Tantra Analyst

Summary of Day 3

Check out the summary of Day 1 here and Day 2 here.

Significant progress was made on the third day. At the end of the day, the case has boiled down to two questions to be decided by the jury: 1) Whether Qualcomm and/or Nuvia breached a specific section of the Nuvia ALA (15.1a), which requires Arm to prove that Qualcomm was required to destroy all products using the Nuvia technology that Qualcomm acquired; 2) Whether Qualcomm’s products are licensed under the Qualcomm ALA. The first was the decision by Arm lawyers, and the second is the confirmation asked by Qualcomm.

The day saw intense cross-examination of Qualcomm expert witness Dr. Murali Annvaram and the testimony of Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon. Arm’s lawyer tried to make Dr. Annavaram say that cores are Arm technology, which he didn’t. Cristiano explained that Arm’s lagging behind Apple in performance was the main reason for buying Nuvia, and he would be happy to get TLA from Arm if it provided high-performance cores even now.

All the testimonies are now completed. Tomorrow, both parties will make their closing statements, and jury deliberations will begin. If the Jury decides quickly, we might have a decision by tomorrow evening.

Come back here tomorrow for the fourth day’s update.

Highlights of Day 3:

• Cross-examination of Annavarm was pretty intense. There is a lot of back and forth on defining what Arm Technology is. Although there is a definition of the term in the ALA, the discussion focused on the explanation of “Confidential Information,” which seems to suggest that “Architecture Compliant Core” is an Arm derivative. Dr. Annavarm didn’t agree to that at all. This is the same thing that was the bone of contention during Gerard Williams’s testimony on Day 2

• The “Arm Technology” term has been used many, many times during the last three days. It does have a specific definition in the contract. That doesn’t include any of the work, including design, RTL, and lots of other stuff done by companies like Nuvia to design processors. This is in contrast to how it is mentioned in the definition of “Confidential Information” mentioned above. It will be interesting to see how the jury will view this.

• Qualcomm’s counsel turned Arm’s Piano analogy on its head. Arm compared its ISA to a Piano Keyboard design during the opening statement and used it throughout the trial. It claimed that no matter how big or small the Piano is, the keyboard design remains the same and is covered by its license. Qualcomm’s counsel extended that analogy to show how ridiculous it would be to say that because you designed the keyboard, you own all the pianos in the world. Suggesting that is what Arm is trying to do.

Video depositions from Arm engineers and managers

• Internal messages suggesting Arm has no basis to sue Qualcomm after the Nuvia acquisition but only after the company ships actual products

• Another opinion is that Arm ARM doesn’t help in designing processors or developing any features

• For the compute platform (Hamoa), Qualcomm started the project with Nuvia implementer ID and changed it to that of Qualcomm

• Emails suggesting Qualcomm was complaining Arm substantially increased its royalty rates after the company disbanded it’s custom core effort

• Messages suggesting Qualcomm complained that Apple’s cores have 20-25% better performance than Arm cores

Dr. Murali Annavaram – Qualcomm expert witness

• Professor at USC, previously worked for Intel and Nokia, lots of awards/recognitions

• Reviewed source code of Qualcomm and Nuvia RTL

• Explained what microarchitecture is and how designing cores involves switching 15 billion transistors on and off etc, in simple terms to the jury

• 1000s of microarchitecture blocks in a chip – computing, storage, memory, scheduler etc.

• Opined strongly that Nuvia/ Qualcomm CPU cores do not use or are derived from Arm technology

• Claimed that the commonality between Arm RTL and Qualcomm RTL is less than 1%

• RTL codes are regularly regenerated, so most of the codes in cores will be Qualcomm’s

• The commonality between Nuvia/Arm RTL codes highlighted by Arm was mostly in comments, not in code

• Long winding back and forth between Arm counsel and Dr. Annavaram on whether Arm complaint cores are derivative of Arm technology. The confusion stems from how they are defined differently in two parts of the contract.

• Annavaram said, he is not a lawyer, and he can’t opine on how it is defined in the contract. But based on his technical knowledge, cores are not a derivative

Cristiano Amon

• Explained Qualcomm and Arm relationship in the last few years – started with ALA for building the first smartphone SOC, when Arm didn’t have its core

• Arm came to Qualcomm with TLA deal and made the company stop its custom core effort

• Arm fell behind Apple in performance and even behind Intel and AMD in PCs

• Had a few executive-level meetings with Arm to complain about it

• Bought Nuvia because of Gerard Williams, and his reputation at Apple building Apple M series chips

• Worked with Arm’s then-CEO Simon Segars to resolve the Nuvia licensing issue but in vain

• Got a call from TM Roh, head of Samsung Mobile, asking for assurance of supply of Snapdragon chips. He was worried because the chairman of Arm board and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son had told him that Qualcomm’s Arm license will expire in 2025 and may not be extended (actually, the contract runs till 2028 with an option to extend for five more years)

• Agreed to Arm’s “Piano” analogy but gives qualifications (e.g., accordion also has same keys)

• Went to Nuvia first to create custom CPU but didn’t workout

• Strongly said to many questions that Qualcomm is committed to honoring all contracts, not just license ones

• Qualcomm CFO’s initial Nuvia price estimate was $500B

• Reiterated that he didn’t believe Qualcomm needed permission from Arm to buy Nuvia but asked for approval anyway to maintain good relationship

• Said it is very unreasonable for Arm to ask for the destruction of Nuvia’s work, which was not dependent on Arm’s license

• Was asked about his compensation, for which he replied that he didn’t remember and said it’s public information