The Dispute between Arm and Qualcomm over Snapdragon X Processor
TapTechNews June 13 - According to a report by Reuters, the Snapdragon X processor, which is about to start shipping next week, may face the fate of being destroyed, although the possibility is slim.
The legal dispute between Arm and Qualcomm has lasted for nearly two years, and the focus of the dispute is the technology used by Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon X processor. Arm claims that after Qualcomm acquired Nuvia, it used its design without authorization and demanded that Qualcomm stop using the design from Nuvia and destroy the related chips.
Nuvia was founded by the founding team of Apple's A-series chips. In 2021, Qualcomm spent $1.4 billion to acquire Nuvia, hoping to compete with Apple's Arm processor. The Snapdragon X series chips were developed based on the technology obtained from the acquisition of Nuvia and are installed in the upcoming Copilot+ series computers of Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft, Samsung and other manufacturers.
The case will be heard in Delaware Federal Court in the US in December 2024. It is not yet clear what the specific license agreement content signed by both sides is, but from the known information, the core of the dispute lies in:
Before being acquired by Qualcomm, Nuvia obtained an authorization from Arm to design server CPU cores. Arm believes that Qualcomm's reuse of this authorization after the acquisition of Nuvia is a breach of contract and demands that Qualcomm stop using and destroy all chips based on Nuvia's design.
While Qualcomm argues that it has a broad license covering PC processors and can legally use the relevant technology.
Arm's lawsuit against Qualcomm and Nuvia is to protect the interests of Arm ecosystem and its partners who rely on our intellectual property and innovative designs. We ask Qualcomm to abide by the contract and stop using Nuvia's design derived from Arm technology, an Arm spokesman said.
Ann Chaplin, chief legal officer of Qualcomm, said at the end of 2022, Arm's accusations ignore the fact that Qualcomm has extensive license rights covering its custom CPU designs, and we believe these rights will be confirmed in court.
This request of Arm has huge challenges at the implementation level. Qualcomm has already cooperated with several computer manufacturers and plans to start shipping the Copilot+ computers with Snapdragon X series processors on June 18. If all chips using Nuvia's design are to be destroyed, it means that the shipping plans of at least a dozen computers will be stopped in the next week.
In addition, the trial of this case will not start until the end of the year, by which time the first batch of computers with Snapdragon X processors will have already been put on the market.
The focus of this legal dispute is not just the Snapdragon X series processor. Qualcomm has already announced that it will apply Nuvia technology to the chip designs in many fields such as smartphones, cars, and augmented reality devices. Arm hopes to reach a favorable agreement on the license fee of new chips with Qualcomm through this lawsuit. The problem lies in how to distribute the profits.
AndroidCentral said that from Arm's point of view, if Qualcomm didn't acquire Nuvia, the negotiation result of the chip license might be very different, and even Arm might not agree to license at all. However, considering that the two sides have been intertwined for two years and Qualcomm has not received any injunction, so the possibility of Copilot+ computers being stopped from shipping seems not to be big. The more likely result is that Qualcomm and Arm will reach some kind of settlement agreement, after all, the two sides still have cooperation in other fields.