ARM cancels Qualcomm's chip design license

[Redaktion]

ARM Holdings Plc has cancelled an architectural license agreement that allows Qualcomm to use its instruction set for in-house chips.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/ARM-cancels-Qualcomm-s-chip-design-license.906480.0.html

[Norbert Kett]

hello RISC-V :)

[Nic M]

RISC-V entered the chat

[nemo]

You guys mention riscv but how realistic is that? atleast in the short term.

How long would it take qualcom to make riscv competitve with what they now offer with arm?

[Nic M]

You guys mention riscv but how realistic is that? atleast in the short term.

How long would it take qualcom to make riscv competitve with what they now offer with arm?

It's true it's not realistic in the short term. It will likely take years (a decade ?) to catch up with a different architecture. Especially if we also take software support in account.
But this move is suicide from ARM, all partners will think twice before starting any new ARM project now, and likely develop a plan B (enough that it could become a plan A asap).
So this one move from ARM will probably still shorten the timeline to usable RISC-V by years compared to what it would have been without.

[Konstantinos]

I am not a lawyer but I read from another article that there was a clause that Nuvia's license to make custom cores was not transferable. If this is true then it is Qualcomm's fault. Especially if ones consider the huge difference in the market position between the two companies (Nuvia vs Qualcomm). Arm wants a new agreement with Qualcomm who controls the majority of the arm-CPU market and did not have an agreement to make custom cores with Arm...

But yes, this incident will certainly give a boost to RISC-V adoption.