While chipmakers are starting to develop their own custom SoCs or are interested in other architectures such as RISC-V, ARM would like to ban the use of IP* external to the company from 2024. Basically, it would no longer be possible to add other technologies to an ARM SoC.
ARM on the road the way down?
This analysis comes straight from the American analyst Dylan Patel who is very well informed in the semiconductor world. He reveals that ARM wants to change its business model from 2024. An inflection in its policy that could hurt the custom chips, including Samsung and Mediatek.
Indeed, the English company, which has been undergoing many shocks in recent years, such as the history with Nvidia or the Chinese branch that has taken its independence, is beginning to record a brain drain to other companies. The latest turbulence, the company has filed a lawsuit against one of its biggest partners: Qualcomm.
To summarize, some chipmakers developing new SoCs use third-party solutions to replace some technical elements that are no longer competitive in terms of performance and efficiency at ARM. The most concrete example concerns the AMD graphics part at Samsung. The use of external technologies would lead to a decrease in royalties paid, which would strongly displease the British firm.
On October 28, we got new information about ARM: by 2024, ARM will cease to deliver licenses to chip manufacturers, instead it will be the smartphone manufacturers who will receive them according to Qualcomm. So the only way for manufacturers to continue to sell ARM chips would be to use exclusively the IP* of the firm.
Partnerships such as: Samsung/AMD, Mediatek/Imagination will not be able to be renewed after 2024, the custom cores in development (such as the Phoenix from Qualcomm) will not be able to be used, despite the fact that most of its solutions are more powerful than those offered by ARM.
The consequences of this decision would be the acceleration of the adoption of the RISC-V architecture, which is starting to take market share. Some large companies like Apple who apparently begin to migrate the development of their future soc on.
To read the full report, go to the source: semianalysis.com
*IP : intellectual property / patent.
