If you follow the tech industry, you’ll be aware that the relationship between Qualcomm and ARM has been in flux for some time now. Recently, Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC for flagship devices. The new hardware platform relies on custom Oryon cores instead of ARM’s “vanilla” Cortex ones. It seems that ARM isn’t taking this too well, as it has canceled the chip design licensing deal it had with Qualcomm.
It all started in 2021 with Qualcomm’s acquisition of Nuvia
The origin of the legal clashes between Qualcomm and ARM dates back to 2021, when the chipmaker bought Nuvia. Qualcomm’s main goal with the purchase was to boost the development of custom cores for its chips. The Oryon cores, released in the Snapdragon X chips for ARM laptops, are a product of that operation.
By purchasing Nuvia, Qualcomm inherited all of its licensing deals and developments. Nuvia had its own agreements with ARM, who did not agree to the transfer of licenses. They believed that Qualcomm needed to obtain authorization through a contract renegotiation. This never happened, leaving ARM extremely disappointed. Therefore, ARM asserts that if Qualcomm does not comply with its demands, the designs based on Nuvia’s developments should be destroyed.
ARM canceled Qualcomm’s chip design license ahead of trial
The trial between the two companies is scheduled for December, but ARM has chosen not to wait and has suspended its chip design licensing agreements with Qualcomm. The company has sent a 60-day cancellation notice, which means that if an agreement is not reached between both parties before 60 days, Qualcomm could have to stop selling chips with custom Oryon cores. This includes the Snapdragon 8 Elite and the Snapdragon X series. Chips like the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 would not be affected as they use ARM Cortex cores.
Qualcomm appears unconcerned about ARM’s threat. “With a trial fast approaching in December, Arm’s desperate ploy appears to be an attempt to disrupt the legal process, and its claim for termination is completely baseless,” said a Qualcomm representative. “We are confident that Qualcomm’s rights under its agreement with Arm will be affirmed. Arm’s anticompetitive conduct will not be tolerated,” he added.
Qualcomm is also confident about the invalidity of the 60-day cancellation notice. The company intends to settle the matter in court during the December trial. Plus, Qualcomm claims that ARM is engaging in anti-competitive practices. “This is more of the same from ARM – more unfounded threats designed to strongarm a longtime partner, interfere with our performance-leading CPUs, and increase royalty rates regardless of the broad rights under our architecture license,” said the representative.
A potential boost to the development of RISC-V architecture
The course of events in the upcoming weeks remains uncertain. It’s not clear that Qualcomm will have to give in to ARM’s demands in order to continue selling Oryon-powered chips. Anyway, this move will likely boost the development of RISC-V, an open-source mobile architecture. The latter is an initiative by Qualcomm and Google in favor of a fairer mobile hardware ecosystem.
