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Discussion The end of Qualcomm's Nuvia dreams?
- Thread starter FlameTail
- Start date
FlameTail
Diamond Member
https://twitter.com/RGcloudS/status/1660592314887344131?s=20
We may see a Huawei Kirin 9000 like situation with Qualcomm stockpiling chips. Grim news.
Why do you think so?
This seems like ARM is finally beginning to reap its position as the main engine behind the mobile revolution and soon-to-be server-dominance.
ARM hates Qualcomm for 2 reasons:
1. Qualcomm lobbied heavily against the ARM + Nvidia deal
2. Qualcomm's Nuvia is a major threat to ARM's business.
ARM is trying its hardest to prevent Nuvia from coming to the market. If it does come to market, ARM wants to a far bigger slice of Qualcomm's profits than before. Hence, ARM sued Qualcomm to block Nuvia designs.
Qualcomm lobbied the US government to block the Nvidia deal. It's very obvious why. Qualcomm has very high custom ARM-core ambitions from their purchase of Nuvia. They want to be the Apple Silicon of the PC/Android world.
Nvidia owning ARM would have injected resources into stock ARM cores and made stock ARM cores more competitive against whatever Qualcomm is planning to do.
Qualcomm wants stock ARM cores to not be competitive in the near future which would make them the defacto high-end consumer ARM supplier.
1. Qualcomm lobbied heavily against the ARM + Nvidia deal
2. Qualcomm's Nuvia is a major threat to ARM's business.
ARM is trying its hardest to prevent Nuvia from coming to the market. If it does come to market, ARM wants to a far bigger slice of Qualcomm's profits than before. Hence, ARM sued Qualcomm to block Nuvia designs.
Qualcomm lobbied the US government to block the Nvidia deal. It's very obvious why. Qualcomm has very high custom ARM-core ambitions from their purchase of Nuvia. They want to be the Apple Silicon of the PC/Android world.
Nvidia owning ARM would have injected resources into stock ARM cores and made stock ARM cores more competitive against whatever Qualcomm is planning to do.
Qualcomm wants stock ARM cores to not be competitive in the near future which would make them the defacto high-end consumer ARM supplier.
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gdansk
Diamond Member
The more they force idiotic bundling requirements and legal fights the more impetus exists to push RISCV in spaces it has no place being presently.
Short-term shareholder value extraction at the cost of long term value. And at the time when Chinese companies coincidentally have a lot of motivation to design RISCV server cores. I applaud such genius business leadership with vindictive intent (/sarcasm).
If ARM wanted to compete against Qualcomm maybe they should have designed a better core or bought Nuvia themselves. Killing the competition with lawyers instead of engineers. Nice.
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Samsung's failure with Mongoose (and Qualcomm's not so impressive OG Kryo core) is a solid demonstration that simply throwing money at the problem is not a be all, end all solution to core design.
Besides ARM already had that cash injection when they got acquired by SoftBank in the first place and the current evolution shows that their design strategy has already shifted to a more perf heavy focus with Cortex X which rapidly shifted ARM's high end from 4 -> 6 wide in just 3 iterations.
Current rumors around Cortex X4 performance in SD8 Gen 3 sound pretty promising and Oryon could end up being a less than amazing debut regardless of ARM legal interference.
Edit: Last point, Qualcomm having a custom core (and therefore architectural license equivalent) was once the norm for ARM during the v7-A generation of Scorpion and Krayt, and but for the failure of Kryo to perform to expectations they would still be doing so.
SoftBank/ARM don't want anything unreasonable, just what they had with Qualcomm before adjusted for the difference in sales and inflation since Kryo flopped.
Depends on the horizon.
Would RISCV make an impact on ARM's mobile, server, laptop market in the next 5 years? Absolutely not. Apple hasn't even finished transitioning to ARM yet after spending billions and many years in both hardware design and software compatibility. Microsoft is spending hundreds of millions or even billions to make Windows ARM and x86 emulation. Android is completely fragmented. Amazon is all in on ARM servers with their Graviton.
Apple = force desktop/laptop software to build ARM versions
Amazon = force server software to build ARM versions
Google/Apple = force mobile software to build ARM versions
No one is forcing RISCV onto software makers.
In 10 years? Maybe.
In the next 5 years, RISCV isn't going to do that much except in specialized situations. The only caveat to this prediction is that maybe Chinese companies will push RISCV hard.
But if Qualcomm gets its way with Nuvia, ARM's business might suffer as soon as 2024. That's 1 year from now. I think what ARM is doing is smart and its only option.
