For posterity’s sake, here are my LinkedIn posts from the Arm vs. Qualcomm trial. A key takeaway is that although I thought neither side argued well, Arm performed better but ultimately lost.
Greed
The Arm-Qualcomm trial has kicked off. Q has successfully portrayed Arm as greedy and obliterated Arm’s first witness. However, nothing so far has moved the needle on the central issue of whether Q needed Arm’s consent to access Nuvia technology.
Paper Trail
In Arm vs. Qualcomm, Arm’s paper trail bit them all day today. Qualcomm trotted out evidence showing Arm CEO is interested in getting out of soft IP and getting into chips and chiplets. It’s not necessarily relevant to the case, but undermines Arm’s credibility with customers.
Arm Lands Blows
In the Arm vs. Qualcomm trial, Arm finally landed blows. Arm firmly established Nuvia breached confidentiality terms.
However, the mechanism is problematic. Nuvia copied its confidential ALA to the data room Q set up for the acquisition. In every deal, confidential info goes into the data room. You can’t do an acquisition otherwise. Would Arm not require seeing contracts if it were taking over a company?
Qualcomm Takes More Punches
In Arm vs. Qualcomm, this morning continued to be tough for Qualcomm. Arm showed the confidentiality clause of the Nuvia ALA defined CPU cores and derivatives as Arm technology. Expert witness legendary Bob Colwell concurred. Q/Nuvia’s Gerard W. disagreed, as would I to a degree. But, as McNulty told Stringer in The Wire, this is a court, not the street.
Anatomy Lesson
- Arm CEO Rene Haas referred to CPUs as the brains at the heart of a computer, shattering my understanding of computer anatomy.
- The attorneys have gotten fixated on comments in RTL code being green, asking witnesses if they looked at comments, striking a Perry Mason stance, and boldly asking, “Were they green?” They obviously don’t realize that RTL code is stored in plain text files; the coloring is a feature of new-fangled IDEs and text editors, and the color is impertinent, arbitrary, and configurable (although green for comments is a common default). Most witnesses grunt an affirmation when posed the green question. However, hoary CPU icon and Intel P6 lead architect Robert Colwell only gave a baffled dumbfounded look when he was asked. Bob strikes me as a vi guy.
edit: I forgot the epilogue! When they finally showed jurors some RTL, they highlighted the code in green.
Ritualistic Reading of the Sacred Verilog
As a CPU designer, a dreaded activity was the design review, which would devolve into The Sacred Reading of the Verilog. Today in Arm vs. Qualcomm, the Arm attorney rolled out a monitor and treated them to a code reading. It’s rare for a jury instead of a guilty party to be punished.
Nailing Jello
Day 3 of Arm vs. Qualcomm. It was the last day of arguments. Qualcomm put its expert witness, professor Murali Annavaram of UCLA and USC on the stand. He argued that CPU microarchitecture is independent of CPU architecture. The professor was correct but not clear, concise, or convincing.
However, his nerdy ability to be simultaneously brilliant and obtuse enabled him to bob and weave during Arm’s cross examination, avoiding blows while driving the Arm attorney up the wall. They ended up reenacting What is a Photocopier, substituting “Arm Technology” for “Photocopier.”
The one question he clearly and concisely answered was whether the metaphor that a piano and its keys are like a CPU and its architecture. He decried that as “a hypersimplification,” which is witness-speak for f’ing idiotic. Arm had used the metaphor in its opening arguments, taking it from Qualcomm CEO Cristiano R. Amon’s deposition.
Having failed to hit the ball out of the park during direct examination, Dr. Annavaram would’ve only been able to do so during redirect if Qualcomm’s attorneys teed up the ball for him. They failed to do so, blowing the last best chance for an in-person witness to change the narrative.
Amon testified subsequently, taking little damage and dishing out even less. He got the closing words for the argument phase. Brought back to his piano metaphor, he strongly stated it would be unfair for the guy who defined the keyboard layout to claim ownership of all pianos or request their destruction. From Team Q’s perspective, it was a good note 🎵 to end on but would’ve been better if it punctuated a day of solid testimony.
