that a reasonable reading of the agreement would mean that Nuvia would need to destroy only the confidential IP ARM provided. I find that argument compelling, but if Nuvia agreed that restriction it becomes a bit less compelling. Imagine an ARM negotiator saying, "We'll give you an architecture license for $X, but we'll cut that rate by 75% if you agree that you can't transfer the stuff you create." It probably wasn't explicit like that (and may not exist at all according to Qualcomm), but one can see how that restriction might occur.

It's also hard to completely say where confidential ARM IP would end. For example, let's say I work at Nuvia and you work at ARM and the agreement between our companies includes a lot of access to ARM engineers. I shoot you an email, "We're having problems with X. Can you offer any guidance?" You reply, "Oh yea, this happens a lot. We suggest you do Y." Wonderful! Then two years later my cores all do Y and I designed a way to make them do Y...but it was based off the confidential help that you/ARM provided me. It's a fundamental part of the chip based off that help.

I designed it, but I designed it based off confidential information covered by the no-transfer agreement. Is my design confidential ARM IP? Your email telling me to "do Y" needs to be destroyed. But then I built lots of stuff that clearly shows "do Y" that can't really be un-done without destroying what I built. Let's say we destroy all the confidential ARM information that Nuvia got. Now Qualcomm engineers are learning "do Y" from me and my design rather than from ARM - but I only learned it from ARM. Even if I don't tell them "Oh yea, ARM said X doesn't work so don't try it," they're still learning from my design that only exists the way it does because of that confidential ARM information.

Note that in your case of "do Y" being embedded in the Nuvia design, "do Y" would likely be protected by trade secret law if it is covered by Arm's confidentiality and licensing agreement, and Qualcomm would likely not be allowed to use knowledge acquired in this way. Proving how they acquired that trade secret would keep a lot of lawyers busy though. https://www.wipo.int/tradesecrets/en/

100% this. Source: previously worked at Arm. No inside knowledge of this case but this explanation fits background perfectly, whereas the article’s suggestions are incoherent.

Also agree the article is a Qualcomm hit piece.

The red meat of the article is that ARM wants to change its licensing agreements with the whole world. Which is totally false if what you say is true.

The red meat of the article is that Qualcomm is claiming that ARM wants to change its licensing agreements. From the first paragraph:

> if what Qualcomm claims for Arm's future plans is anywhere near the truth

Thank you for this reply. I really appreciate you took the time to write this. It’s definitely a difficult thing to understand but the article made it sound like ARM was making changes that would essentially kill off ARM completely. (Atleast to me)

Last time I gave a similar explanation. I was downvoted. So it is nice to see someone else repeating it.

>To me, this op-ed reads like Qualcomm propaganda.

>I definitely understand the position of those who would hate ARM in this case

Which is like 90% on comments on this topic on HN, mostly from RISC-V supporters.

Where does a 2.2 trillion dollar company sit? Anywhere it wants to.

Apple could buy Arm easily if needed, hell they could buy SoftBank.

> Would arm attempt to extort apple?

not sure if that would happen since ARM was a joint venture of Acorn, Apple, and VLSI.

perhaps current organization of IP is very different.

Apple has likely signed a massive licensing deal with ARM at the 'architectural license' level or an even more specialized deal because Apple is Apple. I'd think that Apple's signed a nice long contract because when Apple bought PA Semi and had goals to design their own chip which takes quite a long time. Also note that you can't just buy M1 chips off digikey. Apple only makes these chips for Apple's products, and their agreement may have included that Apple wouldn't become a chip vendor.

I'm going to be so very angry if this kills Adreno. Making every device use a Mali GPU would set mobile game emulation back half a decade in performance.

Maybe it's just me, but I rather disliked the pubescent, sensationalized tone of this opinion piece.

Previous discussion[1][2] of Dylan Patel's coverage a while back.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33419138 (6 days ago, 179 comments)

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33371725 (10 days ago, 10 comments)

I quite like this sort of style, just as a change of pace from the normally pretty dry style that we're used to on these topics. Sometimes it helps strip away the layers of complexity and point out the fundamental oddities in play.

The master of this style as far as I'm concerned is Matt Levine and his "Money Stuff" column for Bloomberg. He goes back to first principles on complex matters in the finance sector, and explains it all humorously.

There might be some stylistic similarities but Matt Levine is actually good.

You can use all the fancy words you like, but if you're just going to call the writer a dick, then just call them a dick. Don't bring pubes into it.

I think that "pubescent" does not mean what you appear to think it means.

Maybe it's just me, but I rather disliked the pubescent, sensationalized tone of this opinion piece.

That's the house style of "The Register" to a "T".

Worth remembering for those wondering, could this effect Apple?

Most likely, no. Apple has every license ARM offers… and Apple actually cofounded ARM with Acorn and VLSI and had an Apple VP as its first president, and so likely gets special unlicensed privileges.

As for VLSI, it was sold to Phillips and is now owned by NXP. A company Qualcomm also tried to buy, which sells a metric ton of ARM chips themselves.

Ironic that a company Apple cofounded now is now the CPU designer for every Android phone, but so is the world.

Edit: If I was a conspiracy theorist, I would almost say that Qualcomm trying to buy a cofounder (NXP), and NVIDIA trying to buy ARM directly, were both attempts at getting some of those privileges, but I have no evidence for that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com