News Qualcomm launches global antitrust campaign against Arm — accuses Arm of restricting access to technology

[Admin]

Qualcomm has filed complaints with regulators in the U.S., EU, and South Korea, accusing Arm of restricting technology access and shifting its licensing model to undermine competition.

Qualcomm launches global antitrust campaign against Arm — accuses Arm of restricting access to technology : Read more

 

[TerryLaze]

Huh?!

Qualcomm argues that Arm's open licensing approach helped build a robust hardware and software ecosystem. However, this ecosystem is under threat now as Arm moves to restrict that access to benefit its chip design business

Isn't that common practice?!
rar did that and zip did that and divx did that and h265 and and and, how are you possibly going to sue against something like that?
It's their IP, unless ARM had a statement in their licensing contracts that said all licenses will be forever free access then that's it.
Tell them to use risc-v...

 

[setx]

I hope that complains would be rejected so Qualcomm would need to abandon ARM asap.

 

[Pierce2623]

Huh?!

Isn't that common practice?!
rar did that and zip did that and divx did that and h265 and and and, how are you possibly going to sue against something like that?
It's their IP, unless ARM had a statement in their licensing contracts that said all licenses will be forever free access then that's it.
Tell them to use risc-v...

This is 100% blame shifting. They’re trying to get attention off the fact that they’re using a Nuvia acquired license that was specific to server chips and have now tried to move their cellphone chips under that license too, to greatly reduce they payment agreements they already had in place with ARM.

 

[DS426]

I think Qualcomm is attempting to go after ARM now that they are both licensing and manufacturing their own chips; it creates a weird situation for existing and future partners and customers.

I say leave Qualcomm and go full RISC-V; if ARM is fine with making things this bitter for some of their longest running and biggest customers/partners, go elsewhere. Qualcomm has the resources to build whatever they need to from the ground up without any interference or disputes with ARM.

 

[thestryker]

Qualcomm already won everything important in court this seems to be more about the future than anything else. This leads me to believe they don't have high performance RISC-V in the pipeline, don't think the switch will be smooth and/or perhaps the performance simply isn't there yet. With Arm's parent company buying Ampere there's very obvious concern to be had and Qualcomm likely sees themselves in a good position after the court victories.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

I think Qualcomm is attempting to go after ARM now that they are both licensing and manufacturing their own chips; it creates a weird situation for existing and future partners and customers.

I say leave Qualcomm and go full RISC-V; if ARM is fine with making things this bitter for some of their longest running and biggest customers/partners, go elsewhere. Qualcomm has the resources to build whatever they need to from the ground up without any interference or disputes with ARM.

That will take many years to accomplish. They cannot stop working on ARM, they have chips in the pipeline. Also does RISC-V come anywhere near close to performance of the SD Elite X let alone what gen 3 will bring or what Nvidia will bring in ARM. Then you have to get OS support and is Microsoft interested in doing so and if so, how long for a highly polished OS for RISC-V?

 

[palladin9479]

This stuff always happens. ARM generated a lot of goodwill buy "not being chipzilla". Of course now that they are leading a large lucrative market, they start acting like chipzilla.

 

[LordVile]

Pot calling kettle black this sounds like

 

[jp7189]

How easy is it really to move from ARM's ISA to RISC-V? I assume the vast library of software will have to run through a translation layer if there even is full feature parity between the two.

 

[DS426]

That will take many years to accomplish. They cannot stop working on ARM, they have chips in the pipeline. Also does RISC-V come anywhere near close to performance of the SD Elite X let alone what gen 3 will bring or what Nvidia will bring in ARM. Then you have to get OS support and is Microsoft interested in doing so and if so, how long for a highly polished OS for RISC-V?

Whoops, I meant to say leave ARM and go full RISC-V, but obviously you knew what I mean against that typo.

Yes, it would take years for ARM to wind back down from manufacturing, and no, I don't think they would do that. I'm just saying it has left their ISA licensees in a weird spot.

I assume in theory, a RISC-V CPU could have similar performance and efficiency metrics as the same ARM CPUs -- someone just has to bring it forward. That said, no, it's still certainly a trailing ISA in terms of OS and software vendor and community support. Still, it takes a vision, taking on some risk, and making an investment for these sorts of things to come to fruition in the long run. I think Qualcomm is seeing the writing on the wall now and therefore investing for a new, more indepedent future.