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Comment by rkangel | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

> 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.

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...

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.

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