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ARM sued Qualcomm: proposed to break up the US $1.4 billion strategic acquisition of chip design company nuvia

Update time : 2022-09-02 13:54:54

It is reported that on Wednesday, local time, arm, a chip company under Softbank group, announced that it had filed a lawsuit against Qualcomm and nuvia, a chip design company recently acquired by Qualcomm, accusing it of violating the licensing agreement and infringing the registered trademark.
Arm applied to the court for an injunction, hoping to force Qualcomm to destroy the design developed under the licensing agreement between nuvia and arm. Arm believes that the company's license must be obtained to transfer these designs to Qualcomm.

Qualcomm bought nuvia for $1.4 billion last year. According to the company, arm has no right to interfere with the innovation of Qualcomm or nuvia. Ann Chaplin, Qualcomm's general counsel, said: "arm's lawsuit ignores the fact that Qualcomm has extensive and comprehensive licenses covering its customized CPUs, and we believe that these rights will be confirmed."
If arm's lawsuit is successful, it will be equivalent to breaking up Qualcomm's largest strategic acquisition in recent years.
Although arm is Qualcomm's most important technology partner, this lawsuit shows that there is a major rift between the two. Since Qualcomm stopped designing its own custom computing core, it has always relied on ARM technology. However, differences have emerged between the two sides in recent years.
Some Qualcomm insiders privately complain that arm's innovation speed is too slow, resulting in Qualcomm's chip performance lagging behind Apple's processor.
The reason why Qualcomm acquired nuvia, founded by Apple's former chip architect, is to restart the core customization business of computing, which is different from the standard arm design currently used by competitors such as TSMC.
One of Qualcomm's first goals after acquiring nuvia technology is to challenge Intel and AMD in the PC and notebook market. Qualcomm acquired nuvia shortly after Apple replaced Intel processors with its own chips in MAC notebooks. But Apple's processor is also based on ARM technology.
Apple's move boosted MAC sales, while Cristiano Amon, CEO of Qualcomm, said that he hoped to use nuvia's arm based design to achieve the same effect in the windows notebook market. Since Qualcomm will still pay arm a licensing fee based on the sales of chips using ARM technology, this will not have a material impact on arm's economic interests. However, according to the agreement between nuvia and arm, the licensing fee may be reduced.
Bob O'Donnell, an analyst at technalysis research, a market research firm, said that the incident highlighted the two sides' dependence on each other.
"Qualcomm's opportunities in the PC and server markets ultimately depend on the design of nuvia, which is the main means for arm to enter the windows PC market. Therefore, if we want to have a meaningful impact on the PC market, these companies need friendly cooperation." He said.
The transaction is seen as a means for Qualcomm to reduce its reliance on arm. In the past, most of Qualcomm's chips used computing cores licensed directly from arm, while nuvia's core only used arm's underlying architecture, and then customized the design scheme.
For Qualcomm, using a more customized core design like apple may reduce the licensing fees paid to arm in the short term. In the long run, it is also convenient for the company to adopt other structures.
An insider close to arm said that there was no dispute between the two parties on Qualcomm's own licensing. This case only involved technologies developed under the nuvia licensing agreement.

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