First the .io death now this, I can’t wait to see the ramifications.
What’s the .io death? Looking this up is particularly frustrating.
They better stay away from .mom domains
The amount of IP money grubbing in the IT industry is able to literally make millions out of sand, this is just more of it.
Not necessarily “out of sand”. IP is basically putting a price tag on a person for them to say “Yes, I consent”. In other words, technofeudalism.
I may be off base but I think that might be referencing what the computer chips are made of…
Go RISC-V phones please!! Omg. I really hope RISC-V goes mainstream because of this.
Let’s wait and see how this develops…
thanks, proprietary licenses.
can we finally move to open standards now or will these fucks keep on losing money just to spite foss?
Laughs in OpenPOWER
This seems like a tactic that might win a battle but lose the war. Reminds me of Unity.
What happened with Unity in the end? Did they back down?
Yeah, iirc, at first they tried to downplay the change, then they paused it, then they walked it back entirely. I think that last step happened relatively recently, even.
But IMO the damage was done from just trying to alter the deal like that.
And, for me personally, I (naively) thought that ARM was an open standard. I opposed the Nvidia purchase because I thought they would do their corporate bullshit to kill off competition or for greed and thought that it getting blocked meant it would be free of corporate bullshit. This action makes it clear that it’s already got some of that going on and ARM has been mentally re-filed to a spot beside x86 and its derivatives.
Though now I’m wondering if that’s the whole point. Do some shitty corporate stuff so that the next time someone wants to buy them out, there isn’t as much opposition and the current owners and C-suite can cash out.
the fact that you know they fucked up but don’t know how they fixed it says it all.
even if they did “fix” it, public opinion has been settled and nobody will trust them for awhile.
Good. Godot exists. Or even that weird engine from Amazon (?) they open sourced. You could make a Unity competitor out of that. Just create an asset store for it and sell stuff, give other creators a decent cut and they will come.
Oh no, not copilot!
Anyway…
Tech patents are ridiculous. Let’s end them or reduce them to 1-3 years with no renewal. Then all that’s left is the specific copyright to the technology, not lingering webs of patents that don’t make any sense anyway to anyone with detailed knowledge of the tech. All they’re good for is big companies using legal methods to stop innovation and competition. Tech moves too fast for long patents and is too complex for patent examiners or courts to understand what is really patentable. So it comes down to who has the most money for lawyers.
Seeing things like “slide to unlock”, “rounded corners”, and “scroll bouncing” are all patentable is ridiculous.
Yeah, but another big issue is that big companies can afford to bribe or buy out the patent holders in the first place. Ideally, the patent holders would benefit the most from everyone making their tech, but instead they benefit the most from one company being the exclusive manufacturer and highest bidder.
The act of an agreement asking a patent holder not to sell to other manufacturers in itself should be illegal.
Yeah, making patents nontransferable would solve that. Ultimately, getting rid of most would be good, but if we have to keep them, then they should be dissolved if a company fails or is bought out because obviously the patent itself wasn’t enough to make a product that was viable. So everyone should get the chance to use the patent. The whole purpose of a patent vs keeping tech proprietary until the product is released was to benefit society once the patent expires. Otherwise, it makes more sense for companies to keep inventions secret if they aren’t just stockpiling them like they do now.
And we all wept.
While every comment here seems to scream “end patents”, arm has less patent bs than other tech (rounded corners) meant to sue/prevent use. Arm works hard on developing and improving architecture and designs to offer licenses at a compelling price. Qualcomm paying as much as other licensees should be preferable to Qualcomm than bankruptcy.
Truly yes, but RISC-V.
Oh so they aren’t as shitty as other companies so it is all good? Sounds like horseshit to me. Patents on a quickly changing area like computer technology are pretty asinine hence why people don’t like them.
Also there is nothing preventing them from changing their behavior and turning into patent trolls in the future. In fact, enshitification pretty much guarantees they will at some point in the future.
Yeah. The crowd rooting for Qualcomm has never worked with them
ARM has it’s problems, but they aren’t in the wrong here
Qualcomm paying as much as other licensees should be preferable to Qualcomm than bankruptcy.
Not saying this is wrong, but where do you get it from? The article just states that ARM considers Qualcomm’s acquisition of Nuvia a breach of license. Both companies held ARM licenses before. What’s the issue with such a purchase?
We shall break into the desktop and laptop market! Let’s start by severing ties with one of the most successful companies to do that so far.
Apple?
Just when ARM devices were finally getting good…
Part of the reason why when people were saying they wanted competition to unseat x86, I didn’t want it to be ARM based, because I knew 100% that ARM would jump in and do some shit to rake in more profit and negate all the potential cost savings to the consumer. As long as theres a single(or in the case of x86, essentially (but technically not) duopoly) that controls all the options for one of the options, then it’s not a good form of competition.
This will get RISC-V probably a big boost. Maybe this was not the smartest move for ARMs long term future. But slapping Qualcomm is always a good idea, its just such a shitty company.
Yeah, in the current macro environment Qualcomm isn’t that tied down & can afford some changes (basically with a few of their biggest partners that can keep their profits up even in a few transitioning years). Not sure what prompted ARM to force such a deal instead of getting like a good compromise.
But also fuck Qualcomm & their closed-softwareness.