Remember Nokia?
Another chuckle-inducing event in the Arm vs. Qualcomm trial: expert witness Murali Annavaram told the jury he had worked one year for Nokia. “You may have heard of them. They’re an old phone company.” Oof.
Don’t Trust Comments
Thanks to all who followed my Arm vs. Qualcomm trial updates. In addition to the jury, the other trial victim had been my butt. I’ve been driving up daily from the DC area only to have to sit all day in a church pew (that’s literally the seating in the courtroom) and then drive back in the evening. I’m staying home and will learn the verdict from reporters or whomever is still on the ground. As soon as I hear, I’ll post it here.
Because my anecdotes get more clicks, here’s another that coders everywhere will get. Under cross during the Ritualistic Reading of the Sacred Verilog (sorry I got the name wrong before), the Arm attorney asked the heroically elusive Professor Annavaram about some RTL:
Atty: What does this code say?
Prof: “This implements the ArmV8 Add function.”
Atty: That proves it’s Arm technology, right?
Prof: Lady, it’s a comment! I think the 500 lines of RTL that follow are more important.
[Let me add at this point that Arm must be reading my daily summaries because while they are as obsessed as ever with comments, they’re no longer talking about their color.]
Atty: The comment is more important because it’s in English and states what the code does, right?
Prof: Lady, if you think comments are accurate descriptions of code functionality, have I got news for you.
Happy to Avoid the Hot Seat
One of the odd things about the Arm vs. Qualcomm trial was that witnesses were asked to introduce themselves. Most said something like, “I’m Cristiano. I grew up in Brazil. I have two children.” In one case, the calling atty said, “This is John Smith. John, please introduce yourself.” He replied, “I’m John Smith.”
I’m glad I wasn’t a witness. For me, it would’ve gone something like, “My name is Joe. I’m bald. I’m unemployed, and I live with my parents.”
A Strong Arm Close
In Arm vs. Qualcomm, Arm brought its A game to closing arg. It highlighted that the Qualcomm ALA only covered cores made by and for the company, not those obtained through a merger.
A Strong Arm Close
In the Arm vs. Qualcomm trial, Qualcomm’s close lacked the directness and simplicity of Arm’s.
Qualcomm Victory or Mistrial?
In Arm vs. Qualcomm, Prakash Sangam is reporting to my surprise:
Q1 (Did Nuvia breach?): No decision
Q2 (Did Qualcomm breach?): Qualcomm
Q3 (Does Qualcomm ALA cover Nuvia products?): Qualcomm
As you can tell from my other posts, I thought Arm argued its side better and would prevail. Thus, Arm would be right as far as the court was concerned but wrong in actuality (i.e., as far as I’m concerned). Likewise, Qualcomm was right in actuality but reckless in its behavior.
If Arm had prevailed, I’m confident* that the backlash would’ve ended their business. Qualcomm and every big Arm licensor would pour resources into RISC-V and end Arm. (*Of course, I was confident Arm would prevail and was wrong. Fortunately, there’s no multiverse so this counterfactual cannot be evaluated, proving me wrong. 😜)
Thanks to Prakash for sticking it out to the end. I’m sure it’s been a boring 24 hours for him.
Still Fighting
Word is the companies are now arguing about what it means to have one question left undecided. One side says that means the whole thing is invalid and a retrial of everything is in order. The other side thinks only the deadlocked issue must be resolved. The judge isn’t having any of this and is telling them to work it out on their own.
Arm’s Parting Words
“We are disappointed that the jury was unable to reach consensus across the claims. We intend to seek a retrial due to the jury’s deadlock. From the outset, our top priority has been to protect Arm’s IP and the unparalleled ecosystem we have built with our valued partners over more than 30 years. As always, we are committed to fostering innovation in our rapidly evolving market and serving our partners while advancing the future of computing.”