With the understanding that both of these are publicly traded multi-billion-dollar corporations and therefore neither should be trusted (albeit Arm Holdings has about 1/10 of the net assets), I feel like I distrust Arm less on this one than whatever Qualcomm is doing on their coke-fueled race to capitalize on the AI bubble.
What does trust have to do with anything? I mean, they seem to be arguing because Qualcomm bought a separate licensor and ARM argues that requires a contract renegotiation. This is the least take sides-y legal dispute in the history of legal disputes.
What does trust have to do with anything?
The fact that I’m not a legal expert who’s read the relevant portion of the existing contract? Like what Arm says seems reasonable, but at the end of the day, I have nothing definitive to go on.
Oh, no, I agree, what I’m saying is you don’t need to trust anybody here. Not everything is a sport, you can see this happen and not root for anybody. It’s a complex legal problem that likely flies over everybody’s heads without reading all the relevant communications. It’s not a take sides, trust-based thing.
Folks, grab your popcorn.
This will get RISC-V probably a big boost. Maybe this was not the smartest move for ARMs long term future. But slapping Qualcomm is always a good idea, its just such a shitty company.
You are overestimating RISC-V. It cannot save the planet alone.
ARM provides complete chip designs.
RISC-V is more like an API, and then you still need to design your chips behind it.
I could be wrong, but I think Qualcomm designs its own chips and only licenses the “API”, so it would be no difference for them.
From my understanding, most companies take the reference design from Arm and then alter it to fit their needs.
True, I just wished RISCV laptops were slightly more developed and available. As of now, the specs aren’t there yet in those devices that are available. (8core@2Ghz, but only 16GB Ram, too little for me)
Kind of a bummer, was coming up to a work laptop upgrade soon and was carefully watching the Linux support for Snapdragon X because I can’t bring myself to deal with Apple shenanigans, but like the idea of performance and efficiency. The caution with which I approached it stems from my “I don’t really believe a fucking thing Qualcomm Marketing says” mentality, and it seems holding off and watching was the right call. Oh well, x86 for another cycle, I guess.
I think, I would go for a ARM Tuxedo PC in your position.
Oh, still some time needed for that as well, but you can see the progress (a lot is working now at kernel 6.11)
https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Where-are-we-with-our-TUXEDO-ARM-Notebook.tuxedo
I’ll wait and see. RISC-V is a nice idea, but there are way too many different “standards” to make it a viable ecosystem.
Several differing extensions of the RISC-V core machine instructions, for example. A pain in the rear for any compiler builder.
Yeah, in the current macro environment Qualcomm isn’t that tied down & can afford some changes (basically with a few of their biggest partners that can keep their profits up even in a few transitioning years). Not sure what prompted ARM to force such a deal instead of getting like a good compromise.
But also fuck Qualcomm & their closed-softwareness.
Im still hoping I can buy a RISC-V laptop (from Framework?) in 2 or 3 years & just run Linux normally.
And if that can happen & RISC-V still doesn’t overall prosper it’s bcs of some shitty greedy deals between megacorps.
ARM wants a sweeter deal.
Nailed it. They know they have a leading chip in these designs now, the market is expanding, and whatever licensing fee was negotiated in the past needs to be revisited.
ARM is mad because Qualcomm bought Nuvia (which had their own ARM license) and then started using Nuvia’s designs. ARM says that Qualcomm needs to renegotiate the license in order to use those designs.
Normally ARM and Qualcomm would handle this fairly smoothly, the reason its not happening this time is because ARM and Qualcomm both have growth plans that are increasingly making them direct competitors.
