It may be old, but it's a legal conflict which, as far as I know, has not yet been resolved. So why do you claim it must be AMD/Intel FUD to discuss it now?
1. It was not discussed hardly at all several weeks ago. Or early 2024. It is rather too highy coincidental that this pops up right before the 'buy' button goes live.
2. Also rather convenient timing as the stories about "You aren't going to get Windows 2H24 " if have x86-64
Here's when your computer will receive the 2024 Update.
www.windowscentral.com
stories also popped up about the same time.
( Do users really want to get 2H release (that usually rolled out in Sept-Oct in June ... maybe not. ), but the point is likely to just to get folks to incrementally slow down impulse buys for a short time. The hoopla about the benchmarks being really bad isn't panning out. )
AMD's response is really coming in July. Intel's toward end of Q3.
3. This case has very slowly gone to trial ( not due until Q4 this year). If Arm said "throw away the Nuvia stuff" years ago at this point and Qualcomm ignored them. That may get Arm bigger punitive damages if they win , but it seems very unlikely that an injunction is coming at this point. There would be more harm to the systems vendors than to Qualcomm at this point since they have wrapped lots more money around the SoCs (in other PC parts ) than what they paid to Qualcomm. An injunction at this point would likely more seriously harm Arm's relationship with system vendors more so over the long term , than any short term harm they could do to Qualcomm.
If Qualcomm losses and get fined $150M but made $200M, then they just pay and move on. ("Better to ask forgiveness than permission" strategy). Arm wants money more than a dead, in the trash Arm chip. If Qualcomm pays the fine and moves on the impact on consumers is about zero.
[ Wouldn't be surprising if both Qualcomm and Arm are waiting to see just how much money is going to be in the pot after shipping for a quarter or so. Qualcomm doesn't want to 'overpay' to get Arm's blessing. (they likely substantively overpaid for Nuvia in the first place. ). Arm doesn't want to miss taking as big a slice as they can get ( since arch license generates less long term revenue for this implementation. ) ]
Arm's punitive damages check just gets bigger the more Qualcomm sells. At this point, they are zero interest in impeding Oryon sales. The folks who are nevous about a successful launch are AMD and Intel.
(This has little to no impact on Apple. They already left x86-64 land and not pressed about Windows. )
4. The longer this drags out the closer get to Oryon version 2 which would be a substantively different design chip anyway ( Arm asked Qualcomm to start over and to a large extent it would be a start over with largely trace and design input data that Qualcomm had collected. ) . Leaked Dell diagram indicated Oryon 2 is coming at end of 2025. Even if Arm wins in mid 2025... appeals and delays could come after Oryon v1 has stopped shipping. Impact to consumers ... not much.
Behind money the second irritant for Arm is time to market for Qualcomm. Even Qualcomm disappeared there is still Arm alternatives coming. The sustained threat there is to the x86 folks. If the PC market doesn't grow much and there are more players for base SoC, then shares of the pie are going to get smaller. That is going to get more FUD slinging. Arm is still a year out from getting to market (e.g., via Mediatek) to the Windows market. Short term delaying articles isn't going to help them no as they are not ramping anything to ship this year.
But the larger point is see above. Slightly shorter: Qualcomm went with the design they had available with the core they had available. I strongly suspect when they develop their own E-cores, we'll see Snapdragon SOCs with a mix of P- and E-cores, though potentially a different mix from Apple depending on what markets Qualcomm is targeting.
