[HN Gopher] Qualcomm acquires RISC-V focused Ventana Micro Systems
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Qualcomm acquires RISC-V focused Ventana Micro Systems
Author : fork-bomber
Score : 47 points
Date : 2025-12-10 15:30 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.qualcomm.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.qualcomm.com)
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| Why does Qualcomm need this? They don't need to license RISC-V.
|
| Is all the IP they acquired with Nuvia[1] tainted? Or were they
| just using ARM-derived internals?
|
| From my understanding, just slapping on a different instruction
| decoder isn't a big technical hurdle. Actually, I wonder if it
| would be possible to design a chip with both an ARM and a RISC-V
| decoder on the same die and just fuse-off the ARM die on select
| units to avoid any fees...
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualcomm#2015%E2%80%932024:_NX...
| dismalaf wrote:
| Acquihire and hedging bets.
| jsheard wrote:
| > Actually, I wonder if it would be possible to design a chip
| with both an ARM and a RISC-V decoder on the same die and just
| fuse-off the ARM die on select units to avoid any fees...
|
| That's not quite what Raspberry Pi did with the RP2350 (the ARM
| and RV cores are wholly separate) but they did include the
| ability to fuse off one side or the other, so I wonder if
| they'll release a cheaper RV-only version at some point.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > They don't need to license RISC-V.
|
| Correct. However you need circuitry on silicon to implement
| said architecture which is the expensive and time consuming
| part.
| fork-bomber wrote:
| QC likely use a lot of Arm IP, Nuvia notwithstanding, and want
| a way out of the general Arm monopoly. Seems to be a growing
| trend.
|
| A dual ISA decoder with with fuse-off options will likely have
| unwelcome power-perf-area and yield consequences.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| Fused off silicon consumes power? I assumed it just went
| dark.
| fork-bomber wrote:
| You're right. But consider that in order to be useful when
| not fused off, the design would need to have a bunch of
| additional logic (interconnect ports, power control
| machinery etc) at the periphery of the to-eventually-be-
| fused-off area that would likely remain even when things
| were fused off. That may impact power.
|
| Apart from that there's the other usual angles: The very
| fact that there's additional logic in the compute path
| (eventually fused off) means additional design and
| verification complexity. The additional area, although
| dark, eats into the silicon yield at the fab.
|
| Not saying it's not possible.
| tux3 wrote:
| Eating the competitor is one way to win. If you're scared of
| them, just buy them out.
| observationist wrote:
| Doesn't have to be fear, it can be simple greed, too. "Hey,
| look, .05% revenue boost, nomnomnom".
| NordSteve wrote:
| No big company would bother with an acquisition if the top
| result is 0.05% increase in revenue.
| 6SixTy wrote:
| They are basically acquiring talent and/or preexisting IP.
| RISC-V is free but implementations are the sole IP of the
| company.
|
| Implementing ARM and RISC-V decoders might depend on licensing
| fine print for each licensee
| Zhyl wrote:
| This. SiFive, for example, is a proprietory core design based
| on the open source RISC V spec. Hazard3 [0] on the other
| hand, is an open source core design.
|
| [0] https://github.com/Wren6991/Hazard3
| jrepinc wrote:
| Another opensource core design is XiangShan
| https://xiangshan.cc/en/
| tapoxi wrote:
| ARM cancelled their architecture license and sued them,
| Qualcomm won, but with a threat like that to your core business
| it's best to have an escape hatch.
|
| They'll need to license future versions of the ARM ISA and now
| they know the licensor is hostile.
| Zigurd wrote:
| There are a lot of little cores in phones doing little core
| things. Having a first rate design team experienced in an ISA
| that is royalty free probably makes sense. They'll be able to
| expand the use of RISCV up the value chain ver time.
|
| Buying a team that's already working on RISCV also reduces the
| chances of ARM lawyers getting involved.
| aseipp wrote:
| It's probably just for IP and talent acquisition, if I had to
| guess. People who can design high performance server-class CPU
| microarchitectures are rare.
