What will happen to computers with Snapdragon X Elite? Regardless of whether Qualcomm’s new computing solution is a success or not, a court will decide its fate. The story is well known: ARM had asked Qualcomm to cancel every project related to Snapdragon Qualcomm has filed a counter-complaint where it targets ARM while ARM, c has asked that all computers with Snapdragon X Elite processors be destroyed.
Let’s briefly retrace the stages and see why it came to this: Nuvia, a startup made up of ex-Apple engineers, purchased an ARM license in 2019 for the development of a core designed for data centers. This license gave Nuvia permission to develop its core using the ARM instruction set, as well as a variety of testing and support tools from ARM itself.
Qualcomm has acquired Nuvia, and has decided to use the core that Nuvia designed to create Snapdragon X Elite now, and in the future to include it in all its products, from smartphones to wearables. According to Qualcomm, having acquired Nuvia and being in possession of an ARM license (the San Diego company is the second best customer for ARM), all of Nuvia’s projects could be passed to her without any problemwhile according to ARM no, the pre-existing Qualcomm license had to be renegotiated and was absolutely not transferable.
Not only that: the licensing terms that Nuvia had accepted were facilitated by the fact that it was a startup, and Nuvia transferred the projects and the license to Qualcomm allegedly violated these terms, so much so that ARM was forced to revoke the license. With the license revoked the “Oryon core” developed under this license becomes an illegal product and must be destroyed.
This matter, on which a court will now have to rule, has several facets. Qualcomm has always been one of ARM’s best customers and in recent years has bought finished designs for its processors from ARM: Qualcomm once created its own Krait cores, now it uses ARM’s Cortex. Qualcomm has always paid ARM a lot of money to have finished designsbut now thanks to Oryon, which will end up on every Qualcomm product, the San Diego company will no longer need Cortex.
This, for ARM, is a problem. Qualcomm would like to pay only for the ALA license, the one that allows it to use the instruction set exclusively, but ARM is asking that we move to a new business model that involves paying a license fee for each processor sold: if he loses on one side he must gain on the other.
Qualcomm, at the end of April, counter-sued ARM: in the documents sent to the court we read that “ARM attempted to impede Qualcomm’s technological advances in CPU design by intentionally withholding tools and documentation that Qualcomm under the ARM Architecture Licensing Agreement (‘ALA’) paid for, and according to Qualcomm ARM also falsified the existence of those materials when Qualcomm also threatened to terminate Qualcomm’s licenses (in addition to the already terminated Nuvia licenses) if it attempted to enforce its contractual right to obtain the materials in question.” The materials in question would be the verification and design tools, which Qualcomm would have had to develop from scratch because ARM did not want to provide those which, under the terms of the existing agreement, it would have had to provide anyway.
Quite a mess, and perhaps this is why Microsoft has looked to Mediatek for the future: Mediatek is the embodiment of ARM on the product side, it only uses ARM’s designs and will be the first to use the newly announced ARM computing cores.
If the court were to rule in favor of ARM, Qualcomm would be forced to stop developing the Nuvia cores and no more computers with Snapdragon X could be sold, but it could take years to reach a verdict. Obviously, anyone who buys a computer today risks nothing.
