All eyes are on silicon. From export bans to AI wars, and from Nvidia’s rise to Intel’s floundering, the chip wars are nothing less than a battle for control of the global economy, hence the firehose of US, EU and Chinese government money being sprayed at any company that can convincingly make itself look like a designer or manufacturer of semiconductors.
One real winner in recent years, largely due to the rise of the smartphone, is British-based Arm. A spin-out from the old Acorn Computers, Arm’s chips have gone on to dominate any space where sipping tiny amounts of power is as important as crunching huge amounts of data. Phones are only a first, albeit huge, step, though.
So-called AI PCs running on-device language models are one possible market, and, indeed, Apple’s M-series chips do include Arm-derived gubbins. However, there’s more: with growing concern about data centres’ environmental impact it’s easy to see why low energy computing is a good bet. Following a successful debut on the stock market Arm in 2023, which designs and licences CPU cores but does not sell any, has set about consolidating its position in the market in the face of competition including the open source RISC-V design. Part of this has been keeping a tight grip on who uses Arm designs to bang out custom chips.
Yesterday it was revealed Arm was dropping its suit against US chipmaker Qualcomm, which has been selling Arm core-based CPUs since it acquired silicon design house Nuvia in 2021.
Arm’s claim had been that Nuvia’s licenses for Arm’s technology were non-transferable and expired after the acquisition, requiring Qualcomm to renegotiate terms. Qualcomm demurred. The affair ended up in a Delaware court in 2023, which largely found in Qualcomm’s favour.
This week, Qualcomm’s latest mandatory report to the US stock market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), revealed Arm had indicated on 8 January that it was no longer seeking to kill off Qualcomm’s licence agreement.
It ain’t over ‘til it’s over, though, and the agreement seems to be more of a frosty detente than a peace agreement.
For a start, Qualcomm has itself sought to slap Arm in the courts, filing a suit on 18 April 2024 claiming the British chip shop had not met contractual obligations. Meanwhile, in its own regulatory filing, Arm left the door very much open for a bit more legal strong-arming, writing: “Both parties have filed post-trial motions seeking judgment as a matter of law and/or a new trial on the issues that were tried. Those motions remain pending. The timing and manner in which the post-trial motions will be resolved cannot be estimated.”
Welcome to the weird world of business, where companies use the courts to jockey for position and slap down competitors while, at the very same time, doing business with them.
In fairness, there is a lot at stake. Had Arm won, or if it were to win a future trial on the matter, there could be significant implications, not only for Qualcomm but for any design licensee. The fact that a battle ended prefigures another’s start is a clear sign of just how valuable semiconductor intellectual property is today.
Arm suffers rare loss in chip battle - TechCentral.ie
All eyes are on silicon. From export bans to AI wars, and from Nvidia’s rise to Intel’s floundering, the chip wars are nothing less than a battle for control of the global economy, hence the firehose of US, EU and Chinese government money being sprayed at any company that can convincingly make...
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