Arm Holdings has terminated its architecture licensing agreement with Qualcomm due to a breach of contract lawsuit. Qualcomm thus has its ARM chips at risk.
Arm Holdings, the company that owns the rights to the ARM architecture, has decided to terminate its license agreement with Qualcomm. The move comes in response to a legal dispute that began two years ago, when Arm accused Qualcomm of violating license terms following its acquisition of Nuvia. Arm has given Qualcomm 60 days to fix the problem or it will demand an end to the sale of chips based on its technology.
ARM chip X Elite
A key point of contention is the acquisition of Nuvia in 2021. Arm claims that Qualcomm failed to comply with the license terms and renegotiate the license terms after acquiring Nuvia. However, Qualcomm argues that its existing licensing agreement already covers Nuvia’s development activities, including new chips based on the Phoenix (Oryon) cores that are at the heart of the problem.
The license agreements that Arm provided to Nuvia in 2019 were limited to data centers and non-transferable without consent. However, after Qualcomm took over Nuvia, the licenses did not transfer, leading to their termination in 2022. Qualcomm’s subsequent development of Nuvia processors led to another legal dispute, with both sides facing lawsuits.
Qualcomm is heavily dependent on ARM technology. Although it will continue to have access to standard ARM core designs, the loss of the license could significantly disrupt and slow down its product development.
Source: pctuning.cz
