In the world of mobile processors, ARM is king. A bit of a weirdo king who has ever made it and let him do it. This strategy has worked so far, but the industry is under serious threat. Why? Why? We count it.

ARM designs and licenses, but does not produce. The British company licenses chip designs (for example, CPU or GPU cores) to companies like Qualcomm, which use these “blocks” as if they were LEGO pieces to develop and manufacture the SoCs we use in our mobile devices.

two licenses. The company has offered two types of licenses to date. The first, called the ARM Technology License (ATL), allows these designs to be used, and the person using them pays for these “plans” plus a royalty for each chip deployed. The second is the ARM Architecture License (AAL), which allows companies to design their own CPU cores using the ARM instruction set. This gives much more control to those licensing those designs while paying a smaller royalty fee for each component deployed.

ARM sues Qualcomm. In September, ARM sued Qualcomm and Nuvia for violations of license and trademark agreements. At Qualcomm, they wanted to develop ARM processors using the CPU core designs they acquired through the Nuvia acquisition. According to ARM, they didn’t have permission to do so.

Qualcomm opposes ARM. Qualcomm did not sit idle and in turn sued ARM. The documents reaching the courts are partially public, and the revelations are troubling.

ARM gets (very) greedy. As they explained at SemiAnalysis, ARM plans not to license CPU designs to companies like Qualcomm: it will only license device manufacturers, so the world’s Samsung, Xiaomi or OnePlus will have to negotiate with ARM and license the use of tech-based processors. ARM is something they’ve covered up until now by buying Qualcomm chips.

wait, there’s more. This counterclaim also states that chip manufacturers cannot mix external elements in their SoCs. Traditionally Qualcomm (or MediaTek) used an ARM CPU and GPU, but later added its own NPUs or its own ISPs that differentiated these designs. They couldn’t with ARM’s new philosophy.

Sea change in the industry. If what Qualcomm claims in its case is true, the implications for the industry will be huge. The move from licensing to licensing to chip manufacturers to licensing to device manufacturers makes everything much more complex and will give ARM a lot more power, which will be able to negotiate different terms and conditions with each manufacturer – possibly putting more pressure on smaller ones.

Why are you ruining everything? The industry has worked fantastically so far. ARM’s licenses provided enough flexibility for manufacturers to move forward from a common foundation in certain areas, but now these theoretical new policies would limit innovation and give ARM unprecedented control. This seems highly unlikely, as if ARM is now planning to be both a manufacturer and a designer/licensor.

unpredictable results. The real impact something like this has on the industry is hard to know. Apple and NVIDIA are companies that have “favorable” deals with ARM, according to SemiAnalysis, and it’s unclear whether this new strategy will be applied “by hand” and to companies like Qualcomm, leaving these big allies alone for now. What is clear is that if the model changes, traditional ARM chip manufacturers like Qualcomm or MediaTek may find their business compromised. Meanwhile, it opens the doors of another alternative.

RISC-V. Open architecture is still a long way off from what has been achieved with ARM designs, but if the British company closes the band, we may see a tipping point for RISC-V designs that will increase the momentum. It’s unlikely in the short term, but perhaps with this measure, support for these royalty-free “Open Source Hardware” designs will be definitive. For example, Intel has already opened the door to this architecture.