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.

 

[bit_user]

ARM is the completely dominant ISA, in the phone market. I think it's an abuse of that market position then to compete directly with its customers. I think the courts should tell ARM to spin off the ISA development & licensing activities into an independent entity that has no ties to the IP design and chip business. That entity could be for-profit or not (e.g. OpenPOWER Foundation, RISC-V International), but it needs to treat the mother company exactly the same as all the other ARM implementers out there.

 

[TerryLaze]

ARM is the completely dominant ISA, in the phone market. I think it's an abuse of that market position then to compete directly with its customers. I think the courts should tell ARM to spin off the ISA development & licensing activities into an independent entity that has no ties to the IP design and chip business. That entity could be for-profit or not (e.g. OpenPOWER Foundation, RISC-V International), but it needs to treat the mother company exactly the same as all the other ARM implementers out there.

You are completely missing the point, this isn't about competing, this is about whether a company has the right to change how their are licensing their own IP.

Even if they would spinn out their development and licensing completely, they could still restrict others from getting a license.

 

[bit_user]

You are completely missing the point, this isn't about competing, this is about whether a company has the right to change how their are licensing their own IP.

Even if they would spinn out their development and licensing completely, they could still restrict others from getting a license.

I don't know about elsewhere, but in the USA, there are laws against abusing market dominance. I think that's probably Qualcomm's angle. We'll just have to see where this goes.

 

[TerryLaze]

I don't know about elsewhere, but in the USA, there are laws against abusing market dominance. I think that's probably Qualcomm's angle. We'll just have to see where this goes.

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...

Plenty of precedence.

 

[bit_user]

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?

I don't know exactly what you're talking about with RAR and ZIP, but they were never a multi-billion dollar industry or companies, like Qualcomm.

DIVX is just a proprietary implementation of MPEG-4 part 2, unless you're talking about the failed DVD-based format. Either way, I don't see your point.

And what's this about H.265? That's a video compression standard, not even a company or a product. It was defined by the ITU-T, which is an international standards body, not a corporate entity.

Anyway, what we think doesn't matter. This will play out in multiple courts of law. We'll see what they ultimately decide, once that process has reached its conclusion (or Qualcomm agrees to withdraw the complaints). I expect it'll probably take years.

 

[TerryLaze]

I don't know exactly what you're talking about with RAR and ZIP, but they were never a multi-billion dollar industry or companies, like Qualcomm.

They where free to use tools until they became the standard that every other company used and then they decided to make them pay to use to cash in.
Same for divx/h.264/265, x264/x265 are the free alternatives, the h variants you have to pay for.
It's precedence for arm changing their licensing scheme not for qualcomm, did you forget who's arguing for which side or something?

 

[bit_user]

They where free to use tools until they became the standard that every other company used and then they decided to make them pay to use to cash in.
Same for divx/h.264/265, x264/x265 are the free alternatives, the h variants you have to pay for.

Okay, thanks for explaining what you meant.

As I said, I think the Qualcomm/ARM thing is on a completely different scale, partly because it involves hardware. But, it doesn't matter what I think. The courts will decide.

 

[TJ Hooker]

They where free to use tools until they became the standard that every other company used and then they decided to make them pay to use to cash in.
Same for divx/h.264/265, x264/x265 are the free alternatives, the h variants you have to pay for.
It's precedence for arm changing their licensing scheme not for qualcomm, did you forget who's arguing for which side or something?

None of those started out free and then became paid-only.

The video codecs have been proprietary from their inception, with certain carve-outs for software-only implementations (hence the existence of the x26[Y] codecs, which are specific software implementations of the codecs, whose developers hace no relation to the IP-holders of h.264/265). The RAR encoder started out as 'free trial' proprietary software, and still is (decoder is licensed such that others may freely implement). ZIP started off proprietary, then became open.

I don't see how any of these are relevant here.

 

[TerryLaze]

None of those started out free and then became paid-only.

The video codecs have been proprietary from their inception, with certain carve-outs for software-only implementations (hence the existence of the x26[Y] codecs, which are specific software implementations of the codecs, whose developers hace no relation to the IP-holders of h.264/265). The RAR encoder started out as 'free trial' proprietary software, and still is (decoder is licensed such that others may freely implement). ZIP started off proprietary, then became open.

I don't see how any of these are relevant here.

ARM didn't start out free either,
and they where a thing for many years before they allowed others to make changes to their cores under license.

Also my whole point was that they have free trails, or where outright free to use, but then they changed to make companies that use them pay.
And that is still the case, as a user you can use them in trail mode or for free but as a business if you want to use rar, winzip or divx you have to pay.

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The video codecs have been proprietary from their inception, with certain carve-outs for software-only implementations (hence the existence of the x26[Y] codecs, which are specific software implementations of the codecs, whose developers hace no relation to the IP-holders of h.264/265).

Which is the closest to the ARM dilemma, proprietary cores with some carve-outs to make changes of your own.
Does this give the makers of x26x the right to do whatever they want with the code?! If the makers of h26x decide to make the next iteration without the carve-outs are the makers of x26x justified to pirate the code and release it anyway?!

 

[bit_user]

Which is the closest to the ARM dilemma, proprietary cores with some carve-outs to make changes of your own.
Does this give the makers of x26x the right to do whatever they want with the code?! If the makers of h26x decide to make the next iteration without the carve-outs are the makers of x26x justified to pirate the code and release it anyway?!

What are you even talking about? Where did any of those codecs have "carve-outs to make changes of your own"? and x264 didn't pirate any code - they wrote their own open source implementation of the H.264 standard.

It doesn't matter, though. Your examples are completely irrelevant.

 

[brucehoult]

does RISC-V come anywhere near close to performance of the SD Elite X

It obviously will if Qualcomm makes a RISC-V version of SnapDragon Elite X.

RISC-V is only slower than Arm because no one has yet put the same resources and talent into making fast ones as they have with Arm and x86.

More accurately, the people who ARE putting in such resources and talent only started recently -- around 2021 mostly -- and so their products are not in the market yet. Both Jim Keller and the designer of Apple's M1 are now at RISC-V company Tenstorrent who say they will catch and overtake Apple's Arm64 performance in 2027. Many of the other PA Semi people are at RISC-V company Rivos. A whole team of top Intel CPU designers founded RISC-V company AheadComputing.

Nuvia started in 2019, remember, and we are just now seeing the results of that in products you can buy. The flood of similar RISC-V stuff is going to hit around 2027-2028.