Qualcomm lawsuit files say Arm changes licensing model
As two heavyweight companies in the semiconductor industry, this legal dispute has also attracted the attention of the entire technology community. According to SemiAnalysis, Qualcomm’s latest lawsuit documents show that Arm may change its licensing model and change the IP terms. After 2024, SoCs based on Arm-based CPUs cannot use external GPUs, NPUs, or ISPs.
That is to say, starting from 2025, if the chip design company still wants to use the Arm public version CPU, some modules designed by itself will not be able to be used in the SoC. For example, Qualcomm’s Adreno series GPUs or Samsung’s RDNA architecture mobile GPUs cooperating with AMD must use Arm’s public version.
For the major design companies using the Arm public version of the CPU, it is a huge blow. As for Arm licensees like Apple or Nvidia, who signed a 20-year license agreement under the old terms, and one of the founders of the Arm ISA, Arm is not expected to take any new action.
The debate between Arm and Qualcomm continues, with a focus on licensing between Arm and NUVIA. Qualcomm believes Arm wants to use the lawsuit as leverage to force Qualcomm to renegotiate to revise the financial terms in the license agreement. To this end, Qualcomm also filed a countersuit against Arm, saying that the other party’s allegations were baseless and hoped that a federal judge in the U.S. District Court of Delaware would rule that it had not violated the licensing agreement with Arm.