Im still hoping I can buy a RISC-V laptop (from Framework?) in 2 or 3 years & just run Linux normally.
And if that can happen & RISC-V still doesn’t overall prosper it’s bcs of some shitty greedy deals between megacorps.You are overestimating RISC-V. It cannot save the planet alone.
ARM provides complete chip designs.
RISC-V is more like an API, and then you still need to design your chips behind it.
Of course i will still take RISC-V a long time to be even relevant. But in the future there could be multiple Companies that offer finished chip designs to use. As you said not every company wants and can create a design themself.
I could be wrong, but I think Qualcomm designs its own chips and only licenses the “API”, so it would be no difference for them.
If they use Cortex cores, they are ARM designs. Oryon cores are in house based on Nuvia designs, and I assume it would still require a complete chip redesign if they decide to switch to RISC-V.
From my understanding, most companies take the reference design from Arm and then alter it to fit their needs.
That’s a big part of what’s going on. ARM is trying to move into Qualcomm’s traditional business while Qualcomm is trying to move in ARM’s traditional business.
"Under Chief Executive Officer Rene Haas, Arm has shifted to offering more complete designs — ones that companies can take directly to contract manufacturers. Haas believes that his company, still majority owned by Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp., should be rewarded more for the engineering work it does. That shift encroaches on the business of Arm’s traditional customers, like Qualcomm, who use Arm’s technology in their own final chip designs.
Meanwhile, under CEO Cristiano Amon, Qualcomm is moving away from using Arm designs and is prioritizing its own work, something that potentially makes it a less lucrative customer for Arm. He’s also expanding into new areas, most notably computing, where Arm is making its own push. But the two companies’ technologies remain intertwined, and Qualcomm isn’t yet in a position to make a clean break from Arm."
Interesting. So essentially Arm is butthurt that Qualcomm doesn’t want to send them a shitload of money and instead tries to do their own thing, so Arm is trying to force them into buying their product regardless?
True, I just wished RISCV laptops were slightly more developed and available. As of now, the specs aren’t there yet in those devices that are available. (8core@2Ghz, but only 16GB Ram, too little for me)
Kind of a bummer, was coming up to a work laptop upgrade soon and was carefully watching the Linux support for Snapdragon X because I can’t bring myself to deal with Apple shenanigans, but like the idea of performance and efficiency. The caution with which I approached it stems from my “I don’t really believe a fucking thing Qualcomm Marketing says” mentality, and it seems holding off and watching was the right call. Oh well, x86 for another cycle, I guess.
ARM CPU prob means that at some point you’ll get stuck with a kernel limit.
But did you imply you would buy (now) a RISC-V laptop if it had more RAM & cores?
I think, I would go for a ARM Tuxedo PC in your position.
Oh, still some time needed for that as well, but you can see the progress (a lot is working now at kernel 6.11)
https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Where-are-we-with-our-TUXEDO-ARM-Notebook.tuxedo
I’ll wait and see. RISC-V is a nice idea, but there are way too many different “standards” to make it a viable ecosystem.
What do you mean by standards?
Several differing extensions of the RISC-V core machine instructions, for example. A pain in the rear for any compiler builder.
That’s a good thing, meaning you can design RISC-V CPUs without functionality you don’t need (like microcontrollers that only need basic operations). However, for those who want a complete CPU, there are RVA profiles (latest being RVA23), which are a list of extensions required to be an application-ready CPU. So there’s really just 1 “standard” for general purpose computing, everything else is for specialized products.
And it does not concern you that this RVA profile is version 23? Which means there are a number of CPUs based on lower versions, too, as they don’t just update on a whim? And they are incompatible, with version 23 because they lack instructions?
So a compiler would have to support at least a certain number of those profiles (usually, parts in the embedded world are supported for 10+ years!), and be capable of supporting the one or other non-RVA extension, too, to satisfy customer needs.
That is exactly what I meant with “too many standards”.
And it does not concern you that this RVA profile is version 23
Not sure where you got that information. There are only 5 RISC-V profiles.
And they are incompatible, with version 23 because they lack instructions?
Like all the x86 CPUs from a few years ago that don’t have all the new extensions? Not supporting new extensions doesn’t mean the CPU is useless, only that it’s worse than new ones, as things should be when there’s progress. Or I guess you throw out your x86 CPU every time Intel/AMD create a new instruction?
So a compiler would have to support at least a certain number of those profiles
Do you think compilers only target one x86 version with one set of instructions? For example in x86, there’s SIMD versions SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, compilers support all of them, and that’s literally just for the SIMD instructions. What’s new?
Yes, there are differences in certain x86 command sets. But they actually have a market. RISC-V is just a niche, and splintering in a small niche is making the support situation worse.
IT Crowd s04e03 timestamp 6:25 - if someone was looking for a scene.
ARM wants a sweeter deal.
ARM is mad because Qualcomm bought Nuvia (which had their own ARM license) and then started using Nuvia’s designs. ARM says that Qualcomm needs to renegotiate the license in order to use those designs.
Normally ARM and Qualcomm would handle this fairly smoothly, the reason its not happening this time is because ARM and Qualcomm both have growth plans that are increasingly making them direct competitors.
Nailed it. They know they have a leading chip in these designs now, the market is expanding, and whatever licensing fee was negotiated in the past needs to be revisited.
“Economies of scale” 🤡
