On December 19, Qualcomm seems to be accelerating its layout in the RISC-V field as the patent war with Arm erupts. According to The Register, at last week’s global RISC-V summit, Qualcomm’s product management director Manju Varma revealed that Qualcomm has already integrated RISC-V into its Snapdragon 865 SoC microcontroller since 2019, and has shipped 650 million RISC-V cores to date.
650 Million RISC-V Cores Shipped
Although Qualcomm continues to use Arm’s instruction set architecture (ISA) and CPU core designs provided by Arm as the basis for its application processor (AP) cores in its system-on-chip (SoC), Qualcomm has long been betting on open-source RISC-V.
According to Varma, Qualcomm began using RISC-V as the microcontroller core in its chips starting with the Snapdragon 865 SoC. Varma stated that he has helped drive Qualcomm’s CPU strategy and roadmap across the company’s entire product portfolio.
Varma noted that RISC-V is an emerging alternative to the proprietary instruction set Arm architecture, with opportunities across a range of devices targeted by Qualcomm’s chips, including wearables, smartphones, laptops, and connected cars. Currently, Qualcomm is using RISC-V microcontrollers in SoCs for PCs, mobile devices, wearables, connected cars, and augmented and virtual reality headsets. These microcontrollers perform low-level tasks in the background, such as managing hardware.
As of now, Qualcomm has shipped over 650 million RISC-V cores, making RISC ISA “one of Qualcomm’s core technologies,” and Qualcomm has become “one of the leaders in RISC-V implementation.”
Is Arm a “Legacy Architecture”? Is RISC-V the Future?
When asked why Qualcomm started betting on RISC-V early, Varma explained that Qualcomm turned to RISC-V microcontrollers in the Snapdragon 865 because it “needed something customizable to meet our unique requirements and that takes up less space.” RISC-V CPU cores enable designers to implement custom instructions and features for expansion. “Existing legacy architecture (Arm) solutions do not meet these requirements,” she added.
Varma stated that the main advantage of RISC-V is that it receives functional contributions from various companies and organizations across the “value chain,” from ISA and CPU to system software, operating systems, and end-user applications. She added that this contrasts sharply with traditional architectures that are “owned by a single entity in the value chain.”
According to Varma, the contribution structure of RISC-V is made possible by its open-source nature and is managed by the non-profit organization RISC-V International, creating opportunities to “add value to end consumers’ functionalities and define them together with everyone in the value chain, which is another area where legacy architectures fall short.”
“In the past, we often saw that the features introduced in legacy architectures did not seem to add real value for end consumers,” Varma said. Through RISC-V, there is an opportunity to define chip designs with “best-in-class performance, best power efficiency, and value-added features.”
“These advantages also allow RISC-V, as a general-purpose basic instruction set architecture, to scale from low-end microcontrollers to high-performance computing, and everything in between, improving efficiency across the industry,” Varma said in her keynote speech.
At the end of November, domestic RISC-V chip manufacturer SiFive launched the world’s first high-performance RISC-V chip for PC applications—the SiFive·Jinghong 8100. At this global RISC-V summit, chip startup Ventana Microsystems also released the world’s first CPU for servers—the Veyron V1. The efforts of these companies demonstrate the potential of RISC-V in high-performance computing.
RISC-V Still Needs Improvement
While Varma spent a lot of time discussing the benefits of RISC-V, she also believes that RISC-V needs to continue improving and called on the ISA development community, stating that contributors need to commit to standardizing features and reducing fragmentation, which is a known issue among developers of RISC-V.
Varma said, “As a chip supplier, we see the need for standardized, RISC-V-compatible system IP. We have seen a lot of innovation in the application processor space. We see a lot of diversity, competition, and differentiation, which is great. But we need to ensure standardized system IP to reduce ecosystem fragmentation.” The RISC-V community also needs to ensure it does not regress in the functionalities sold for the ISA.
Varma pointed out other areas that need improvement in RISC-V, such as the need for a competitive compiler that optimizes the RISC-V instruction set architecture; an open-source core community that can learn the latest and best instruction set architecture features; and a standardized software security stack compatible with the RISC-V instruction set architecture is also crucial. “By focusing on tools, libraries, and languages, we can truly accelerate the adoption of RISC-V software.”
