ARM Introduces New Licensing Policy That Can Potentially Threaten A MediaTek & NVIDIA SoC Partnership, Here Are All The Details
The current licensing policy from ARM dictates that it charges a royalty based on the chip’s average selling price and licensing fee from manufacturers such as Qualcomm and MediaTek for using its CPU designs. However, going forward, there will be a small but very impactful change in the way ARM does business, and it might negatively affect the rumored partnership of MediaTek and NVIDIA, who were previously reported to have joined forces in making a chipset flaunting a new GPU.
A new image from the Financial Times mentions ARM's current and future licensing policies, with Twitter user @korean_riceball having uploaded an image revealing how the British chip designer will make money moving forward. Instead of simply charging a licensing fee and royalty payments from companies like Qualcomm and MediaTek, ARM has added another condition to the mix; such entities cannot use their own GPU, NPU, modem, or ISP if granted a Cortex design.
For years now, we have seen companies like Apple not only use their own CPU designs, but custom GPUs, so does ARM’s latest licensing policy dictate that technology giants will not be able to use custom designs? No, because according to the image, firms like Apple and Samsung are unaffected by this decision because they have their own agreements with ARM, meaning that they are free to use their own ISP, GPU, NPU, modem, and other custom chips. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about other companies.
figure below shows " a schematic diagram of the Arm's new licence policy
if you receive an Arm Cortex CPU license, you cannot use your own GPU, NPU, ISP, modem, etc. at all (?!) pic.twitter.com/j4XDcTxhjA
— Riceball
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