ARM's Chernobyl Moment | Hacker News Reader

ARM's Chernobyl Moment

irrationalanalysis.substack.com

Arm is canceling Qualcomm's chip design license

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41920401

I don't think ARM has much to worry about from RISC V in the near future.

RISC V is neat, I even ordered a SBC, but it's no where near refined enough for usage in anything aside from tiny IOT devices.

I do think this is the end of Windows on ARM though. To my knowledge ( I can always be wrong) ARM is suing over the chips ultimately included in WoA PCs, the Snapdragon Elite and Plus chips.

Once the dust settles, I suspect Qualcomm will just stop making those chips.

Or we live in wacky world and Qualcomm will be prevented from making anything outside of reference designs.

Mediatek's time to shine?

Disagree.

If enough money moves behind RISC-V, it will catch up. This is exactly how that could happen.

No way Qualcomm just stops selling these chips. As the article says, it is not just Windows machines but smart phones as well.

This will all conclude with a new agreement between Qualcomm and ARM. They both need it to.

If Qualcomm has to stop using ARM for their high-end agenda, their next attempt will use RISC-V for sure.

So ARM is just playing hardball ?

I like RISC V, the idea of an open standard is better for everyone. In theory hobbyists could eventually make their own chips.

I'm always open to being wrong, Chat GPT 5( or whatever they have in the lab that's not public) might be able to design RISC V chips faster than we can imagine.

China is the enough money. They have reasons to dedicate government resources to keeping RISCV development moving along until it is a real option for all current use cases.

I’d bet significant money that Qualcomm would invest heavily to make riscV successful if they get hosed by Arm. Its take a few years, but they will succeed.

I mean a RISC-V netbook with a Linux GUI already exists. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qDGV6LTOnk

That is what is already exists. Put some money into it and you have a real product. The work Microsoft did for Windows on ARM I'm sure is mostly compatible. Windows has been a large number of architectures in the past (PowerPC, Itanium, Alpha, MIPS) so portability is in it's DNA and there isn't much ARM-native & hardcoded Windows software out there.

I was thinking of this

https://deepcomputing.io/product/dc-roma-risc-v-laptop-ii/

ARM is still leaps ahead though.

The next 5 years will be interesting, I don't think ARM is stupid enough to price themselves out of the market.

>RISC-V was in disarray, fragmented beyond recognition.

I get this is satire, but still, there's no factual basis to it.

The article begins by ignoring the design faults of the RBMK reactor. I can't take it seriously.

Well if he waited he wouldn't have run into the design fault in the first place.

TechTechPotato (Ian Cutress’ YouTube channel) has a nice summary/analysis video of this here: https://youtu.be/j6kX7JWMiV0

As well as a longer form podcast video with George from Chips and Cheese: https://www.youtube.com/live/T20rxYUySPw

> Every customer (excluding Nvidia and Apple) is going to start working on RISC-V migration with vigor.

I am happy to take that bet, if the author is willing

Another RISC-V advocacy article.

The stocks are not down so much today (Thursday the 24th), not beyond the general jitters the market's had of late. But the fact is, this wasn't really the triggering of mutual self-destruction. More likely than not, Qualcomm will be able to negotiate somewhere between their higher and lower rates with the Nuvia chips providing the axis around which the debate will turn. Ultimately, I thing, the re-negotiated terms will benefit Qualcomm, as I don't see them getting worse. But how long the litigation will take and how hard ARM can negotiate with Qualcomm is anyone's guess. For something better than a wild guess, we can look at how Qualcomm handled their modem litigation with Apple. Qualcomm couldn't recognize a lot of revenue and therefore profits for many years due to Apple withholding payments https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/1/18525962/qualcomm-apple-se... In the end, Qualcommm received a multi-billion dollar lump sum payment AND Apple signed a long-term deal (this was back in 2019, so). Something Apple is still trying to get away from, by the way. I don't think ARM has the financial firepower to withstand a trial as long as Apple did, which took multiple years - but even that Qualcomm may deem temporary given where they are now. The negotiations have begun, I'm not sure I would read any further into this move by ARM. As for the reputational hit against ARM, well, that is hard to measure, for me at least. But it's an interesting thought. I feel like the relationship between ARM and its customers are something like TSMC's foundry business. I can't imagine TSMC even threatening to stop manufacturing the chips of Qualcomm. But TSMC's other customers prob wouldn't blink. And neither might ARM's.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com