|
| Frankly, Ventana seemed like an interesting entry in the space,
| but I have no idea who would have actually bought their servers
| at the end of the day. They taped out multiple designs, but
| none actually seem to exist outside their labs. I don't really
| see any path to meaningful RISC-V server adoption for at least
| several more years and by that time Qualcomm could design
| something on their own, assuming they are serious about re-
| entering the market. Grabbing the talent and any useful IP/core
| design components makes the most sense to me, anyway.
| fidotron wrote:
| https://patents.justia.com/assignee/ventana-micro-systems-in...
|
| RISC-V being freely available does not mean that
| implementations of it will not be patented from here to the
| Orion nebula and back.
| boredatoms wrote:
| I wonder why SiFive wasn't the acquisition target
| ch_123 wrote:
| Might be worth more than Qualcomm is willing to spend and/or
| introduce antitrust concerns. This feels like a hedging of
| bets, no need for Qualcomm to buy the biggest name in the
| RISC-V space.
| rwmj wrote:
| SiFive have apparently been shopping themselves around for a
| while. But they've been around for a long time, taken loads of
| investment, had a huge number of employees at one point (not
| now), and don't have very competitive products. My speculation
| is they're just not a very attractive acquisition with a
| complex ownership structure, and are demanding too much money
| to compensate their earlier investors.
| tonetegeatinst wrote:
| Does anyone know or have they leaked potential cost of
| acquisition?
| monocasa wrote:
| The $2B deal with Intel fell through. Thought they were
| arguably worth more on paper then. My guess is that they're
| in a weird place where a fair offer at the moment is less
| than the investment they've gotten so far.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Note that the $2 billion deal story was always "according
| to people with knowledge of the matter", and I wonder if
| it was nothing more than Intel taking a peek at Sifive's
| technology and books.
|
| https://archive.is/FVMLI#selection-3331.81-3331.129
| pieter3d wrote:
| A perfect target for Intel then, followed by a rapid exodus
| of the employees and destruction of the IP (like every other
| Intel acquisition).
| monocasa wrote:
| They almost got bought by Intel, but then even Intel noped
| out.
|
| https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-failed-to-buy-
| sifive
| IshKebab wrote:
| SiFive have had a very long time to create competitive CPUs and
| they haven't really managed it. I dunno what's going on there
| but I'm not sure I'd buy them either.
| wslh wrote:
| 2025 and counting. Apple launched the M1 in 2020. I am an Apple
| user but not a fanboy but everyday I wonder about the magic in
| Apple that is unique because even established competitors with
| virtually infinite money and incredible processes can't move
| forward. Another incredible aspect is the early addition of an
| NPU by Apple in a SoC.
|
| I would love to resurrect my XPS 13s with a durable battery and
| working in Linux without trigerring the fan. The same for my
| Lenovo Xs.
|
| In my imagination I am waiting for the billionaire geeks doing
| their part for fun (e.g. energy management in Linux).
| baq wrote:
| > Apple launched the M1 in 2020.
|
| which means the M1 was being worked on since at least 2018, I'd
| bet much earlier than that, for sure much earlier than that if
| you count silicon which never left the lab.
|
| reminder iphones run on apple silicon since 2010, which means
| they had to be working on it at least since 2008. they have _a
| lot_ of experience in silicon design by now.
| wslh wrote:
| My point holds even if they started earlier, companies such
| as Samsung has their own chips and they could also put
| notebooks on the market.
| verditelabs wrote:
| Qualcomm has had DSPs in its chips for a long time, providing a
| lot of NPU-like functionality before the term NPU had been
| coined. What Qualcomm currently calls its NPUs are just Hexagon
| DSP cores with specific instructions and abilities for matrix
| math and common inferencing datatypes.
| eigenspace wrote:
| The original Apple M1's performance per Watt and physical
| battery size may have been special when it first came out, but
| nowadays there's nothing special about its hardware specs
| relative to a modern x86 laptop.
