The deal marks a big push by Qualcomm to reestablish a
leading position in chip performance after several years of high-profile patent
licensing litigation with rival Apple and regulatory authorities.
It also comes amid a change in the helm with Qualcomm
announcing this month that Cristiano Amon, its current president and head of
its silicon division, will replace outgoing CEO Steven Mollenkopf, effective
June 30.
Founded by three of Apple's former top semiconductor
executives in charge of iPhone chips, Nuvia has been working on a custom CPU
core design that it had said would be used in server chips.
Qualcomm, however, plans a broad use of Nuvia's processors,
saying they would power flagship smartphones, next-generation laptops,
infotainment systems and driver-assistance systems among other applications.
While laptop makers have traditionally turned to Intel Corp
for processors, Qualcomm has been supplying PC chips for several years to firms
such as Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Microsoft Corp.
“It’s exciting to see Nuvia join the Qualcomm team,"
Panos Panay, Microsoft's chief product officer, said in a statement on the
deal. "Moving forward, we have an incredible opportunity to empower our
customers across the Windows ecosystem."
The deal is also significant because it could help lessen
Qualcomm's reliance on Arm Ltd, which is being purchased by Qualcomm rival
Nvidia Corp for $40 billion.
Most of Qualcomm's current chips use computing cores
licensed directly from Arm, while Nuvia's cores use Arm's underlying
architecture but are custom designs. For Qualcomm, using more custom core
designs - a move that Apple has also made - could lower some licensing costs to
Arm in the short term and make it easier to move to a rival architecture in the
longer term.
While Qualcomm and Apple have resolved disputes over
Qualcomm's patent royalties, Nuvia and Apple have been at loggerheads.
In 2019, Apple sued Nuvia's Chief Executive Gerard Williams
III, alleging Williams recruited Apple employees to Nuvia while he was still
employed at Apple. Apple did not sue Nuvia itself, nor did it allege any
intellectual property theft, and no trial date has been set. -Reuters