Qualcomm's massive Snapdragon chip empire could be under threat with Arm Holdings PLC killing their partnership with the firm.

Any company that makes Arm chips must license technology from Arm Holdings plc, the British company that develops the instruction set. Companies can license the instruction set and create their own CPU designs or license one of Arm's ready-made Cortex CPU core designs to incorporate into their own chips.

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The chip design firm gave a mandated 60-day notice of their cancelation to Qualcomm, Bloomberg reports. Arm claims that when Qualcomm acquired AI chip company Nuvia - which uses the Arm architecture - for $1.4 billion in 2021, it was required to seek Arm's approval to transfer licenses from Nuvia over to Qualcomm.

Arm reportedly canceled Qualcomm’s chip design license, intensifying a legal battle that could disrupt smartphones and other tech industries.

This "architectural license" agreement has been the cornerstone of the partnership that has kept Android smartphones humming with Qualcomm's cutting-edge processors for years. Now, according to

Arm has reportedly scrapped its license with Qualcomm, which granted the company the right to design chips based on Arm technology standards.

Arm has finally thrown its toys and given 60 days notice that it intends to cancel Qualcomm's licence to produce chips based on Arm technology. So says Bloomberg, which claims to have seen Arm documents detailing the move.

As PCs, smartphones, and automobiles acquire more AI capabilities, the increasingly powerful Snapdragon Elite platform is supposed to be Qualcomm’s big move into those arenas. Now the dispute with Arm,