|
| The difference you perceive is mostly software. Windows and
| Linux are really just designed for desktop machines first and
| foremost. MacOS was too, but when they transitioned to Apple
| Silicon, they replaced a lot of the internals with stuff taken
| from iOS, and iOS _is_ designed with batter life first and
| foremost.
|
| Getting the level of battery life out of non-apple laptops is
| just going to be a long, hard slog of going through the
| operating systems and auditing *everything* and every design
| decision for how it affects battery life and how much resources
| its using.
| MobiusHorizons wrote:
| Interesting, I thought Apple Silicon was still ahead on raw
| numbers, would you mind pointing me at any resources to learn
| more?
|
| Is that still true when you consider the whole system power
| consumption vs performance? I was under the impression that
| Apple's ram and storage solutions give them a small edge here
| (at the cost of upgradability / repairability)
| bigyabai wrote:
| "raw numbers" always means a lot of things. Apple's CPU
| benchmarks are neck-and-neck in multicore and usually top-
| of-class in single-core performance compared to other
| desktop chips. x86 will draw more power when idling and
| during bursty workloads, but is typically more efficient
| during sustained SIMD-style workloads.
|
| If you want an example of where Apple's design chops are
| pretty weak, look at their GPUs:
| https://browser.geekbench.com/opencl-benchmarks
|
| The M3 Ultra is putting up some of the saddest OpenCL
| benches I've ever seen from a 200-300w GPU. The entry-level
| RTX 5060 Ti runs circles around it with a $400 MSRP and
| 180w TDP. I truly feel bad for anyone that bought a Mac
| Studio for AI inference.
| eigenspace wrote:
| Apple Silicon has a lead in performance per watt over the
| competition (not a gigantic one, but a real one
| nontheless), but we were talking about M1, which is 5 years
| old now and has no appreciable hardware advantages compared
| to an AMD or Intel laptop made in the last few years.
|
| The reason an old M1 laptop gets better battery life is
| almost entirely a software difference.
| bigyabai wrote:
| > Another incredible aspect is the early addition of an NPU by
| Apple in a SoC.
|
| I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you've not used
| CUDA yet. NPUs are a lot of things, but "incredible" is the
| last word an engineer would use to describe them these days.
| wslh wrote:
| Incredible means they follow a SoC approach where the RAM is
| shared between CPU, GPU, and NPU instead of separated like in
| a typical GPU such as Nvidia.
| Zhyl wrote:
| It may be a while off yet, but it's pretty clear that companies,
| Qualcomm chief among them, are ready to replace arm as soon as
| possible.
| rwmj wrote:
| If it happens, Arm will have only themselves to blame. Suing
| your own customers is not the smartest move.
| Moral_ wrote:
| Now they're getting counter sued by Qualcomm because it turns
| out they allegedly violated their own TLA (license to get off
| the shelf cores) and their ALA (architecture license).
|
| Qualcomm is claiming that Arm is refusing to license the v10
| architecture to them and refused to license some other TLA
| cores requiring them to get the Nuvia Custom CPU team to
| build cores for those products instead.
|
| This explains their expansion into Risc-V it's a hedge
| against Arm interfering with QC's business.
| bitwize wrote:
| It'll turn out OK. They'll just be acquired by Apple, who
| will continue putting out the most powerful CPUs on the
| market with AArch64 architecture.
| nrclark wrote:
| Most SOCs on the market today have a mix of various CPU cores.
| It's common to see designs with a few big ARM Cortex-A cores
| running an OS like Linux or Android, and then some smaller
| Cortex-M microcontroller cores that do housekeeping things like
| security checks, power management, realtime features, peripheral
| management, etc.
|
| If I were to guess, Qualcomm wants to replace its various
| Cortex-M cores with RISC-V equivalents. This saves them money on
| licensing, reduces their dependency on ARM, and doesn't break
| customer-facing compatibility. Ventana is probably more of an
| aquihire to get their designer team.