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Qualcomm is going to have a tough time arguing against ARM's plans (assuming that tweet is correct) since that is EXACTLY what Qualcomm does in double dipping at both chip sale time and device sale time, and getting the latter via a percentage of the device's sale price.
Now of course that's separate from "part one" of the dispute about whether Qualcomm can use technology developed by Nuvia under their own license instead of Nuvia's license, but since Qualcomm's deal with ARM needs to be renewed occasionally they have no way to avoid eventually having to go along with ARM's new license. I don't know when, but probably within a few years since I doubt the agreements are longer than a decade (if that) and there obviously have been no renewals since the Nuvia acquisition.
Sure, sure, they could take their ball home and say "fine we'll transition to RISC-V cores and avoid paying you anything" but there's a lot of risk (sorry) attached to that. There are no guarantees they can make a smooth transition and bring their customer base along, plenty of things could happen along the way to sabotage that and put them in a much worse situation than if they had just gone along with ARM's new scheme. But going along is also risky, if too much of the Android world decided to abandon ARM.
Now of course that's separate from "part one" of the dispute about whether Qualcomm can use technology developed by Nuvia under their own license instead of Nuvia's license, but since Qualcomm's deal with ARM needs to be renewed occasionally they have no way to avoid eventually having to go along with ARM's new license. I don't know when, but probably within a few years since I doubt the agreements are longer than a decade (if that) and there obviously have been no renewals since the Nuvia acquisition.
Sure, sure, they could take their ball home and say "fine we'll transition to RISC-V cores and avoid paying you anything" but there's a lot of risk (sorry) attached to that. There are no guarantees they can make a smooth transition and bring their customer base along, plenty of things could happen along the way to sabotage that and put them in a much worse situation than if they had just gone along with ARM's new scheme. But going along is also risky, if too much of the Android world decided to abandon ARM.
Apple controls both the hardware and software and even then, it took a monumental effort to make the switch from Intel to Apple SIlicon.
Qualcomm would have a much harder time switching from ARM to RISC-V. I just don't see how they can do it. It'll need to be a joint effort between Qualcomm, Google, Microsoft, etc. There isn't much benefit for anyone except Qualcomm since it's not Google or Windows that depends on ARM designs and ISA. Android and Windows will be here even if Qualcomm disappeared tomorrow.
I think the fantasizing of Qualcomm abandoning ARM for RISC-V is a pipe dream. I think the above posters who think ARM is digging its grave by doing this are wrong. I think Qualcomm is trying to dig ARM's grave with Nuvia.
Throwing money at custom core design isn't the end all solution. You're right. That's why Qualcomm pounced on the opportunity to acquire Nuvia, with its founders coming directly from the Apple Silicon tree.
I don't know the terms of the Softbank deal but usually when a company acquires another, it doesn't mean that the acquirer injects cash into operations. Softbank could have left finances the same as before but the shareholder just switched to Softbank. That's it.
Again, I think ARM is doing the right thing. And I think Qualcomm is doing the right thing. I'd like to see Nuvia come out. I actually own Qualcomm shares.
beginner99
Diamond Member
So, so true. And that alone make ARM the bad guy. if nuvia chips are so good, they will be priced that way and most phones will still use normal ARM cores. This is typical bad management "panic" and panic implying they stop thinking. I also have a feeling there is some personal feud going on in the c-suites between these 2 companies.
EDIT: Given that qualcomm will then sell a lot of Nuvia chips at a higher price it will also likley lead to higher profits for ARM!!! Also because mabye some iphone users will switch.
I certainly can't argue with that. Apple spent many years on this effort, though how many of those years were hard work and how many was sitting back and waiting for their ARM performance to be good enough to make the switch without upsetting customers who knows. Dropping 32 bit x86 support (and more importantly the legacy APIs from those 32 bit days) made the whole static translation thing easier so even if a lot of the last few years was "sitting back" there were still some important milestones that needed to be reached.
Google has already laid some of the groundwork in Android for RISC-V support, though the OS support is just the tip of the iceberg. One reason ARM has been so successful over the last couple decades is the whole ecosystem that has been built up, from compilers to uboot support to ARM native drivers being par for the course for anything that an OEM might want to see get a design win in anything that's not a PC. That type of ecosystem doesn't appear overnight.
I think Qualcomm would be less worried about Microsoft supporting RISC-V for Windows though. They make the vast majority of their revenue in smartphones and similar devices. They want to expand into PCs but that was always going to be a tough nut to crack. If they have to give up those ambitions and push/follow the Android market from ARM to RISC-V they will do so. Maybe Microsoft would someday decide to port Windows to RISC-V, though if their partner in the ARM port abandons them they may not be too eager.
