According to the British “Financial Times” report, the chip design company ARM has recently adjusted its licensing policy, which may have a negative impact on some chip manufacturers, and even threaten the rumoured Mediatek and Nvidia. Collaboration plan. It is reported that MediaTek and Nvidia are conspiring to develop a chip equipped with a new GPU.
ARM’s current licensing policy is to charge manufacturers such as Qualcomm and MediaTek for using its CPU designs based on the chip’s average selling price and licensing fees. However, in the future, ARM will add a small but important change to this policy: if ARM licenses a Cortex CPU to a partner, that partner cannot use its own GPU, ISP, NPU, modem, etc. components.
But companies like Apple and Samsung which have their own CPU designs and custom chips for GPUs, ISPs, NPUs, modems, etc. will not be affected by this policy change because they have their own agreements with ARM. Other companies don’t have that advantage, though.
Twitter user @RGcloudS analyzed the implications of this new authorization policy in a series of tweets. He believes that, in addition to MediaTek and Nvidia’s cooperation, this policy change may also prevent Qualcomm from launching a Snapdragon chip with a custom Oryon core based on technology from Nuvia, which Qualcomm acquired. He mentioned that to avoid this, Qualcomm and MediaTek need to register themselves as device manufacturers and build their own factories. However, ARM knows this is risky for both chipmakers and believes they will not take this move but embrace the new changes.
It is unclear whether ARM will file a lawsuit against Qualcomm because of this policy change.
