REPORT: Arm is sensationally canceling the license that allowed Qualcomm to make Snapdragon chips which power everything from Microsoft's Copilot+ PCs to Samsung's Galaxy smartphones and tablets

I hope this isn't a cartoony scheme driven by Apple honeydicking Arm with the M-series processors to tank PC and Android.

Good. Qualcomm refuses to make it easy to run linux on their hardware. Instead they try to hide basic information about their processors and chips in the name of selling a license for every little thing.

Oh no, not copilot!

While every comment here seems to scream "end patents", arm has less patent bs than other tech (rounded corners) meant to sue/prevent use. Arm works hard on developing and improving architecture and designs to offer licenses at a compelling price. Qualcomm paying as much as other licensees should be preferable to Qualcomm than bankruptcy.

Tech patents are ridiculous. Let's end them or reduce them to 1-3 years with no renewal. Then all that's left is the specific copyright to the technology, not lingering webs of patents that don't make any sense anyway to anyone with detailed knowledge of the tech. All they're good for is big companies using legal methods to stop innovation and competition. Tech moves too fast for long patents and is too complex for patent examiners or courts to understand what is really patentable. So it comes down to who has the most money for lawyers.

A risky move... Or should I say... A RISCV move...

The amount of IP money grubbing in the IT industry is able to literally make millions out of sand, this is just more of it.

This seems like a tactic that might win a battle but lose the war. Reminds me of Unity.

The free market is going very well here

thanks, proprietary licenses.

can we finally move to open standards now or will these fucks keep on losing money just to spite foss? are they that afraid we read some of their source code?

We shall break into the desktop and laptop market! Let's start by severing ties with one of the most successful companies to do that so far.

RiscV! RiscV!

Hopefully Qualcomm takes the hint and takes this opportunity to develop a high performance RISC V core. Don't just give the extortionists more money, break free and use an open standard. Instruction sets shouldn't even require licensing to begin with if APIs aren't copyrightable. Why is it OK to make your own implentation of any software API (see Oracle vs. Google on the Java API, Wine implementing the Windows API, etc) but not OK to do the same thing with an instruction set (which is just a hardware API). Why is writing an ARM or x86 emulator fine but not making your own chip? Why are FPGA emulator systems legal if instruction sets are protected? It makes no sense.

The other acceptable outcome here is a Qualcomm vs. ARM lawsuit that sets a precedence that instruction sets are not protected. If they want to copyright their own cores and sell the core design fine, but Qualcomm is making their own in house designs here.

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.

I wonder if their recent bid to take over Intel, is related.

The irony would be very thik as Qualcomm played a big role in killing Intel's 2010er efforts to enter the mobile sector.

And so the corporate wars have begun

Just when ARM devices were finally getting good…

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.

Part of the reason why when people were saying they wanted competition to unseat x86, I didn't want it to be ARM based, because I knew 100% that ARM would jump in and do some shit to rake in more profit and negate all the potential cost savings to the consumer. As long as theres a single(or in the case of x86, essentially (but technically not) duopoly) that controls all the options for one of the options, then it's not a good form of competition.

ARM wants a sweeter deal.

Is this somewhat related why qualcomm suddenly decided to bring oryon to smartphones?

And we all wept.

I liked the puntastic writing. Qualcomm smh

everyone near a clinic should get a burner and leave it at the clinic without hanging around

First the .io death now this, I can't wait to see the ramifications.

Strangely Qualcomm’s stock is flat in after hours trading right now. I’d think a bombshell like this would hit them pretty hard…what am I missing?

I guess they will have to make x86 work