|
| "We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to
| our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is
| futile." -Qualcomm, probably
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Could be good if a large firm stabilized the RISC-V version
| fragmentation with a massive standard SoC product boost in the
| Android space.
|
| But more likely, the early product line will meet the same fate
| as the dog in "Old Yeller" (1957) in a market consolidation
| push. =3
| nrclark wrote:
| I'd be surprised if Qualcomm replaces their application
| processors (the cores that typically run Android/Linux or
| QNX) with RISC-V any time soon. Aarch64's ecosystem is huge,
| and Qualcomm would cut their customers off from it by moving
| fully to RISC-V.
|
| They're more likely to replace the smaller CPU cores imo.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Agreed, at $5/pc for a ARM64 7/8/9 SoC that can run a real
| OS, the Aarch64 is likely the minimum now for most designs.
| =3
| webdevver wrote:
| bad, bad, bad sign, when a company starts to penny pinch like
| that.
|
| but unfortunately very in-line with the thesis that qualcomm is
| getting squeezed by a commodifying market where value-add
| opportunity is shifting outside of the SoC platform.
| monocasa wrote:
| Ventana's cores were 15 instruction wide, massively out of
| order cores that on paper compete with the application cores in
| Apple's M series SoCs.
|
| They're a totally different gate count niche than a Cortex-M
| equivalent.
| nrclark wrote:
| Fully agree - Ventana's cores are more like Cortex A76 kinds
| of things, and are on a completely different scale from
| typical Cortex-M cores.
|
| But switching to RISC-V would shut Qualcomm out from QNX and
| would limit its Android compatibility. And on the Qualcomm
| chips that I've seen so far, they're really bought in on both
| QNX and Android. That's why I think this is probably an
| aquihire more than a desire to ship Ventana's CPU cores.
| camel-cdr wrote:
| > Ventana's cores are more like Cortex A76 kinds of things
|
| More like Neoverse-V3:
| https://www.ventanamicro.com/technology/risc-v-cpu-ip/
|
| BTW: "Silicon platforms launching in early 2026."
|
| I wonder if this will be delayed due to the acquisition.
| wbl wrote:
| Porting QNX would be very possible.
| drob518 wrote:
| Yea, this to me signals that Qualcomm is starting to hedge
| its ARM bets. Given all the kerfuffle around licensing they
| have had with ARM already, I suspect that they are signaling
| to ARM that they have options and so ARM's leverage is a lot
| lower than it might be. That said, there are also huge
| switching costs to Qualcomm's customers, so this is not a
| move it takes lightly. In the mean time, I'm sure those
| Ventana engineers can also help them improve their ARM
| designs, too.
| monocasa wrote:
| My guess is that this was mostly an acquihire. I had heard
| that Ventana had a lot of people that were laid off from
| Intel for instance.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I would guess the same. Although Android is adding
| support for RISC-V so I could potentially see them
| looking into RISC-V Android phones.
|
| Feels kind of unlikely though. Ventana probably ran out
| of money.
| nrclark wrote:
| Maybe Ventana's software engineers can also help Qualcomm
| fix its BSPs. . . .
|
| I can dream, right?
| throwaway31131 wrote:
| So much for the $1.4B spent on NUVIA.
|
| https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/startup-key-apple-goog...
| monocasa wrote:
| I imagine this is mostly an acquihire to bolster the same teams
| that the Nuvia acquisition did.
| Moral_ wrote:
| What are you talking about Qualcomm is shipping cores from the
| Nuvia team they acquired for 2 years now.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Is this just Qualcomm buying itself another vote on the RISC-V
| foundation board?
| thebeardisred wrote:
| No, it's one company == one vote. There's a similar situation
| with IBM & Red Hat. Since IBM owns Red Hat, Red Hatters (like
| myself) may participate in meetings but where individuals from
| both companies are present "there can be only one."
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