Arm's licensing battle with Qualcomm just got a lot more serious

Key Takeaways

• Arm has served Qualcomm with a 60-day cancelation notice for its chip design license.
• Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite uses custom Oryon CPU cores, thanks to its Nuvia acquisition.
• Arm canceled Qualcomm's license due to the latter's Nuvia acquisition without its consent and new licensing agreements.

Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips tick inside virtually all flagship and popular mid-range Android phones. Until now, Qualcomm has been using reference Arm CPU cores for its Snapdragon chips with modifications for better performance. In 2021, the company acquired Nuvia to boost its custom CPU development efforts. The results of that acquisition are visible with the Snapdragon 8 Elite, Qualcomm's latest mobile SoC, which uses custom Oryon CPU cores and promises major performance and efficiency gains. However, this has seemingly not gone down well with Arm, leading to the cancelation of Qualcomm's license to use its IPs.

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Qualcomm is a long-time Arm licensee, using its reference CPU designs for its Snapdragon SoCs. Nuvia was also an Arm licensee, with the agreement allowing the startup to develop custom CPU cores based on the Arm instruction set.

However, Qualcomm's acquisition of Nuvia ruffled Arm's feathers. It believes the transfer of Nuvia's license and IPs without its consent is a breach of its licensing agreement with Qualcomm. This led Arm to file a suit against Qualcomm in September 2022, asking it to destroy some of the IP associated with Nuvia's license before the acquisition.

With Qualcomm officially unveiling its first mobile SoC with custom Oryon cores, Arm appears to have increased its pressure tactics for a settlement. According to Bloomberg, Arm has served Qualcomm a 60-day cancelation notice of their architectural license agreement.

This means that after 60 days, Qualcomm cannot sell chips featuring its custom CPU cores and Arm's instruction set, like the Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon 8 Elite. That is unless the company gives in and agrees to Arm's demands.

Qualcomm does not appear to be in the mood to settle

A Qualcomm representative shared the following statement with Anshel Sag, Principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy, "This is more of the same from ARM – more unfounded threats designed to strongarm a longtime partner, interfere with our performance-leading CPUs, and increase royalty rates regardless of the broad rights under our architecture license. With a trial fast approaching in December, Arm’s desperate ploy appears to be an attempt to disrupt the legal process, and its claim for termination is completely baseless. We are confident that Qualcomm’s rights under its agreement with Arm will be affirmed. Arm’s anticompetitive conduct will not be tolerated."

This feud with Arm is a key reason why Qualcomm and Google are working on a new open-source mobile architecture, RISC-V. Both companies also announced a collaboration back in October 2023 to develop a new RISC-V Snapdragon Wear platform for Wear OS smartwatches.