If the RISC-V community develops “first-class architectural specifications” for security, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, and introduces new features at a faster pace, then the ISA ecosystem “will have a significant time-to-market advantage,” Varma concluded.
Arm’s “Divine Assistance”
At the end of August this year, Arm initiated a lawsuit against Qualcomm and its subsidiary Nuvia, which designs self-developed CPU cores based on the Arm instruction set, accusing both companies of infringing Arm’s patents, terminating the license for Nuvia, and demanding Qualcomm destroy all Nuvia designs, prohibiting their use in new Qualcomm products.
Arm stated that the license previously obtained by Nuvia cannot be transferred to its parent company Qualcomm for use without its permission. Therefore, Arm requires Qualcomm to modify the license previously obtained from Arm to align with the terms of its license with Nuvia. Arm acknowledged that Nuvia’s license has a higher royalty rate than Qualcomm’s, and it seems that Arm wants to continue receiving higher royalties after Qualcomm takes over the technology from Nuvia.
Arm also warned that if Qualcomm violates its license with Arm, it could mean that Arm may revoke all rights for Qualcomm to use its technology. This would be a heavy blow to Qualcomm, as it still relies on Arm-licensed architectures and IP to design chips.
In response, Qualcomm stated that Arm wants to leverage this licensing requirement to charge Qualcomm additional fees and higher royalties. Qualcomm believes that the licensing details involved do not actually require Qualcomm to obtain Arm’s permission to absorb Nuvia’s technology, and its use of Nuvia’s designs does not require Arm’s consent anyway.
Subsequently, Qualcomm also countersued Arm and revealed in the lawsuit documents that Arm will change its IP licensing model after 2024, and will no longer license its CPU to semiconductor companies like Qualcomm under the Technology License Agreement (TLA), but will only license to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Arm told OEMs that the only way to obtain Arm-based chips is to accept Arm’s new licensing terms. Qualcomm claims that Arm has misled Qualcomm’s OEM partners regarding Qualcomm’s licensing terms.
Additionally, Qualcomm alleges that Arm told OEM manufacturers that chip design companies would not be able to provide other key components in Arm CUP-based SoCs, but would instead be provided directly by Arm’s new license, including GPU, NPU, and ISP, among others.
An Arm spokesperson responded in mid-November, stating, “Qualcomm’s allegations regarding changes to Arm’s business model are misleading and intended to distract Arm’s customers from the fact that Qualcomm is violating the explicit terms of the relevant contracts by misappropriating Arm technology. Access to fundamental technology will remain unrestricted, and Arm will continue to work with semiconductor companies and OEMs to provide them with our technology.”
Although Qualcomm and Arm each have their own arguments, their relationship has reached a freezing point.
In the face of Arm’s warning to Qualcomm to destroy all Nuvia designs and not use them in new Qualcomm products, while Qualcomm stated it complied with Arm’s request, Arm still believes that Qualcomm seems to have incorporated Nuvia’s custom CPU designs into its chip blueprint without permission.
At the 2022 Snapdragon Technology Summit, Qualcomm announced a brand new custom CPU core, “Oryon,” which will be used in higher-performance Snapdragon SoC platforms, aiming to compete with Apple’s custom M-series chips based on the Arm instruction set in the PC market. Snapdragon processors based on the Oryon CPU core will be delivered to customers in 2023. There is speculation that Oryon is based on the Phoenix design from Nuvia, which Qualcomm acquired.
While Qualcomm has not disclosed what it would do if it loses the lawsuit against Arm, many analysts believe that regardless of the outcome, it will give Qualcomm more reasons to consider RISC-V as an alternative to Arm.
It is worth noting that Qualcomm is also a founding member of the RISC-V open-source organization RISC-V International. Additionally, Qualcomm invested in SiFive, a leading global RISC-V IP design company, through its Qualcomm Ventures fund in 2020.
Editor: Chip Intelligence – Wandering Sword
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