The dispute between Qualcomm and Arm has escalated with the latter canceling Qualcomm’s ability to use the instruction set for designing chips.
Sounds like things are getting tense. I feel like this is just a negotiating tactic by Arm, but man it would sure be wild if they follow through beyond the 60 day notice period.
What does this mean for average consumers, or prosumers?
Qualcomm will need a place to stay, maybe set up the bed in the basement for them.
Qualcomm settles and continues to pay ARM a bigger shitload of money, Qualcomm SoC prices increase to make up for that, phone prices increase further.
It will impact the elite CPUs
Ah, time to switch to RISC-V, then? Long term it’s the best choice. Wouldn’t be surprised if they started working on it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they started working on it, but even if they had a design ready, it wouldn’t happen overnight. Apps, and Android itself, don’t yet have support for RISC-V (though I believe Android 15 has preliminary support).
At the moment, Qualcomm likely has to bend over and take it
I mean, sure, but this could be the push to open architecture. Half the apps wouldn’t need recompiling anyway, only those containing native code.
Realistically it could take 2-3 years for Qualcomm to switch to RISC-V (so 5 years because we all know how smooth such huge transitions are). That’s enough time for Google to fully support Android on RISC-V.
IMO it’s now in Google’s hands, once they add support, interesting things are gonna happen. I could even see Arm going out of business, I’m sure Qualcomm would happily help others transition for a very fair fee to help get them out of business.
I think with RISC-V being as supported as it is (meaning it’s nothing obscure, but has strong open source toolchain support), this might potentially be a very bad move for Arm.
Anyway, I love it when corporate greed destroys corporations instead of humans for a change. And if open architecture gains traction thanks to that, well, all the better.
