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[-] CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml 244 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Hopefully Qualcomm takes the hint and takes this opportunity to develop a high performance RISC V core. Don't just give the extortionists more money, break free and use an open standard. Instruction sets shouldn't even require licensing to begin with if APIs aren't copyrightable. Why is it OK to make your own implentation of any software API (see Oracle vs. Google on the Java API, Wine implementing the Windows API, etc) but not OK to do the same thing with an instruction set (which is just a hardware API). Why is writing an ARM or x86 emulator fine but not making your own chip? Why are FPGA emulator systems legal if instruction sets are protected? It makes no sense.

The other acceptable outcome here is a Qualcomm vs. ARM lawsuit that sets a precedence that instruction sets are not protected. If they want to copyright their own cores and sell the core design fine, but Qualcomm is making their own in house designs here.

[-] scarilog@lemmy.world 56 points 2 months ago

takes this opportunity to develop a high performance RISC V core

They might. This would never be open sourced though. Best case scenario is the boost they would provide to the ISA as a whole by having a company as big as Qualcomm backing it.

[-] CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml 47 points 2 months ago

RISC V is just an open standard set of instructions and their encodings. It is not expected nor required for implementations of RISC V to be open sourced, but if they do make a RISC V chip they don't have to pay anyone to have that privilege and the chip will be compatible with other RISC V chips because it is an open and standardized instruction set. That's the point. Qualcomm pays ARM to make their own chip designs that implement the ARM instruction set, they aren't paying for off the shelf ARM designs like most ARM chip companies do.

[-] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 19 points 2 months ago

The RISCV instruction set IS open source. What they'd do to ratfuck it is lock the bootloader or something.

[-] ArdMacha@lemmy.world 27 points 2 months ago

Simping for Qualcomm is definitely not a take i expected

[-] CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml 23 points 2 months ago

In the mobile Linux scene, Qualcomm chips are some of the best supported ones. I don't love everything Qualcomm does, but the Snapdragon 845 makes for a great Linux phone and has open source drivers for most of the stack (little thanks to Qualcomm themselves).

[-] thesporkeffect@lemmy.world 15 points 2 months ago

Qualcomm is one of the worst monopolists in any industry though. They are widely known to have a stranglehold on all mobile device development

[-] rhombus@sh.itjust.works 11 points 2 months ago

Saying an ISA is just a hardware API vastly oversimplifies what an architecture is. There is way more to it than just the instruction set, because you can’t have an instruction set without also defining the numbers and types of registers, the mapping of memory and how the CPU interacts with it, the input/output model for the system, and a bunch of other features like virtual memory, addressing modes etc. Just to give an idea, the ARM reference is 850 pages long.

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[-] mako@discuss.tchncs.de 151 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] dust_accelerator@discuss.tchncs.de 51 points 2 months ago

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.

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[-] IndustryStandard@lemmy.world 128 points 2 months ago

A risky move... Or should I say... A RISCV move...

[-] vext01@lemmy.sdf.org 28 points 2 months ago

"risc architecture is gonna change everything"

[-] IndustryStandard@lemmy.world 26 points 2 months ago
[-] pewgar_seemsimandroid 23 points 2 months ago

year of the linux riscv desktop

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[-] Xatolos@reddthat.com 22 points 2 months ago

It really did.

FYI, ARM stands for Advanced RISC Machines.

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[-] frezik@midwest.social 19 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

It actually did, but not in a way people expected at the time that movie was made. It changed a lot underneath the hood.

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[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 14 points 2 months ago

For a firm that already have their own core designs that simply use the ARM instruction set, it might be easier to adapt to RISC-V. For a firm that licenses ARM cores on the other hand...

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[-] umbrella@lemmy.ml 96 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

thanks, proprietary licenses.

can we finally move to open standards now or will these fucks keep on losing money just to spite foss? are they that afraid we read some of their source code?

[-] Nobilmantis@feddit.it 89 points 2 months ago
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[-] irotsoma@lemmy.world 77 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] irotsoma@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 76 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

With the understanding that both of these are publicly traded multi-billion-dollar corporations and therefore neither should be trusted (albeit Arm Holdings has about 1/10 of the net assets), I feel like I distrust Arm less on this one than whatever Qualcomm is doing on their coke-fueled race to capitalize on the AI bubble.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io 18 points 2 months ago

What does trust have to do with anything? I mean, they seem to be arguing because Qualcomm bought a separate licensor and ARM argues that requires a contract renegotiation. This is the least take sides-y legal dispute in the history of legal disputes.

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[-] chasingtheflow@lemmy.world 38 points 2 months ago
[-] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 58 points 2 months ago

This seems like a tactic that might win a battle but lose the war. Reminds me of Unity.

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[-] szczuroarturo@programming.dev 53 points 2 months ago

And so the corporate wars have begun

[-] SupraMario@lemmy.world 26 points 2 months ago

I saw this documentary where taco bell won them.

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[-] TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee 52 points 2 months ago

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.

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[-] MehBlah@lemmy.world 47 points 1 month ago

Good. Qualcomm refuses to make it easy to run linux on their hardware. Instead they try to hide basic information about their processors and chips in the name of selling a license for every little thing.

[-] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 23 points 1 month ago

And so is Arm, especially their Mali drivers.

While some go "um, ackchually, you don't need a GPU driver for your hobby project of using a cheap SBC to run emulators", it does affect usability a lot. Yeah, Arm also pointing at the licensors and so are licensors to Arm in this case, but it's still not good that the only SBCs with relatively good GPU drivers for Linux are made by Raspberry Pi, and in all other case, you either need to pirate the drivers (!), use the tool that allows regular Linux to use Android GPU drivers, or just use the framebuffer-only driver with heavy limitations.

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[-] Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip 46 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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.

[-] frezik@midwest.social 39 points 2 months ago

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.

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[-] JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 37 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I hope this isn't a cartoony scheme driven by Apple honeydicking Arm with the M-series processors to tank PC and Android.

[-] ziggurat@lemmy.world 20 points 1 month ago

Arm owner softbank wants more mulah, want line goes up.

Qualcomm thinks this is not allowed in their license contract.

Without having read the contract, I think Qualcomm has a strong case, seams arm wants this to be settled before court in December. Qualcomm also thinks they have a strong case, so they say let the courts begin.

But it doesn't matter if it's an American court, because Qualcomm is American, softbank is Asian, arm is European. So, you have home turf advantage

[-] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 37 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 17 points 1 month ago

Truly yes, but RISC-V.

[-] ozymandias117@lemmy.world 11 points 1 month ago

Yeah. The crowd rooting for Qualcomm has never worked with them

ARM has it's problems, but they aren't in the wrong here

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[-] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 36 points 2 months ago
[-] CaptDust@sh.itjust.works 21 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 27 points 2 months ago

I wonder if their recent bid to take over Intel, is related.

The irony would be very thik as Qualcomm played a big role in killing Intel's 2010er efforts to enter the mobile sector.

[-] mariusafa@lemmy.sdf.org 18 points 1 month ago

Go RISC-V phones please!! Omg. I really hope RISC-V goes mainstream because of this.

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[-] 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 14 points 2 months ago
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[-] RelativeArea0@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago

Is this somewhat related why qualcomm suddenly decided to bring oryon to smartphones?

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this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
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