You need to understand how ARM works.
ARM licenses two things mainly:
1. The ARM ISA
2. Core and IP designs
Apple only license the ISA for Apple Silicon. Qualcomm licenses both the ISA and core designs. Qualcomm pays ARM money to license their core designs. With Nuvia, Qualcomm won't have to pay ARM for core designs anymore.
In addition, if Nuvia dominates ARM designs in performance, then companies such as Mediatek won't be able to compete because people will want to buy Nuvia-based devices. Mediatek also uses ARM core designs and pays a fee to ARM by chips sold.
Licensing core designs is much more profitable than just licensing the ISA for ARM.
Nuvia is a huge threat to ARM.
All (very successful) businesses use this practice.
One thing I want to ask the members of this forum is to think of these entities not as non-profits for your frames per second in your video games but as businesses.
They are businesses. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you understand their decisions.
moinmoin
Diamond Member
Oh I fully understand these businesses in a business sense, I also fully dislike these business in a business sense. And monopolistic actions are rightfully persecuted in many regions for having bad influences in the open market. Arm being the dominant platform for mobile phones most certainly will be looked at for these changes if they are realized.
beginner99
Diamond Member
By that logic everyone would want an iphone and not android anymore because iphone performs much better.
But ARM could change their licensing model at any time they like (not retroactively, but for new/renewed architectural licenses) and not allow companies that make their own cores to sell those cores as chips rather than as a part of finished products. Or (as it appears they are doing) make that no longer save much money. Or only do that for some companies or market categories (i.e. allow it for servers where ARM's designs aren't really targeted but not for smartphone/embedded where they are)
Even if courts decide that Qualcomm is allowed to bring Nuvia designs under Qualcomm's ALA, when does that expire and need to be renewed? Qualcomm might have a few years of gravy, but be unable to renew under the same terms - either no longer allowed to use custom cores in Snapdragon SoCs or subject to much higher (effective) royalty rates so ARM makes roughly the same amount of profit either way.
Like I said in a previous post, if the tweet at the start of this thread is accurate all ARM is trying to do to Qualcomm is Qualcomm's own business strategy. Amending Qualcomm's ALA (either as the price for being able to use Nuvia designed cores or at renewal time) to make OEMs who buy Snapdragon SoCs execute agreements with ARM and pay based on the value of the device it is going into would have ARM doing to Qualcomm exactly what Qualcomm does to Apple and other customers. There's no way Qualcomm can prevent it, the only question is when it takes effect - immediately if the courts so decide it or whenever they have to renew their ALA if the courts decide in their favor in the current case.
moinmoin
Diamond Member
On track for lunch. 🍖 🤤
Regardless of how the license situation works out Qualcomm is still a huge licensee of ARM IP in general from the sheer quantity of product in the market that uses Qualcomm ARM SoCs.
No amount of shifting to custom cores from QC is going to put ARM Ltd in a grave, simply because every sale QC makes is still money in SoftBank/ARM's coffers one way or another.
At worst it might stymy funding for future Cortex X µArch development if Mediatek, Samsung and perhaps also Google are not enough together to take up the slack in high volume licensees of those higher performance designs.
Also keep in mind that some Neoverse customers are funding that development to a degree, as Neoverse V cores are based on the same µArch design work for Cortex X, just as Neoverse N cores are based on big Cortex Axxx.
At this point it's also way too early to hail the crow of the Nuvia's Phoenix core when it was announced so far back, and Cortex X µArchs have come on no small way since.
I'm certainly interested to see Oryon perform and to get me a perf heavy ARM box, but Qualcomm would not be the first big hitter to buy a company for a new custom core design only to be less than satisfied with its performance in such a competitive marketplace.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
A point to add to that:
Enthusiasts (aka our wizened community of tech connisseurs 🧙♂️) often forget that the average naive mark who walks into an O2/EE/Vodafone/Verizon/etc/etc outlet store and into the jaws of their sales personnel often don't know one phone manufacturer from another very well, let alone what SoC runs in it to any significant degree, or who designed it.
Yes, I fully expect the monopolies commissions in various jurisdictions to be looking very close at ARM's practices if these changes go ahead. Yes, Qualcomm might be in a bad situation as they too have come under scrutiny, but if, for example, the EC does not start investigating ARM's practices very soon I would be very surprised.
Now, ARM and Softbank may have considered this and thing like Intel they can just drag this on for years. That is, monopolies commissions were not able to do anything about Intel vs AMD in time: a player with deep enough pockets can basically hope to drag things out so long that nothing happens.
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