Qualcomm wins licensing fight with Arm over chip designs

I really feel like I must have misunderstood something here.

In other words, Nuvia failing to destroy the designs might or might not have been a breach of contract. At least if I understand all of this correctly. But I feel like I must be missing some key details.

Acorn Computers started off much earlier (I owned an Acorn Atom when it was released) which begat the Electron, then the BBC Micro and then the Archimedes.

At that time ARM was just an architecture owned by Acorn. They created it with VSLI technology (Acorn’s Silicon partner) and used the first RISC chip in the BBC Micro before then pivoting it to the Archimedes.

Whilst Acorn itself was initially purchased by Olivetti, who eventually sold what remained years later to Morgan Stanley.

The ARM division was spun off as “Advanced RISC Machines” in a deal with both Apple, and VSLI Technology after Olivetti came onto the scene.

It is this company that we now know as Arm Holdings.

So it’s not entirely accurate to claim “they had a full computer system” as that was Acorn Computers, PLC.

We can't know and won't for up to until 2030 or 2035. Humans are just not very good when it comes projecting the future (if predictions of 1950-60's were correct, I would be typing this up from my cozy cosmic dwelling on a Jovian or a Saturnian moon after all).

History has had numerous examples when better ISA and CPU designs have lost out to a combination or mysteries and other compounding factors that are usually attributed to «market forces» (whatever that means to whomever). The 1980-90's were the heydays of some of the most brilliant ISA designs and nearly everyone was confident that a design X or Y would become dominant, or the next best thing, or anywhere in between. Yet, we were left with a x86 monopoly for several decades that has only recently turned into a duopoly because of the arrival of ARM into the mainstream and through a completely unexpected vector: the advent of smartphones. It was not the turn than anyone expected.

And since innovations tend to be product oriented, it is not possible to even design, leave alone build, a product with something does not exist yet. Breaking a new ground in the CPU design requires an involvement of a large number of driving and very un–mysterious (so to speak) forces, exorbitant investment (from the product design and manufacturing perspectives) that are available to the largest incumbents only. And even that is not guaranteed as we have seen it with the Itanium architecture.

So unless the incumbents commit and follow through, it is not likely (at least not obvious) that RISC-V will enter the mainstream and will rather remain a niche (albeit a viable one). Within the realms of possibility it can be assessed as «maybe» at this very moment.

Having a competitive CPU is 1% of the job. Then you need To have a competitive SoC (oh and not infringe IP), so that you can build the software ecosystem, which is the hard bit.

Lack of reg+shifted reg addressing mode and or things like BFI/UBFX/TBZ

The perpetual promise of magic fusion inside the cores has not played out. No core exists to my knowledge that fuses more than two instructions at a time. Most of those take more than two to make. Thus no core exists that could fuse them.

Business are actually happen how the ALA is proven in court.

Also correct: RISC-V is not anywhere near competitive to ARM at the level that Qualcomm operates.

No, it's not just around-the-corner but Qualcomm has a role to play here. Not like they should just sit on the sidelines and say "call me when we are RISC-V"

The Nuvia ALA (architecture license agreement) specified much higher royalties, i.e. a much bigger cut for Arm, than the Qualcomm ALA.

The official reason for the conflict is that Qualcomm says that the Qualcomm ALA is applicable for anything made by Qualcomm, while Arm says that for any Qualcomm product that includes a trace of something designed at the former Nuvia company the Nuvia ALA must be applied.

The real reason of the conflict is that Qualcomm is replacing the CPU cores designed by Arm with CPU cores designed by the former Nuvia team in all their products. Had this not happened, Arm would have received a much greater revenue as a result of Nuvia being bought by Qualcomm, even when applying the Qualcomm ALA.

This is what you use to fund the next generation of said IP. There is no magic.

Which is the part that is questionable and I guess no way to prove unless we continue with the trial. The Nuvia core is said to be perfect on A0, and no one in the industry has ever done anything perfect on A0, especially with something as complex as modern CPU design.

One could argue all the previous Nuvia Design IP were in the Nuvia's team's head memorised. They are basically recreating the same work done in Nuvia at Qualcomm. And that is I guess grey areas.

Edit: I guess it wouldn't be that simple to do

The first argument was always the weaker argument, the license explicitly banned licence transfers between companies without explicit prior permission. Qualcomm were arguing that the fact they already had a licence counted as prior permission.

But ARM bypassed that argument by just terminating the Nuvia licence, and by the time of the lawsuit qualcomm was down to the second argument. Which was good, it was the much stronger argument.